Details, details. Paul will find a way to distance himself from the old Republican orthodoxy when the situation requires it. Obama was against the Iraq War and the Surge. He was against the Patriot Act. All of that went away when he suddenly saw a real shot at the White House.
Rand Paul: Washington (taxpayers) will bail out Detroit "over my dead body" Not a fan either, but I do think he is such a true believer, he would never be able to win nationally. Big doners just don't like somebody who won't compromise or apologize on cue. I don't think he could deal with the constant scrutiny and criticism either, not without a lot of explosions and implosions that make him look crazy on a macro level. In other news (since this has already gotten so far off topic) Lindsey Graham has a primary opponent that could send him into retirement now. Nancy Mace, the first female graduate of the Citadel and daughter of a Brigadier General, and a small business owner announced she was running and has the whole Tea Party movement running around chasing their tails and peeing themselves with delight. The whole Howdy Doody to John McCain's stringpulling act got old years ago. (And not hard on the eyes)
God forbid people like someone who is a leader that wants to protect the constitution and our freedom. Rand Paul disagrees with things like giving money to countries who burn our flag and illegally funding rebels who are in with al queda. He has a real plan to cut spending and get rid of our ridiculous debt. These things somehow gets you labeled as an extremist nowadays. It's sad. The country is going to fail at some point in the near future if we continue down the current path IMO. Paul would be a big step in the right direction. Before rand could ever win Americans would need to recognize that we need to reduce government and that means some things you may like or need from the government would have to go away. People don't like that bit it's much better than the alternative of mortgaging the future and leaving our children with impossible debt. You may think I am a nut job but I rarely buy into conspiracy theories.
Again, I'd never vote for someone who calls their self a libertarian but wants to restrict personal freedoms. Every candidate claims to have a solution. Paul can act like he has all the solutions but I very seriously doubt he does.
No one has all the solutions. How does Paul want to restrict personal freedoms? I've never heard him talk about anything other than protecting personal freedoms. I hardly know everything about him though. Anyway - what he calls himself shouldn't be what matters. What he stands for is what should matter. People get way too caught up in those things IMO. edit: Sorry, I overlooked this post before That's his strong Christian faith coming through. I actually disagree with him on both of those issues and agree with you that it doesn't really fall in line with someone who is all about personal liberty. While those issues may be important I don't believe either of them are threatening the future of our country. There are far more important issues IMO.
And as the Republican party moves more and more to the right, and the demographics of the voting public as a whole become more diversified and moderate/liberal, the chances of a Republican ever winning a national election again get more and more unlikely. And then the Republicans who control the red states gerrymander their congressional districts to assure a Republican majority in the House, they run candidates like Mace for Senate seats and either lose because they are too conservative or win and remove traditional Republicans who still have the word "compromise" in their vocabulary, and this country goes down the toiled because of perpetual gridlock with a divided Senate, a Republican House controlled by 80 Tea Party wingnuts that the Republicans live in fear of, and a Democratic President who can get nothing done because the 80 wingnuts refuse to give a Democratic President anything he/she wants all to avoid giving that President a "win", even if it is good for the country. Welcome to the new American political paradigm. What a mess. Thanks to the Tea Party for messing up the USA.
It's not the Tea Party. The Tea Party is a symptom of the problem. It's three things really, all of them not easy to describe well so I'm not going to do a long post to attempt it. 1. Karl Rove swung for the fences and missed with his Grand Pander in the Bush years, where he tried to get the Senior vote locked up with the Medicare expansion while simultaneously cutting taxes and trying to milk the national security angle for all it was worth. The combination of the three things basically overloaded the budget and set us on an inevitable long-term decline. 2. The Democrats and the Republicans both fell into the clutches of the Wall Street Greed Crowd. Anybody who wants to dispute this somehow has to reconcile Paulson and the Treasury removing the last constraints on moral investing with the bailout proposals coupled with all the non-enforcement by the SEC in the decade prior to that. They need to explain Jon Corzine. 3. Unrestricted money in politics as a result of a general loosening of controls over the last two decades that was capped by Citizens United. If you don't understand how a tremendous amount of loose money in politics will draw flies and gum up the works I can't really argue the point with you. It was everybody. There's no other rational explanation for how things could have gotten so screwed up.
LOL @ the Tea Party messing up the USA. Don't forget to register for one of the two custom made "sides" of the same government that has been messing up this country for the better part of a century.
Come on Willie, ur are smarter than this.......while the tea party entity has its share of criticism, it's quite short sighted to blame the current mess on it, if in fact u were serious about it. U are correct posting about the demographics going forward. BO is the first president to use this nugget to his advantage and all future pols will do the same. The liberal/democratic wing has plenty of air under it and they know it. It allows them to get away with political charades, hypocrisy, and constitutional follies a republican would be crucified over. for example - http://www.marketwatch.com/story/congress-to-get-obamacare-exemption-report-2013-08-02
The extension of the closures tells me that the US does not fully trust any of the governments we're dealing with in the Middle East at this point. We're being abundantly cautious because we do not know who is red team and who is blue team. This is an obvious sign of our diplomatic decline. Countries are not lining up firmly behind us any more. They're waiting things out and playing the angles.
We should build a fort in the middle of the Atlantic ocean, protected by US ships; and if the middle east chooses to trade oil with us (they will definitely want to trade with us), it will be processed through this check point. For all other intensive purposes we should completely abandon the middle east and Northern Africa. Never offer a dollar of aid (that dollar can go back into the US economy) and let them workout their troubles amongst themselves. The only country in the region that we should ever give a weapon or dollar of aid to is Israel as they are the only nation in the region we don't have to worry about using our weapons against us.
They're giving aid to those countries like the colonists gave aid to the natives in this country. Enjoy your blankets. (And your small pox)
