Rand Paul’s Mouth
[Guest post by DRJ]
Pundits on the right and the left say Republican Senate candidate Rand Paul has a big mouth that may jeopardize his chances this November:
“Rand Paul on Tuesday beat an establishment candidate in solidly Republican Kentucky to become the GOP nominee in the race to replace retiring Sen. Jim Bunning (R). But he quickly found himself on the defensive over his views about civil rights.
Paul backtracked from comments in which he questioned whether the government should be allowed to block racial discrimination by private businesses.
And later in the week, he said that White House criticism of oil giant BP “sounds really un-American.”
His civil rights comment, in particular, resulted in two days of “bruising media coverage” that reportedly caused Paul to cancel an appearance on Sunday’s Meet the Press.
In the current climate where Democrats think government is the answer to every problem, will Paul’s suggestion that government isn’t the answer hurt him with Kentucky voters? It will if voters believe Paul is a racist as liberal website Firedoglake claims, or if they believe he is an extremist as suggested by the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein. Some may view Paul’s comments like this Washington Times editorial:
“The possibility that fiscal stalwarts like Dr. Paul the Younger and former Club For Growth President Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania might have the senatorial power to filibuster wasteful proposals must keep Ms. Maddow up at night. So it should not have come as a surprise that instead of a pleasant interview following his primary victory, the ascendant Dr. Paul was subjected to interrogation about how he would have voted on legislation pushed through Congress 46 years ago.
For all of its faults, the country is a better place in the wake of the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The problem with Dr. Paul is that his intellectual honesty – a malady we wish would infect other politicians – would not let him overlook the faults. He rightly pointed out that if one accepts the ability of the federal government to decide that all customers must be accommodated, Congress could use the same power to force liberal restaurant owners to serve people carrying guns.
Ms. Maddow wasn’t interested in logical consequences, she was interested in tarring Dr. Paul and the Tea Party movement in general as racist.”
Paul has since affirmed he would have voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. So will this incident hurt his chances or is it yesterday’s news?
— DRJ
The media have shown their cards, they’re going to try to run with their evergreen “The GOP is being hijacked by crazy extremists” storyline. No big surprise there.
Paul was guilty of a DC gaffe – telling the truth. Everyone knows the CRA was unconstitutional. It’s been sad to watch so many on the right repeating some variant of, “Sure, the CRA probably violated the Constitution in some respects, but it was for a good cause!”
Subotai (8ea9c0) — 5/22/2010 @ 7:13 pmLarry Elder has, on numerous occasions on his radio show, spoken about private discrimination, and how it is a hallmark of individual liberty, if not always a winning formula for commercial success.
AD - RtR/OS! (3c862f) — 5/22/2010 @ 7:22 pmI doubt very seriously if Ms. Maddow would be willing to interview Mr. Elder on this subject.
Because as always, Facts to a Liberal are as Kryptonite to Superman.
Uh, would that be the legislation that was overwhelmingly supported by Republicans but not so much by Democrats?
And she really wants to make that an issue?
Okay then…
EW1(SG) (edc268) — 5/22/2010 @ 7:23 pmSorry…
AD - RtR/OS! (3c862f) — 5/22/2010 @ 7:23 pmspoken..spoke..And, that filibuster in opposition was lead by one Senator Albert Gore, SENIOR (D-TN)!
AD - RtR/OS! (3c862f) — 5/22/2010 @ 7:24 pmSometimes best way to answer them is not to but to turn them around.
HeavenSent (a9126d) — 5/22/2010 @ 7:39 pmIt should be remembered that the situation was not that the southern state governments were diligently race neutral while private individuals chose to discriminate or not. What was happening was that almost universal discrimination in the south was upheld with the active assistance of the state and local governments (the Jim Crow laws are called ‘laws’ for a reason) and organized private violence that, if not actually supported by local law enforcement, could be undertaken with the knowledge that no jury would convict (if charges were actually ever filed).
To talk about this system as if it any way embodied individual liberty is make libertarianism look, at best, completely out of touch with reality. What does Mr. Rand think would have happened to a store, or store owner, who publicly welcomed black customers and and treated them equally in many southern towns? That his friends and the local racists would have just shrugged and said, “well, that is his indvidual right”. Or is a 2 am fire also just to be considered a hallmark of individual liberty?
