The Republican candidate for President, Ron Paul, just confirmed what we already knew – that he is against the 1964 Civil Rights law that outlawed different forms of discrimination against blacks and women.
The Republican/Libertarian appeared on the show Hardball with Chris Mathews and made his feelings against The Act known. His son Rand Paul, stated the same sentiments against the Civil Rights Act when he successfully ran for Senate in 2010.
Below is the video, compliments of TPM
The circus rolls into town tonight. On Fox News, the first presidential Republican debate begins, with five misfits. Will any of these performers get the eventual Republican nomination? We’ll have to wait and see.
Let’s meet the fab 5!
Tonight’s event could well be the first time in history that a nationally televised presidential debate lowers the stature of every participant. A total of five candidates are set to take the stage at 9 p.m., when Fox News — which customarily attracts several million viewers in that time slot — goes live. Only one of them, former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, has a realistic chance of winning the GOP nomination — or even coming close. The other four are strident ideologues with niche appeal, nonexistent victory prospects — and absolutely nothing to lose.
* Herman Cain, the former CEO of Godfather’s Pizza. Cain has run for office before, finishing a distant second (with 27 percent of the vote) to Johnny Isakson in Georgia’s 2004 U.S. Senate primary. This means that, from an electoral standpoint, Cain has a weaker claim to being taken seriously as a candidate than even Alan Keyes; at least Keyes had won the GOP nomination in the two failed Senate bids that preceded his 1996 and 2000 White House forays. To the extent Cain has distinguished himself on the ’12 trail, it’s probably through his pledge to engage in hiring discrimination by barring Muslims from working in his administration.
* Rick Santorum: Santorum was drummed out of the Senate by Pennsylvania voters in 2006, losing his bid for a third term by 17 points to Democrat Bob Casey. Other modern era presidential candidates who lost Senate races before setting out to run for the White House include: Democrats Carol Moseley Braun (2004) and George McGovern (1984), and Republican Keyes. (You could also, I suppose, include Mike Gravel, who lost a Senate reelection campaign in 1980 and sought the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination.) Between them, they won a total of zero primaries and caucuses. Santorum won’t do any better, but he is passionately opposed to abortion, gay rights and President Obama — and he’ll have plenty of time to prove it tonight.
* Gary Johnson: The former New Mexico governor is probably, as Salon noted last year, the most interesting Republican you’ve never heard of — an authentic libertarian who wants to dismantle government but who also supports legal abortion and pot. Obviously, he’ll barely make a dent once the primaries roll around (especially with Ron Paul in the race), but he’ll get an unusual amount of airtime tonight for his unorthodox platform — which will presumably prompt Cain and Santorum to use him as a foil to assert their conservative bona fides, potentially forcing Pawlenty to weigh in on subjects he’d rather sidestep.
* Ron Paul: His presence figures to foster this same dynamic, just as it did in 2007 and 2008 — when no GOP debate was complete without one candidate using Paul as a punching bag in order to look courageous and principled in the eyes of the party base.
And that’s it. No other candidates (or potential candidates) will participate. Mitt Romney is wisely staying away, as is Mike Huckabee. Even Newt Gingrich and Michele Bachmann are keeping their distance. No-shows were not supposed to be an issue when Fox and the South Carolina GOP originally scheduled the debate a few months ago. Back then, it was assumed — based on recent history — that the GOP field would be fully formed and the campaign in full swing. But that hasn’t happened.
Ron Paul, the Libertarian who caucuses with Republicans in Congress, wants to get rid of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security… and he’s running for President of the United States in 2012 with those cuts on his agenda.
Mr. Paul appeared on MSNBC and was interviewed by Host Cenk Uygur. Mr. Uygur asked Mr. Paul whether or not he will “transition” out of Medicare and Social Security if he became president, to which Paul answered;
“Well, you know, if I can get the people to agree and Congress to agree, yea, that will be my program. It’s to transit out, because this one has failed.”
We pretty much know how the people will respond to having their health care “transitioned out.” A recent poll shows that Americans overwhelmingly oppose cuts to these programs. Among registered voters, 80% oppose cutting these Medicare and Medicaid. Among Democrats, 92% oppose. 73% of Republicans also oppose cutting these programs and for Independents, 72% oppose the cuts.
And how does the Teaparty feel about these cuts Mr. Paul speaks of? 75% of Teaparty supporters oppose these cuts. Seems Ron Paul is already off on the wrong foot for 2012.
Libertarian Ron Paul, who caucuses with the Republicans in Congress, criticized the Republicans push this week to defund NPR – National Public Radio. He said that Republicans would be satisfied with $10 million savings, which would do nothing for the budget, but will allow them to “go home and brag about how they’re such great fiscal conservatives.”
“There’s a serious question of whether [eliminating NPR funding] will even cut one penny, but at least the fiscal conservatives are going to be overwhelmingly in support of slashing NPR, go home and brag about how they’re such great fiscal conservatives.”
“The very most they might save is $10 million. That’s their claim to fame for slashing the budget. At the same time they won’t consider for minute cutting a real significant amount of money.”
Republicans have promised their Teaparty members that they will cut over $60 billion from the budget. They have proposed cuts in areas like nutrition for infants and pregnant women. Economists from both political sides of the aisle have predicted that if these cuts go through, the American people will suffer.
Zandi, an architect of the 2009 stimulus package who has advised both political parties, predicts that the GOP package would reduce economic growth by 0.5 percentage points this year, and by 0.2 percentage points in 2012, resulting in 700,000 fewer jobs by the end of next year.
Ron Paul said it best – what these Republicans are doing is just for bragging rights.
