He’s running for president, and he’s a politician. That said, Rand Paul and others like him will twist and turn and squeeze themselves in any shape or reshape possible, if it gives them the ability to get a vote in 2016. So yes, he will pander to the Black community, to the Hispanic community, to women, to gays. These are just some of the groups Rand Paul and the Republicans have hammered over the last few years but, he is running for president and he’s a politician… and he’s a Republican!
You’ve got to give this much to Rand Paul: Kentucky’s junior senator is willing to do something almost unheard of in modern presidential politics, which is to make arguments that not everyone in his party already cares about. For this reason alone, Paul is probably the most interesting presidential hopeful out there, if not the most likely to succeed.
Paul’s latest gambit, as you may have seen, involves an appeal to black voters, who generally have about as much attachment to the Republican Party as Donald Sterling has to his wife. This unusual courtship, which included a speech to the Urban League in which Paul actually quoted Malcolm X, led to a spate of media stories in the past week about a new contest between the parties to win over black voters in closely divided states.
No real news here. We all know that Dick Cheney will attack anyone who does not believe in sending American troops to fight and die in an unnecessary war. Something he’s all in favor for.
In an interview on ABC, Cheney spoke about fellow Republican and potential 2016 presidential candidate, Rand Paul, calling Paul an “isolationist” for his opposition to the war.
“Rand Paul … is basically an isolationist,” Cheney said on ABC’s This Week Sunday. “He [Paul] doesn’t believe we ought to be involved in that part of the world. I haven’t picked a nominee yet. But one of the things that’s right at the top of my list is whether or not the individual we nominate believes in a strong America, believes in a situation where the United States is able to provide the leadership in the world, basically, to maintain the peace and to take on the Al Qaeda types wherever they show up.”
The father of Rand Paul, the man who wants to be our next president in 2016, is proving his love of America and Americans by giving away a weapon of mass destruction – a semi automatic Colt LE6920MP-B AR-15 . Paul’s give away is actually a chance to get people to donate to his website, but in the letter posted on his website, he claims that the giveaway is all about FREEDOM! Cause, you know, Obama is somehow using jedi mind tricks and taking away all our guns and… FREEDOM!
Did I say FREEDOM?
Here’s his letter!
Dear Friend of Liberty,
There can be no freedom without the ability to defend it.
C4L is standing up for freedom every day by fighting to Audit the Fed, repeal ObamaCare, stop NSA spying, and reclaim our Republic.
But each and every one of us has a God-given right – and duty – to defend freedom.
That’s why C4L is giving away a brand new Colt LE6920MP-B AR-15 equipped with a red dot sight.
The AR-15 will come with Magpul stock, pistol grip, handguard, and vertical grip and back-up sight. All you have to do is sign up for free below for your chance to win!
All entries must be submitted by 5 PM EDT on Thursday, July 3, 2014. We will notify the winner via email.
There are numerous examples where Rand Paul supported or supports – depending on the time of day – the Republicans effort to suppress the vote through voter I’D measures.
That of course is not the news.
What made news was an apparent effort by the senator to distance himself from his fellow Republicans when he said that those in favor of voter restrictions should step back from marking it a central part of their platform.
“I think it’s wrong for Republicans to go too crazy on this issue because it’s offending people,” he said.
Paul then goes on Hannity to sooth the base of the Republican party by reaffirming that he is in fact, in favor of voter ID laws, and that his original flip flop on the issue was “overblown.” The country’s drug policies have a restrictive effect on the minority vote, he said, while the GOP’s voter ID efforts may not.
Paul added that if the Republican Party is making voter ID a “central theme and issue,” his colleagues must be sensitive to how some minority voters will perceive those efforts as an attempt to shut them out of the voting process.
“I’m trying to go out and say to African-Americans ‘I want your vote, and the Republican Party wants your vote’ … we have to be aware that the perception is out there and be careful about not so overdoing something that we further alienate a block of people that we need to attract,” he said.
So Rand Paul has sent out mailings to his supporters telling them some rather impossible to believe claims about Obamacare. Of course his supporters drink it all as truth. They happily believe everything these Republicans say. But PolitiFact has checked and this lie got their Pants on Fire ratings.
According to PolitiFact, someone sent them the mailing from Rand Paul claiming that “for every Kentuckian that has enrolled in Obamacare, 40 have been dropped from their coverage.” An insane ratio, I know. And I’m not the only one who found this claim rediculous. It also caught the attention of PolitiFact. They checked into Paul’s claim and found this:
Tracking cancellations isn’t so easy, because cancellations are issued by private health insurance companies, and regulations differ in each state. TheAssociated Press assembled a comprehensive, 50-state look at Obamacare-related cancellations and concluded that, in Kentucky, 130,000 people received cancellation notices. Meanwhile, the Kentucky Department of Insurance has put the number at 168,000.
So a reasonable number for cancellations in Kentucky is probably between 130,000 and 168,000.
How many Kentuckians have signed up for Obamacare?
The answer depends on your definition of “Obamacare.”