Libertariansim is not about the federal government staying out of it when the state government is complicit in maintaining a system of social enforced discrimination. That is what states’ rights meant in the 1960’s. I think Rand Paul (and other libertarians sympathetic to the 1960s southern argument) would do himself a world of good in understanding what was going on by thinking about why the battle cry of the anti-federal southerners in the 1950s and ’60s was states’ rights rather than individual rights. The situation where a state government is massivly complicit in enforcing widespread discrimination is (thankfully) rare in America. But when it does occur, it requires a rare solution, and that is the large-scale intervention of a higher government level doing things that in normal situations it should not do. Hence the necessity of the federal government weighing in with a heavy hand.
Most people understand the racial conditions in the south of the the 1960s (and ’50s, and ’40s, etc.) were not the natural working out of some sort of libertarion laboratory of individual rights and choices presided over by by a neutral and benign government. If Rand Paul wants to be U.S. senator, it is time he understood that too.
Counterfactual (bbe3a0) — 5/22/2010 @ 7:59 pmBanning government discrimination is important, because government has coercive powers denied to private companies and individuals. But we’ve come a long way since 1964. The justification to ban private acts of discrimination as an extension of government-imposed discrimination, has disappeared.
Of course, the lefties will cry “RAND PAUL IS RAAAAACIST!!” because that’s all they know how to do. When you don’t have a rational argument, just cry racism, and that shuts down the debate.
Brother Bradley J. Fikes, C.O.R. (9eb641) — 5/22/2010 @ 8:02 pmIt’s yesterday’s news unless a few other conservative commentators want to come forth and wring their hands about it in public. I was delighted to see that Patterico.com did not join the nervous nellies handing the libs gasoline to pour on their bonfire.
First, no matter what Rand said Maddow would have concluded that he was a racist. The decree was issued by the liberals for all Tea Partiers a year ago. Second, if you watch the interview he exhaustively and explicitly pointed out his affinity for equal rights, MLK, and repeatedly expressed antipathy toward racism. Maddow summarized the exchange by trying to link him directly to the violence directed against those desegregating lunch counters. If you are getting fooled into questioning whether Rand Paul might be a racist, by all means find the interview and listen to the whole thing.
The standard reply from conservatives to questions about this whole libralo-genic tempest in a teapot should be: “Can’t we talk about something important?”
And that goes for the ‘scandal’ surrounding his cancellation of the MTP appearance as well. Obama has stiffed the media for a year on a presser and all we’ve heard is a few minor grumbles. But Rand cancels out and they are in full outrage mode.
Why?
They wanted another chance to grab some twisted soundbites to use against the Tea Party. Of course.
But the real reason is their inflated egos and exaggerated sense of self-importance. They have appointed themselves the source of all wisdom and some guy with funny hair from outside the beltway has the temerity to just flip them off. rofl, that’s gotta hurt!
in summary: http://www.damaverick.com/zenb49.jpg
DaMav (6ab8ce) — 5/22/2010 @ 8:04 pmWhoever goes Godwin or cries “racist” first wins. Claim the moral high ground asap (and yes, this is what passes as the moral high ground – no matter what the debate is about) and you too can put your opponent on the defensive from the get-go. And it doesn’t even matter if it doesn’t make sense. That’s the unbelievable irony.
Rand Paul has some work to do however. I like what Dr. Krauthammer had to say:
This is not going to sink him, but it is a negative. If on the first day of the general election campaign you have to issue a statement saying I’m not in favor of repealing the Civil Rights Act, you have a problem. Why are you even discussing it?
There is a reason why in America libertarians are admired and their ideas are current, but they get half a percent of the vote when they actually want to govern. People don’t want this purist individualism actually in government.
And I think he should have had an easy answer saying: “The Civil Rights Act was one of the great achievements of our day and it made our country enormously better in every way. But… our real problem today, in part, [is that] because of the prestige that the federal government acquired as a result of the success on civil rights, it thought it could solve everything, and for the last 50 years we have been injecting it in every area of life, and I’m saying it’s not the way to approach things.”
But to actually debate the first principles about desegregation on day one of the campaign, this is a huge unforced error.
Rand Paul was played. He better smarten up quick to the traps set every step of the way just waiting for his naivete to spring.
