Rand Paul Dump
No analysis here – Plenty of that goin around. Just a fun dump. Quite a party. GOP dumps on this guy. Conservatives dump on this guy. Libertarians dump on this guy. Everyone dumps on this guy. Quite fun.
Rand Paul’s victory in Kentucky’s Republican senate primary made him an instant hero with conservatives, but after his gutting in the national media, in anticipation of a fullblown meltdown, conservatives and Republicans are attacking him.
Talking Points Memo’s Christina Bellantoni reports, “top Republicans in Washington did not seem eager to defend the party’s newly crowned nominee, distancing themselves from Paul’s remarks about the Civil Rights Act.” She quotes RNC chair Michael Steele as “the harshest.” She adds, “Sen. John Cornyn, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, said on Meet the Press yesterday that Paul is a ‘novice.’”
The New York Times’ Ross Douthat calls Paul’s philosophy “self-marginalizing, and self-destructive. Like many groups that find themselves in intellectually uncharted territory, they have trouble distinguishing between ideas that deserve a wider hearing and ideas that are crankish or worse.”
Conservative bloggers are blasting Paul for his remarks about the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Commentary’s Peter Wehner blames Paul for igniting controversy and doubts the veracity of his apology: “one cannot help believing that Paul is embracing a view he doesn’t really believe. Of course, he wouldn’t be the first candidate for Congress to do such a thing.” The American Conservative’s Daniel Larison likens Paul to “all the [Bush-era] people who helped wreck entire countries and provided the justification for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.” Hot Air’s Allahpundit: “I guess he’ll follow the Palin playbook going forward, avoiding hostile media on grounds that they’ll never give him a fair shake. But Palin at least has the good sense to avoid the terrible optics of scheduling a big interview and then pulling the plug after a rough couple of days. Not Paul.”
Fellow libertarian Brink Lindsay of the Cato Institute: “I think Rand Paul is wrong about the Civil Rights Act.”
The Wall Street Journal blasted Paul’s flawed history: “It’s important to understand why Mr. Paul was wrong even on his own libertarian terms. . . he was wrong on the Constitutional and historic merits . . . He owes his supporters, and his own libertarian principles, better than that.”
Paul Gigot, the conservative Wall Street Journal columnist said on Meet The Press, “he’s wrong about the, he’s wrong about the Civil Rights Act, and he shouldn’t get into debate about 46-year-old settled law that is a – there’s a consensus and support of in this country. . . . The mistake he made was to take the focus, political focus, away from all that and say, ‘Oh, well, we’re – you know, let’s have a libertarian seminar about a 46-year-old law.’”
George Will, the conservative Washington Post columnist calls him frivolous: “There is no reason to believe Rand Paul is a racist. There is now reason to believe that he is frivolous. . . The simple fact is that in 1964, we, as a nation, repealed one widely-exercised right – the right of private property owners to serve on public accommodations whom they want – and replaced it with another right, that is the right of the entire American public to use public accommodations.”
Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway: “I meant that he rejected a fundamental provision of the Act.” Conway referenced Paul’s 2002 letter to a local newspaper denouncing the Fair Housing Act on the grounds that a “free society” should allow private discrimination even if he finds it abhorrent.
GOP Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina told The Huffington Post, “It’s clear he doesn’t support racism. I think most people in Kentucky believe as I do that in 2010 you should be able to sleep in whatever hotel and eat in whatever restaurant you want to . . . but as for what’s the proper role of government in the privater sector, he’ll have to convince people that his views are acceptable.”
Sen. John Cornyn of Texas told Politico, “I support non-discrimination of people, so I would need to talk to him to see precisely what his concerns were.”
One of his chief boosters in the Senate, Jim DeMint of South Carolina told Think Progress, “I support the Civil Rights Act . . . I will talk to Rand about his positions.”
Ed
Tags: Politics