The broader measure includes both signups for private insurance at the state-run Kynect insurance marketplace, as well as signups for Medicaid, the longstanding government-run health insurance program for the poor that Kentuckychose to expand under Obamacare.
In late April 2014, the stateannounced that 82,795 Kentuckians had purchased private plans on Kynect and 330,615 others had qualified for Medicaid coverage, for a total of 413,410. Data from the federalDepartment of Health and Human Services that counts a few more weeks of signups had slightly higher numbers.
Comparing the two numbers
Using just these numbers, Paul is either wrong or very wrong.
The smaller number — private-insurance number of signups (82,795) — is exceeded by the number of cancellations (up to 168,000), but at most, the discrepancy is only twice as big, not 40 times as big.
But it’s not clear that this is the right number to use. Paul’s newsletter didn’t only refer to private plans, and the Medicaid expansion was just as much a part of Obamacare as the marketplaces for private health insurance plans.
So if you include both types of signups (413,410), then the combined Medicaid and private-insurance signups in Kentucky actually exceeded the number of cancellations by more than double. So Paul’s claim is not just off-base, it’s actually going in the opposite direction.
In fact, the 40-times-higher claim is ridiculously off-base.
Senator Rand Paul is slowly realizing that statement he made years ago could come back to haunt him in the 2016 presidential election.
Today mother Jones highlighted a video showing Rand Paul making some rather truthful statements about former Vice President Dick Cheney. In the video, Rand Paul is heard talking about Dick Cheney and the hypocrisy of Cheney decision making during the first and second Bush presidency.
Rand Paul believes that Cheney only became interested in a war in Iraq after he became the CEO of Halliburton and saw the opportunity to make millions of dollars with a war in Iraq. Halliburton – I’m sure you’ll remember from civics 101 – is a company that specializes in oil and oil products, thus, Iraq.
Did you really think the Cheneys were going to stay quiet and take this one laying down? Well think again. Luz Cheney to the rescue!
“It’s not surprising since Senator Paul often seems to get his foreign policy talking points from Rachel Maddow.”
And Fox News via contributor and former United Nations Ambassador John Bolton chime in with, “Senator Paul should repudiate his remarks and apologize to Vice President Cheney.”
This one’s not over yet folks. Watch this space. 🙂
“There’s a great YouTube of Dick Cheney in 1995 defending President Bush #1 and the decision not to invade Baghdad in the first Gulf war, and he goes on for about five minutes. He’s being interviewed, I think, by the American Enterprise Institute, and he says ‘it would be a disaster, it would be vastly expensive, it’d be civil war, we would have no exit strategy.’
“He goes on and on for five minutes. Dick Cheney saying it would be a bad idea. And that’s why the first Bush didn’t go into Baghdad. Dick Cheney then goes to work for Halliburton. Makes hundreds of millions of dollars, their CEO. Next thing you know, he’s back in government and it’s a good idea to go into Iraq.”
Guess who said those words? That’s right, it was Rand Paul. Those words are just part of what the Republican/Libertarian said about his former Republican vice president. Rand Paul, a Republican prospect to run for president in 2016 opened his mouth in the video below and guess what…? The truth jumped out.
The video below was brought to light by Mother Jones.
Paul had more to say about Cheney. See the video below.
You know when an election is coming and who is planning to run for higher office when die hard Republicans buck their party platform to appeal to a larger audience. That is what the suspected 2016 Republican presidential candidate is doing, as he tries his best to distance himself from the crazies that occupies the Republicans.
Rand Paul put a new spin on a familiar refrain that the Republican Party needs to broaden its base. He compared the GOP’s need for change to a recent Domino’s Pizza’s campaign to improve the taste of its crust.
Speaking to a packed crowd of students at the University of California at Berkeley on Wednesday, Paul said that “the Republican Party needs to either evolve, adapt or die.”
“Remember when Domino’s finally admitted they had bad crust? Think Republican Party. Admit it; bad crust. We need a different kind of party,” he said referring to a well-known advertising campaign by the pizza chain.
After complaints from customers of stale, flavorless crust, Domino’s promised change and documented its efforts to come up with better tasting pizza.
I can guarantee you that the Republicans cannot come up with a better tasting party. Their very presence will always leave a bitter taste in the mouth!
Sen. Rand Paul leads the GOP 2016 pack, and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is more likely to be perceived as capable of handling crises than is President Barack Obama, according to new survey data released Sunday.
A CNN/ORC International survey found Paul the slight favorite for his party’s nomination, with 16 percent of those polled on the question tapping the Kentucky Republican as their choice for the 2016 GOP nod. He was closely followed, within the margin of error, by 2012 vice presidential nominee Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), who pulled in 15 percent; and Texas Gov. Rick Perry, with 11 percent.
Perry, whose unsuccessful 2012 bid was characterized by a series of high-profile missteps, made a big splash at the Conservative Political Action conference earlier this month. Like Paul, he has signaled he is weighing a 2016 presidential bid.