Dana (1e5ad4) — 5/22/2010 @ 8:25 pmCounterfactual, it appears to me he does understand that. He wasn’t asked about Jim Crow laws, which as you point out were passed by state governments to prevent private businesses from doing what the racists knew perfectly well they’d do; cater to black customers.
He was asked about private enterprises:
He was asked about the Constitionality of the Civil Rights act of 1964. Which, when you think about it, is simply Jim Crow in reverse. It compells private businesses to do what the states had formerly compelled them not to do.
He wasn’t disputing the Constitutionality of the power of Congress to prevent states from passing discriminatory laws.
AFAIK, the only entities that did that was Supreme Court in Plessy v. Furgeson, and the Southern Democrats in Congress, governorships, and state legislatures.
I wish he would articulate the point better. The fact that Jim Crow laws were necessary means that the Congressional overreach was not.
Steve (6cf4f1) — 5/22/2010 @ 8:27 pmit hurts him cause it made him look stupid to where some people will be less likely to write him a check
happyfeet (c8caab) — 5/22/2010 @ 8:41 pmRand Paul is a chip off the old blockhead…..
redc1c4 (fb8750) — 5/22/2010 @ 9:24 pm“Paul was asked whether he believed private businesses should have the right to refuse service to African-Americans.”
I think that’s none of the government’s business.
Dave Surls (2502bc) — 5/22/2010 @ 10:23 pmRand Paul should have pointed out that the only reason that the CRA of 1964 was needed in the first place was because Democrats refused to stop mistreating blacks in the South.
Have Blue (854a6e) — 5/22/2010 @ 10:50 pmI think that Rand Paul, and his father, fall into the trap easily set for libertarians, as exemplified by Dave Surls’ comment. And, please, I understand what Dave is saying.
In my opinion, libertarians, by definition, can not be racists. Race has nothing to do with the ideology.
However, when exposed to the facts, libertarianism has to acknowledge that race does factor into politics and policy.
We can all wish that race doesn’t play a part in society, and it shouldn’t, but it does. That’s not the fault of libertarians.
However, condemning the mechanism of government to correct racism is a losing cause.
The sad part, though, is that the race-baiters really only care about race-baiting. That’s who they are. That is their life.
Ag80 (b97c3e) — 5/22/2010 @ 10:51 pmCounterfactual writes
You do realize, don’t you, that you just supported Rand’s position? He clearly stated that the Civil Rights Act was properly applied to governments and to those entities that were supported with tax dollars but was improperly applied to private businesses.
The National Guard didn’t stand on the steps of a local bar in Little Rock. They stood on the steps of the state supported and taxpayer dollars funded state university.
The buses in Mobile weren’t owned by a private company. They were owned and run by the city.
The Ku Klux Klan wasn’t a privately owned business. It was an organization supported and peopled by the leaders of the community.
The courts that administered “justice” that allowed the murder of blacks weren’t private enterprises. Neither were the law enforcement officials who used fire hoses and dogs to punish the protesters and refused to provide an escort to the freedom riders until they were force to by the federal government.
In fact, thinking back on those days, I can remember very little that wasn’t supported by, funded by and controlled by the local and state governments of those states. That was what, for me, was so shocking and revolting about those times.
Antmedia (f41333) — 5/22/2010 @ 10:52 pmRand Paul will win easily in Kentucky. In fact, he probably hurt himself more by not standing by his original comment.
He should stay off the national news programs, however. He only helps their ratings and gets his party into a jam with his views. It does not move the ball one iota in the KY senate race, and as happyfeet points out, it could cost him donors. They won’t want their names to show up on his donor list, for fear people like J.D. will yell “racist!”
The danger he represents is to the Tea Party movement, which has worked furiously and I would say unsuccessfully to distance itself from an extremist and racist image. He even adds a new negative narrative to the tea party image, b/c I’ve never heard any tea party people mention the Civil Rights Act.
I agree with commentators who say that running for the Senate is not the time for candidates to engage in philosophical debates. There are constitutional arguments for and against aspects of the CRA, but it’s not going to be revisited, so when asked just say you support it and move on with your life.
Myron (a79d53) — 5/22/2010 @ 10:53 pmI can remember very little that wasn’t supported by, funded by and controlled by the local and state governments of those states.
Antmedia: This is a good point. One of Paul’s failings is that he clearly knows very little about how Jim Crow worked. I think he’s kind of trumpeting his daddy’s opinion.
