Category Archives: Ron Paul

For the time being, he's somehow both.

Gary Cameron/Reuters

Since Senator Rand Paul's formidable talent and obvious interest in the presidency became clear, the question has been how he'd square the circle of his unusual political beliefs. For every area where his heterodoxy might be more in line with the average Americanthe general population may in fact be more dovish than official Washington!he had other positions that might not sit so comfortably: People really do like federal legislation that bars private businesses from discriminating on the basis of race.

Would Paul find a way to sand the edges off his views? Would the Kentucky Republican stick to them? Would he have a road-to-Damascus moment that would herald a sudden mainstream shift in some of his attitudes?In the last two months, we've gotten a glimpse of his first stab: Paul is changing his views while insisting he hasn't. Chris Moody and John McCormack, among others, have detailed a few notable cases. And now The New Yorker's Ryan Lizza examines Paul's history closely in a lengthy profile. There's no huge revelation in the (very long) piece, but it does a good job of showing the struggle the senator will face. The example of the moment is on intervening to attack ISIS, but there are others, notably the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and foreign aid. Making things more difficult, there are the rather more extreme positions taken by his father, former Representative Ron Paul. Rand Paul owes his boost into politics and much of his political organization to his father, but he differs from him on some key questions.

The most compelling quote in Lizza's piece comes not from a politician or strategist or commentator but from an old college friend of Paul'scloser to a normal human being, in other words. Back in 2010, GQ reported an entertaining moment at Baylor when Paul and a co-conspirator snatched a friend and made her pray to "Aqua Buddha." Lizza tracked down the source, Kristy Ditzler, and got her to go on the record. It turns out she was appalled by the way her anecdote was turned into an attack on Paul, but she was still uneasy about how Paul seemed to be whitewashing his college days:

"The only reason I felt like speaking up was that I was a little bit irked by him making himself out to be all about God and country and all about conservative values, because he was clearly not promoting that when I knew him, Ditzler said. I mean, we all change, we all have a past. If hes changed, why cant he just say that hes changed?

Flip-flopping is always a problem for a candidate, but everyone has changed their view on something at some point. It's especially tricky for Paul because his brand is speaking truth to power, bravely speaking out against the consensus, and truly believing in what he says. If he's willing to change positions now, is he all that different from the average politician? And if so, why bother with an occasionally prickly first-term senator? Been there, done that.

One way around this question is the view that Jesse Benton, a friend and aide to Ron Paul, espouses to Lizza: Rand hasn't changed, it's just that he's now in a different position and is working through what it means to apply his principles. If Ron were President, he would have had to govern like Rand," Benton said. "Ron is much more of a purist about non-intervention, and thats fine, but in many ways Rons foreign policy can exist only in an academic sense. Its just not possible for the United States to be non-interventionist. Its not much of a difference on principle, but a much bigger difference in practice.

That might be true, but it doesn't account for the material change in the younger Paul's position on, say, ISIS. And it doesn't help him build distance from his father's foreign-policy views, which make the Republican establishment and many voters particularly uneasy.

Another tack is simply to pretend that the younger Paul doesn't believe the stuff he's saying now. Paul fans told The Daily Beast's Olivia Nuzzi earlier this month that the senator was just playing a political game and suggested he didn't really mean itwhich doesn't do much for the true-believer reputation.

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Is Rand Paul a True Believer or a Flip-Flopper?

Ryan Lizza -- a Fix friend and not only because we always get mistaken for one another -- has a massive profile of Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul in this week's New Yorker. It's a long and good read detailing Paul's ambitions to be president and the things -- namely his father, Ron -- that might keep him from that goal. I plucked out five people talking about Rand in the piece that I found particularly telling -- and explained why.

1. Ron was always content to tell the truth as best he understood it, and he saw that as the point of his politics. Rand is the guy who is committed to winning. -- Paul family strategist Jesse Benton

This gets to the core of the difference between Rand and Ron Paul. It's not -- as Lizza correctly notes in his piece -- fundamentally about their policy views on which there is considerable overlap. "They dont really have differences," Carol Paul, wife of Ron and mother of Rand, told Ryan. "They might have fractional differences about how to do things, but the press always want to make it into some kind of story that isnt there. The real difference between the two men is stylistic and focus-oriented. Many Republican strategists admit that if Ron Paul had simply refused to go down the rabbit hole of his foreign policy views (over and over again) during nationally televised debates, he might well have won a primary or caucus in 2012. Rand Paul, by contrast, understands the need to pivot off of topics where his views are not entirely aligned with the people he is trying to woo.

2. Hes not naturally gregarious. Hes not a natural politician. -- Longtime Louisville Courier Journal reporter and columnist Al Cross

Cross is right. Paul doesn't fit the charismatic pol stereotype like New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio do. If he's like anyone in the potential field, it's Ohio Gov. John Kasich, a wonky guy with a sort of off-beat appeal. To Paul's credit, he understands that he is not the back-slapping, hail-fellow-well-met candidate in the race and uses his occasionally awkward personality as a public-facing sign of just how different he is from the longtime politicians he hopes to beat. (A more concerning character trait that Lizza picks up on is that Paul is "prickly.")

3. Kelley [Paul] is going to say whats on her mind. She eggs him on when he gets attacked. -- A former Paul aide

Rand Paul's wife, Kelley, is someone the national media -- and the average voter in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina -- knows very little about. That, of course, will change as part of the process of running for president in this media age is that your significant other also must step into the spotlight. The comment about Kelley from the former Paul aide is part of a broader section in the Lizza piece about Rand's political antennae not always being perfectly tuned. But, it's worth noting that Kelley Paul, according to the Lizza piece, advised her husband against appearing on Rachel Maddow's showin May 2010-- good advice given what a mess he made of that interview.

4. [Mitch McConnell] realized that he was not his fathers son in all respects, and that he was interested in winning and achieving things rather than just making philosophical points. McConnell quickly realized that this is somebody with whom political business can be done. -- John David Dyke, Kentucky GOP commentator

The relationship between Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell -- brokered following the former's thrashing of the latter's hand-picked candidate in a 2010 Republican Senate primary -- may be the single most telling thing about the rise -- and change -- of Kentucky's junior senator. Dyke's praise of Paul as "somebody with whom political business can be done" is something that would have never been said of Ron Paul or even Rand Paul as recently as 2010 when he ran, at least in part, to teach the establishment a lesson for their long opposition to his father. But Rand doesn't want to be a hopeless cause. He wants to be a winning candidate. The relationship with McConnell speaks to that fact.

5. Ive seen him grow and Ive seen him mature and Ive seen him become more centrist. I know that if he were President or a nominee I could influence him, particularly some of his views and positions on national security. He trusts me particularly on the military side of things, so I could easily work with him. It wouldnt be a problem. -- Arizona Sen. John McCain

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The 5 most important quotes from the New Yorkers Rand Paul profile

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