On the other side of the aisle, Clinton was the prohibitive Democratic favorite according to the survey, clocking in with 63 percent support for the 2016 presidential nod. She was followed by Vice President Joe Biden at 13 percent.
The March 7-9 survey of 801 adults across the country — including 367 Republicans and voters who lean Republican; and 372 Democrats and voters who lean Democratic — hase a margin of error of plus or minus 5 percentage points.
Other data from CNN/ORC indicated that 64 percent of Americans surveyed perceived Clinton as “tough enough to handle a crisis” and the same percentage of people called her a “strong leader,” while only half called Obama a “strong leader” and 53 percent said he is “tough.” Sixty-eight percent of those surveyed considered her likable, the poll said. However, the survey also found that only 50 percent of those polled would be “proud” to have her as president.
Welcome to the continuation of the Republican clown show. Rand Paul is doing his part. He is a very funny Republican!
In an interview with Politico released Tuesday morning, Republican Sen. Rand Paul is about as forthright as he’s been about wanting to run for president in 2016. “The country’s a mess, and I think there needs to be a program that Republicans put forward, and also there needs to be a messenger who can actually win,” he told Politico, which caught up with him on a political swing through Texas earlier this month. “And I’m concerned that if we put forward the same sort of candidate again, that we won’t be successful.” The candidate Republicans need, Paul reasons, is Paul. He’s the only one who can appeal to minorities.
While Paul’s buddy in the Senate, Ted Cruz, has completely derailed immigration reform, Paul is willing to address it. Politico reports that to a crowd of self-described Cruz and Sarah Palin fans at the Harris County GOP dinner in Houston, Paul said explicitly,
Texas is going to be a Democrat state within 10 years if we don’t change. That means we evolve. It doesn’t mean we give up on what we believe in, but it means we have to be a welcoming party. What I’ll continue to say, and it’s not an exact policy prescription, … but if you want to work and you want a job and you want to be part of America, we’ll find a place for you.
Paul doesn’t support the bipartisan Gang of Eight immigration bill that’s currently stalled in Congress, but he does approve of reform that goes beyond border control. He’s taking cues straight from Republican National Committee chair Reince Priebus here. In the RNC’s “autopsy report” from the 2012 election, Priebus didn’t offer a specific policy prescription for immigration reform, but he made it clear that change needs to happen to appeal to Latino voters. Paul noted to Politico,
I think that our message … has great appeal if you are part of any kind of group that’s ever been mistreated in history. That could be African-Americans, Jewish-Americans, Japanese-Americans, all of which, at times in our history, haven’t been treated as they should be.
It’s interesting that this is the angle Paul is pushing, considering he had to fire one of his top aides last year for being less than racially sensitive. Paul’s aide Jack Hunter was a shock jock radio host who espoused neo-Confederate views on air into the mid 2000s. He once suggested that John Wilkes Booth’s “heart was in the right place” when he shot President Lincoln.
When you’re looking for a sensible Repunlican to speak the truth to their brain dead masses, Karl Rove is usually not the man.
As a matter of fact, when it comes to speaking the truth, it is hard to find anyone in the Republican Party to carry that banner. So when someone from that party step to the plate and make a sensible statement, well, there will be a lot of snow in the northeast.
Guess what? There is a lot of snow in the northeast and Karl Rove said something that actually made sense.
In a recent interview on Fox News, Rove was asked to comment on Rand Paul and his constant bludgeoning of a 20 year old story involving Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. Rove’s response amounted to the most sensible thing I’ve heard from a Republican in a very long time.
“I’m not sure he [Rand Paul] has a strategy,” Rove said. He then went on to explain that each candidate running for president in 2016 must focus on the “bigger picture” instead of personal issues and he concluded that Rand Paul’s focus on Bill Clinton’s past is not in the best interest of the nation.
Hillary Clinton has not yet declared that she is running for president in 2016, but already the Republican jokers have began their attacks.
This attack though, takes the cake. Somehow, Republican presidential wannabe candidate Senator Rand Paul is suggesting that the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky scandal should give Americans pause when it comes to evaluating the Clinton legacy — and, by extension, Hillary Rodham Clinton’s potential presidential campaign.
Paul’s wife, Kelley, made similar remarks in a Vogue profile last year, and her husband agreed with her Sunday in an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” Rand Paul said the scandal is about more than just infidelity and lying to the American people, but also as “predatory behavior” from the former president.
“One of the workplace laws and rules that I think are good is that bosses shouldn’t prey on young interns in their office,” Paul said. “And I think really the media seems to have given President Clinton a pass on this. He took advantage of a girl that was 20 years old and an intern in his office. There is no excuse for that, and it is predatory behavior.”
Paul said the episode undercuts Democrats’ allegations of a GOP “war on women” and should color people’s perceptions of the Clintons. He added that “sometimes it’s hard to separate” Bill and Hillary Clinton.
“And then they have the gall to stand up and say Republicans are having a war on women?” Paul said rhetorically. “So yes, I think it’s a factor. It’s not Hillary’s fault, but it is a factor in judging Bill Clinton and history.”
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