Business owners in many localities were forbidden by local law or custom from crossing the color line and serving blacks equally, even if they wanted to. So it went well beyond just a “private” business decision.
Myron (a79d53) — 5/22/2010 @ 10:58 pmMyron – So your 19 is an admission that the problem was not the private business decisions of individuals but the actions of state and local governments, and yet we have to go after individuals?
Have Blue (854a6e) — 5/22/2010 @ 11:23 pmRon Paul’s particularly loathsome racist newsletter (and solicitations in white-power publications) lend credence to cries of racism against Rand Paul, since Rand is running based partly on his father’s positions and credentials.
The paleolibertarian movement – a contemptible effort to crush ethnic and religious minorities – is nothing to be proud of. I’m not libertarian (though I am a libertarian-leaning Republican), and I know the Pauls bring out the crazies, but when Rand Paul says this stuff, I don’t think historical ignorance is the cause.
Questioning whether he is racist strikes me as legitimate. There are plenty of non-crazy small-government folks out there to say nice things about.
And, there’s a non-racist argument to be made regarding private discrimination. But Ron Paul is a long-time race-baiter, and adopting his rhetoric is ungood.
–JRM
JRM (65bbfb) — 5/22/2010 @ 11:30 pmThe Ku Klux Klan wasn’t a privately owned business. It was
anthe paramilitary wing of the Democrat Party,organizationsupported and peopled by the leaders of the community.FTFY!
AD - RtR/OS! (3c862f) — 5/22/2010 @ 11:41 pmJRM,
Al Gore’s father was a hell of a lot more racist than Rand Paul’s. I think you can criticize Rand without passing onto him the sins of his father.
I think Rand is taking the civil rights based Goldwater approach to this. Remember, some NAACP members were opposed to the 1964 Civil Rights bill on civil rights grounds. There’s an idea that people should be free to run their businesses in a racist fashion.
I personally disagree with Rand, but I can acknowledge that his argument doesn’t rest on any sort of racial preference. I really haven’t seen anything justifying your attack. Ron Paul’s crazy newsletter? That’s a stupid thing to try to pin on his son.
Dustin (b54cdc) — 5/22/2010 @ 11:43 pmIt will continue. The left will try Borking since it’s all they’ve got. Even 1 protester outside a Rand Paul office/event will likely get national news. Expect reading about how Rand Paul intentionally blinded his black patients.
cedarhill (05a0d5) — 5/23/2010 @ 5:27 amHave Blue: No, not my argument at all. Discrimination on the basis of race is unconstitutional, whether a public body or private business. Though folks like Rand Paul cannot accept it, the courts decided this issue in the 1960s. Racial discrimination also happens to be immoral, but that’s a separate matter.
Myron (a79d53) — 5/23/2010 @ 6:23 amAD: The KKK was not a wing of the Democratic Party and no, it was not a private business organization. It was, and remains, a domestic terrorist organization and social club.
Myron (a79d53) — 5/23/2010 @ 6:24 amDustin: I’m pinning Rand Paul’s own sins on him: Namely, ignorance of Jim Crow and re-litigating the settled issue of whether businesses can discriminate on the basis of race.
And I mention his father, b/c Rand’s position is exactly that of his dad, except his dad said plainly he’d have voted against the CRA. Rand was being evasive and later, prevaricating — another “sin.”
Myron (a79d53) — 5/23/2010 @ 6:28 amand I would say unsuccessfully to distance itself from an extremist and racist image.
You were sounding rational until that slipped out.
Rand Paul, I suspect, has been too busy becoming a physician and ophthalmologist to spend a lot of time learning his own political philosophy and parts of his father’s excesses peeked out. Who in the world is advising him ? He had no business going on that show until he was well along in learning how to campaign.
This is what the McCain people feared for Sarah Palin when they made the mistake of keeping her away from the press for so long and then they foolishly let her go to a hostile venue like Katy Kouric.
Mike K (82f374) — 5/23/2010 @ 6:49 amEnough about Paul… how ’bout that Djou!
GeneralMalaise (273918) — 5/23/2010 @ 7:03 amMyron, the only sin is that you are misrepresenting what Rand Paul is talking about. Rand Paul’s only sin is making the mistake of using an intellectual answer.
