There are certain things that are just hard to define.
Human sexuality, for example.
We understand the Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Part of LGBTQ.
A lot of folks nowadays understand the concept of Transexuals, pansexuals, hypersexuals,
or asexuals.
Add Bigender, androphilic, and sexually fluid to the list, and you may get a few tolerant
people whipping out dictionaries for help.
Extend the acronym to include genderless, gynesecual, and skoliosexual, and even advocates
like myself are helpless without desperately searching wikipedia to find out, first, what
are all these, and two, how did this acronym get so damn long!?
The point is that human sexuality doesn’t fit into an easily definable space.
It’s subtle.
So are opinions.
Ask the average person on the street about their political views and assuming they aren’t
super fans of the democrats or republicans, you’re likely to receive a difficult to
define answer.
“How would you describe your political opinions?”
“Well, I’m a socially liberal, fiscally conservative, love the troops, hate the war,
afraid of immigrants, but love ethnic food, feminist (but not the crazy ones, you know
what I mean), wasn’t Obama born in Madagascar or something?
I don’t know.
I don’t really follow politics that much.
I guess I’m sort of a libertarian, but not the socialist kind, right?
I don’t like Rush Limbaugh.”
And this is the reason why people are confused by Rand Paul.
He’s running for the republican nomination, identifies with the ultra conservative tea
party, the media calls him ‘libertarian’, and so does he (“Libertarian would be a
good description” CNN 2010), except when he doesn’t (...I’m not a libertarian Time
Magazine 2010).
A lot of his fans are libertarians.
But then, even they are confused when he poses in front of big government funded aircraft
carriers while proposing multi billion dollar increases to defense spending.
But conservatives don’t get him either.
Like when he proposes cutting aid to Israel, an idea that conservatives hate!
And who is he appealing to when he suggested that making people vaccinate their children
could lead to Military Rule in the streets?
The only person nodding along at that point is a tinfoil hat wearing, hollywood liberal,
with a doomsday bunker.
So who is Rand Paul, and how do his views stack up?
To answer this question, let’s examine his positions, issue by issue.
To keep it simple, let’s compare Rand’s views to two other People: Mr. libertarian,
representing the most general libertarian position; and Mr. Conservative, representing
standard conservative republicans; both are voters he will need to win the nomination
next year.
Let’s start with common ground.
Rand Paul supports a flat tax, lowering/eliminating corporate tax and income tax, would remove
green energy subsidies, opposes gun control, repeal the affordable care act (also known
as Obamacare).
He would dissolve the department of education, push for congressional term limits, and only
sign a conservative version of immigration reform which secures a border, and blocks
citizenship for illegal immigrants.
More recently, Paul spoke in favor of allowing private businesses to refuse service to gay/lesbian
customers, if it violated their religious conscious (adding that he wouldn’t personally
do so).
All to which Mr. Libertarian and Mr. Conservative say, “yeah.
sounds good enough”
But from here the seas get rougher.
Mr. Libertarian is about to get seasick.
Here are some issues where Sen. Paul can alienate libertarians in favor of republicans like
Mr. Conservative.
First, Paul seems much more open than his father to using American Armed Forces abroad.
He has tacitly accepted the ISIS bombing campaign in Iraq and Syria (though he suggests Obama
ask congress), and he supports increased military spending by 76.5 billion dollars.
These positions are nails on the chalkboard for most libertarians.
Especially if you trumpet them in front of an aircraft carrier.
He opposes legal cannabis (medical is ok), is pro-life, and opposes gay marriage (giving
the classic cop out :’leave it to the states’) So, is Rand Paul a libertarian?
Well, he’s not winning any purity contests.
But Mr. Libertarian is loyal.
He sees Rand as his best chance for the white house.
Sen. Paul and Mr. Conservative have many more disagreements to work out.
Here are just a few.
He strongly opposes the Patriot Act and all NSA Spying.
Though some Republicans may say the snooping of the NSA pushes the limit, ultimately they
are more worried about terrorism (generally speaking, of course).
Rand Paul supports a balanced budget amendment, one that would require the federal government
to have no debt.
Maybe on the surface this would sound nice to republican primary voters.
But tell them that this would likely require cutting military spending, and their ears
will bleed.
Paul hasn’t specified how he would balance the budget yet, but this seems to go against
his 72billion in extra pentagon spending we just talked about.
Paul is opposed to the federal Defense of Marriage Act, a cherished relic for social
conservatives.
He instead, like we mentioned earlier, says the dorky line that gay marriage is an issue
for the states, which isn’t good enough for many evangelican christians, to whom gay
marriage is apocolyptic.
Paul opposed the Iraq invasion/occupation, even though many republicans still believe
Saddam had WMD’s.
And worst of all, in 2010 he expressed his desire to cut foreign aid to Israel, the precious
baby of the right.
Backlash was so harsh on this one, he had to flip flop, but no one has forgotten.
Paul supports criminal justice reform, ending mandatory minimum sentences, the war on drugs,
and voting rights for felons who have served their time.
This kind of common sense reform makes you sound like a soft hippie to conservatives
(but there’s my bias seeping through);.
This is the tightwalk, needle threading, scale balancing cliche that is Rand Paul’s candidacy.
He has to satisfy both libertarians and conservative republicans in order to be the nominee.
In Iowa, the first primary state, he’ll need the conservatives to show up (there are
simple far more of them), but also the energy and organization of young libertarians, the
ones his father relied so heavily upon in 2008/2012.
A task, which we have just seen, is incredibly difficult.
So far, he has been able to hold rank.
His tea party label helps him keep appearance as a true blood conservative.
And libertarians basically seem to think, ‘well, he isn’t perfect.
but hes the closest we’ll ever get to a libertarian in the white house’.
And that’s one of many reasons 2016 is going to be so fascinating to watch.
Have a great day friends.
Thanks for watching friends.
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Also, if you want to hear us talk more about Rand Paul, check out this video from last
week, where we dissected his statement that America needs another revival.