By the way, Myron, you are repeating falsehoods yet again. The KKK was the terrorist arm of the Democrat Party for many decades. It dominated the Democrat Party for at least the first half of the 20th Century. Your denial of that fact makes you despicable.
SPQR (26be8b) — 5/23/2010 @ 7:18 amMyron,
Lester Maddox made that exact point in 1966 – after the CRA. He refused to serve black customers at his Pickrick Restaurant in Atlanta not because Georgia state law required him to refuse blacks (GA de jure segregation laws were made null and void by the CRA). He claimed that as a private businessman he should be allowed to serve – or not serve – whomever he wished. It was a real-life test case of Rand Paul’s argument.
He lost the argument in the courts, but won over the votes of anxious white Georgians and became Governor.
Note that George Wallace made a similar argument in 1968. He abandoned his “segregation now, segregation forever…” line from the early 1960s as he traveled north in his Presidential campaign. He made a libertarian argument that was supposedly race-neutral. The problem was that everybody knew George Wallace’s race-neutral libertarian language was BS. He was as racist as ever and was using the libertarian language as cover (in the same way Southern states used 10th Amendment “states rights” arguments as cover for obvious racism).
Does that mean the principle of libertarianism itself is wrong? No. But it does mean it is limited. The reality of race is that it is connected to power and group identity – both of which militate against the libertarian ideal of free choices in an open marketplace. As long as racism exists, a truly free market does not exist. Indeed, tribalism has historically prevented the growth of individual freedom more than governmental restriction per se; just look at the response to the Mohammad cartoons.
The proper response was Krauthammer’s. Paul is not ready for prime time.
Elrod (536150) — 5/23/2010 @ 7:21 amRand Paul’s inability to side-step a Lefty media sucker punch was his second mistake, his first one was participating in an interview controlled by a patently disingenuous MSM talking head who’s only interest was in broadcasting a public lynching.
But, Rand Paul’s inexperienced blundering is nearly insignificant compared to President Barack Obama’s 20 year history of racist participation in Reverend Wright’s bigoted and hateful congregation.
The national media, FOX NEWS included, doesn’t press Barack Obama to explain his racist associations, his crooked real estate transactions, his lies about his long-term association with domestic terrorist Bill Ayres, his failure to confront the environmental disaster in the Gulf, his coddling of Islamic jihadis, his blame America first foreign policy, his takeover of huge segments of the national economy, his failure to secure our borders, and the list goes on and on.
A comparatively minor GOP candidate stumbles, caught up in a prearranged trap and MSM goes apoplectic attacking the ghost of an issue over 45 years late to the party. Yet our racist President can’t be discomforted by currently relevant, but personally, inconvenient questions.
Truly, the watchdogs of democracy now feed from the hand of the tyrant.
ropelight (9d307a) — 5/23/2010 @ 7:22 amWhat was happening was that almost universal discrimination in the south was upheld with the active assistance of the state and local governments (the Jim Crow laws are called ‘laws’ for a reason)…
That’s actually somewhat counterfactual itself. The purpose of Jim Crow laws was not to assist “universal discrimination”. If that was the situation, the laws would not have existed. It was to make the discrimination universal such that those who discriminated would not be undercut by others who were not willing to make the economic sacrifice to discriminate. Jim Crow had to be enforced with the weight of the state to work.
SPQR (26be8b) — 5/23/2010 @ 7:22 amSPQR,
You are confusing the two Klans. The first Klan, founded in 1866, was the armed wing of the post-Civil War Democratic Party in the South. It saw itself as the paramilitary response to the Republican Union League. Its purpose was to “redeem” Southern state governments from Republican rule. It used terrorism, fraud and blacklisting to defeat Republican governments. And then it disappeared after the early 1870s once its job was done.
The second Klan founded in 1915 was never the partisan paramilitary tool of its ancestor. It was more of a generalized terrorist organization devoted to hatred of Catholics, Jews, liberals, socialists, blacks, and anybody else deemed outside “traditional” America. It was national – dominating Indiana in the 1920s – and died out in the late 1920s. It was revived in the 1950s to fight the civil rights movement – though the White Citizens Councils were more powerful than the Klan. And then it was sued virtually out of existence in the 1980s and 1990s.
Elrod (536150) — 5/23/2010 @ 7:29 amropelight,
Elrod (536150) — 5/23/2010 @ 7:33 amI noticed how you included “failure to confront an environmental disaster in the Gulf” alongside other issues that were absolutely front and center in the 2008 campaign. What exactly do you think Obama should do in the Gulf? Rand Paul seems to believe that Obama should not “confront” the Gulf spill but rather should let BP sort it out on its own. Do you agree with that? What should Obama do in the Gulf?
I’m not confusing anything, Elrod. As just one example, here in Colorado Ben Stapleton, dominated local politics with the cooperation of the KKK until post WWII.
SPQR (26be8b) — 5/23/2010 @ 7:34 amSPQR,
Elrod (536150) — 5/23/2010 @ 7:46 amThe modern Klan occasionally backed individual politicians. Heck, it controlled the Indiana legislature in the 1920s. But it was never the “armed wing” of any party – not to mention the Democrats – in its modern iteration. In the 1860s it was a paramilitary wing designed to destroy the Republicans (who had their backing from blacks primarily). That wasn’t the case in, say, 1920s Indiana. In Indiana the greater threat was from Catholics and immigrants who mostly voted Democrat. The Klan backed both Republicans and nativist Democrats in Indiana. My guess is the same was true elsewhere in the early 20th century.
Sure, Elrod, that explains why the Wilson administration resegregated Federal employment and the 1920 Democratic Presidential campaign of Cox and FDR sounded so much like a KKK rally …
SPQR (26be8b) — 5/23/2010 @ 7:51 amClarence Morley was a Republican Governor of Colorado in the 1920s and was a top Klansman. The KKK controlled both parties in many states in the 1920s.
Elrod (536150) — 5/23/2010 @ 7:53 amWilson’s Administration was the most racist in modern history. The Democratic Party was absolutely committed to white supremacy from the 1820s through the 1920s – and in some places until the 1960s.
But the Republican Party started to embrace white supremacists in the 1920s as well – especially after the fall of the Progressive (TR) wing in 1920.
When FDR issued his Fair Employment Practice Commission Executive Order in 1943 – the first time the Federal government banned racial discrimination in Federal contracts (for wartime) – the immediate response was a Philadelphia hate strike and walkout. The PA Republican Party, reeling after the Depression, finally found a way back to power by capitalizing on racial animosity among working class whites. It was the beginning of the end of the FDR coalition. The unraveling would continue with Mayor Cobo of Detroit in the 1950s and would become a national phenomenon in the 1960s.
See James Wolfinger’s book on Philly
http://books.google.com/books?id=MhM9Fw2xQ5QC&pg=PA273&lpg=PA273&dq=Philadelphia+hate+strike&source=bl&ots=Hpg4QA45Df&sig=cnIvp-6aF9XtUmwAVomPu24fcd4&hl=en&ei=wkL5S7-8MsL68Ab1k63YCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6&ved=0CCkQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=Philadelphia%20hate%20strike&f=false
Or Thomas Sugrue’s “Origins of the Urban Crisis” re: Detroit.
Elrod (536150) — 5/23/2010 @ 8:00 am“Paul is not ready for prime time.”
That would explain why Dick Durbin, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Jim McDermott, Jim Moran, Alan Grayson, and a host of other Democrats remain in prominent positions in government, right?
GeneralMalaise (273918) — 5/23/2010 @ 8:26 am“Clarence Morley was a Republican Governor of Colorado in the 1920s and was a top Klansman. The KKK controlled both parties in many states in the 1920s.”
wiki… wacky… woo.
GeneralMalaise (273918) — 5/23/2010 @ 8:28 amSpot on with post #31, ropelight.
GeneralMalaise (273918) — 5/23/2010 @ 8:30 amA comparatively minor GOP candidate stumbles, caught up in a prearranged trap and MSM goes apoplectic attacking the ghost of an issue over 45 years late to the party. Yet our racist President can’t be discomforted by currently relevant, but personally, inconvenient questions.
That’s the point: every GOP candidate worth their salt should know beforehand that this is how it’s going to be if they step into the campaign arena.
There is no excuse whatsoever to not know this is how the game is going to be played. The Palin treatment by the MSM coupled with her own ignorance/naivete to the brutality of the media machine clearly revealed what’s in the cards for a GOPer making a run for office: It’s a stacked deck on a not level playing field and any GOPer is going to have to be extra savvy, prepared, cautious and shrewd to make it to the end win.
Paul was clearly unprepared, showed an incredible naivete and ignorance in his comments. It’s as if he really believed the MSM and the greater public were interested in his philosophies and would give some critical thought to them. He needs to wake up to what the reality really is. Maybe he should re-watch that Palin/Couric interview.
Dana (1e5ad4) — 5/23/2010 @ 9:12 amI hear you Dana. when I heard he had gone on Maddow, of all places, I did a doubletake, he should have brought up how the CRA intent has been fundamentally rededifined if anything from equalaccess to preferential treatment
ian cormac (2f975b) — 5/23/2010 @ 9:24 am#34, Comment by Elrod — 5/23/2010 @ 7:33 am
Elrod asked, “What exactly do you think Obama should do in the Gulf?Rand Paul seems to believe that Obama should not “confront” the Gulf spill but rather should let BP sort it out on its own. Do you agree with that?”
OK, Elrod, off the top of my head, first things first. Let’s establish why we are now faced with the biggest environmental disaster in American history.
Obama should acknowledge he received the largest campaign contributions BP made during the most recent election cycle which put him in the White House.
Obama should admit that his Minerals Management Service (MMS) allowed BP to omit the required Environmental Impact Report prior to drilling off-shore.
Obama should make public MMS’s records for BP’s blow out preventer (BOP) showing the results of required tests for every 14 days in operation, and immediately prior to any capping operation.
Obama should demand BP explain publicly why their fail-safe shear ram device failed to function.
Then Obama should acknowledge that the blame for the blow-out rests equally on BP and on his MMS for gross failure to follow existing rules and regulations for drilling off-shore.
Then he should move to Venice, Louisiana, and take personal charge of coordinating the response efforts. Drop anything and everything that isn’t of overarching moment, leave Joe Biden in DC to handle routine affairs of government, and concentrate directly on stopping the flow of oil into the Gulf, and cleaning up the mess.
BTW, Rand Paul’s opinion, or your interpretation of his opinion, is really inconsequential compared to what role Barack Obama and his Administration played in precipitating this disaster, and in what steps they should be taking to limit the devastation in the Gulf of Mexico.
ropelight (9d307a) — 5/23/2010 @ 9:52 amI’d like to compare Maddow’s questioning of Rand Paul on the CRA with her questions to Robert Byrd on the same topic. Does anyone here have a link to the video of her asking Byrd his opinion of the Civil Rights Act?
Her network has been running footage of “reporters” running up to Republican politicians asking them what they think of Rand Paul’s calls for the repeal of the CRA. Can anyone find the footage of them asking Democrat politicians if any of them support Byrd’s filibuster of that act? And why any of them would call a member of the KKK the “conscience” of the Senate?
Have Blue (854a6e) — 5/23/2010 @ 9:54 amHave Blue, here’s a quote from Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV) that voters might like to hear him explain, or Democrat member of Congress explain why he’s considered an honored elder statesman in their party.
“ I shall never fight in the armed forces with a Negro by my side… Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds.”
Robert C. Byrd, in a letter to Sen. Theodore Bilbo (D-MS).
ropelight (9d307a) — 5/23/2010 @ 10:18 amMSLSD is a low-rated network of clueless, leftwing chirpers… nothing more… nothing less.
GeneralMalaise (273918) — 5/23/2010 @ 10:41 amHe is correct.
Actually, state governments have this power already, as it had not been denied to the states by the Constitution. While the commerce clause permits federal regulation, it does not pre-empt state regulation.
Of course, it is important to remember that libertarians and their sympathizers do not agree with government actions even if permitted by the Constitution.
And what provision of the United States Constitution prohibits private businesses from discriminating on the basis of race?
How so?
Were restaurants free to discriminate against black people, but other restaurants were forbidden to discriminate against white people?
Who were they?
Michael Ejercito (249c90) — 5/25/2010 @ 6:04 pmThe interesting thing is to remember that Jim Crow laws were passed in response to private business accomodating Blacks, since they found it made little economic sense to discriminate (particularly through “seperate but equal”, which just increased costs with only a marginal, if any, increase in revenue).
AD - RtR/OS! (bd3d6c) — 5/25/2010 @ 6:09 pm