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Rand's win in the straw poll makes him the early front-runner for '16.
Who cares what a pathetic Fuzzy Troll like you thinks?you still don't get it. I like you talking about something completely aside in acting like that is not the case.
Rand's win in the straw poll makes him the early front-runner for '16.
Frontrunner
Rand is the frontrunner, he leads in the polls and is raising the most money.
Well, we are more than 3 years from the next Presidential election..things change...Hillary is the clear democratic frontrunner....but nobody is really running with that right now...Rand could be the flavor of the day, or a libertarian extremists like his father...
Unlike his father, I think Rand could pull it off, be the republican nominee, and become president.
Rand also has the biggest national organization, is the best in debates, and has the best issues for GOP primary voters.
Rand has a better chance than his dad because his dad never sold out to the two party system and corporations while he did. It's only a matter of time before the military industrial complex + prison industrial complex get Rand in their back pocket and he'll be supporting the defense spending + war on drugs his dad is so vehemently against.
Rand will bring the military-industrial complex to their knees!
If Rand keeps selling out, he has a good chance at the nomination.
You just think he is selling out.
You've been duped by Rand Paul!!!
He endorsed Mitt Romney while his dad was still in the race. That's a major sellout -- but something he needed to do if he wants the 2016 nomination. Next, he'll start becoming socially conservative and soften his views on military cuts.
The MIC will pour money and resources into another candidate if it thinks there's even a chance Rand won't sell out to them.
Fortunately for Rand, he betrayed his dad and endorsed a presidential candidate who wanted to increase military spending by $2 trillion over the next ten years (as did several of the Ron Paul "supporters" on this site oddly enough), so the MIC is confident it'll have his support.
Rand will buy more manned attack planes instead to kill all the brown children that are currently being handled by the drones. It's a win-win since he can on Obama while still handing out fatass checks to Lockheed and Boeing.
Every Congressman must have lots of money to win and maintain office, so every Congressman is purchased by special interests. It's a complete fantasy that tea bagger, libertarian Congressmen are not as corruptible as any others.
You're mixed up, the Paul family has opposed war for 40 years.
Rand Paul's Loopy Ascent
When you've got loons the likes of Ted Cruz and Sarah Palin fluttering about, I suppose it's easy not to seem like such a wacko bird yourself.
Is that why Rand Paul is flying high right now? Or is it because he followed his 13-hour filibuster - that knee-defeating, bladder-defying moment in the Senate sun - by showing a few of his less florid feathers? Either way, he has managed, with remarkable speed, to migrate to the foreground of Republican politics. You could almost lose sight of what an albatross he really is.
Today he's singing the moderate song of immigration reform, and that dirge about drones, which had a valid bass note despite its alarmist melody, struck chords across the political spectrum.
But Paul's greatest hits include a denunciation of Medicare as socialism, a recommendation of stopping foreign aid to a few key allies, and the insistent introduction of Patriot Act amendments so loopy that one of them netted all of 10 votes from the 95 senators present while another garnered a whopping total of 4.
As Jennifer Steinhauer noted in The Times right after he peddled those clunkers, he had seemingly relocated to Washington "less to make laws than points."
Now he's making headlines and waves, and not as a Tea Party curiosity but as a Republican Party lodestar, someone discussed seriously as a possible force in the 2016 presidential primaries. He was tapped just last week to be the featured speaker at the approaching Lincoln Day Dinner in Iowa. There's an important caucus in that state, you'll recall.
Paul personifies the G.O.P.'s curse right now. Although it needs to re-establish its bearings in the mainstream, many of the Republicans making the biggest splashes are rowing in from strange tributaries, and the establishment can't seem to stop the tide.
Seasoned hands with cooler heads tend not to generate nearly as much excitement. All Jeb Bush generated with the publicity tour for his immigration book was outright befuddlement.
The tail wags the dog. Rather than Cruz, the junior senator from Texas, humbly taking cues from John Cornyn, the senior senator, Cornyn labors to match the supercilious upstart scowl for scowl, and even followed Cruz's intemperate lead to cast one of only three Senate votes against John Kerry's confirmation as secretary of state.
And Mitch McConnell, who is not only Kentucky's senior senator but also the Senate minority leader, seems to worry more about Paul, the state's junior senator, than vice versa.
Back when Paul began his 2010 Senate campaign as an insurgent ophthalmologist (how many times does a journalist get to write that phrase?), McConnell supported the other, more established candidate in the Republican primary. Then Paul triumphed, the Tea Party proved its muscle and McConnell, eyeing his own 2014 re-election bid, had to worry about being undone by the very romance with naysaying outsiders that lofted Paul to victory.
McConnell's campaign manager this time around? The same one Paul used. His new public posture toward Paul? Indulgent, sometimes even adulatory. He joined Paul for a portion of that marathon filibuster, egging him on.
McConnell doesn't fear a potential Democratic run by Ashley Judd. He fears being "primaried" - the menacing verb that was popularized by the 2010 and 2012 elections, signifying the threat that a state's restive Republican voters will pick a Richard Mourdock over a Richard Lugar. That's Cornyn's dread, too. He's also up in 2014.
And so someone like Paul (who, by the way, voted for Kerry's confirmation) sets the tone. I also wonder if he's modulating his own, as some long-term strategy moseys into his thinking.
Yes, his recent questioning of jail time for marijuana arrests isn't a certain winner, but it's not a surefire loser, either. And his immigration speech last week, which called for a path to citizenship without quite calling it that, suggested a fresh calibration and sensitivity.
But his past brims with statements and stands that make him an unhelpful mascot for his party. He'd be a skunk in a presidential primary and a quixotic, doomed nominee.
He has
railed erroneously about the Clean Water Act's effect on his toilets,
indelicately quibbled with aspects of the Civil Rights and Americans With Disabilities Acts,
and carped about the "nanny state" in relation to seat-belt laws. Yes, seat-belt laws.
His distaste for government is so deep you wonder how he can bear to work there. He's like a vegan who has chosen to sup at a steakhouse, though I guess that's the point. Now that he has access to the kitchen, he can filibuster the filet, stall the sirloin with nuisance amendments, and leave diners with only a side of spinach, and maybe an iceberg wedge.
It's a crazy salad he's serving, no matter how it's currently dressed.
http://mobile.nytimes.com/article?a=...&sub=Columnist
KY and TX sending this flaming assholes AS SENATORS to Congress.
At least Rand Paul doesn't hide from the fact social security is a form of socialism and wealth redistribution, that makes him a lot more intellectually consistent than other candidates who use the word socialism to fear monger but support social security and medicare.
Socialism worked great in Cyprus, eh?
You're missing my point. Social security is a form of socialism. The fact Rand Paul says just as much gets respect in my book.
SS is not socialism and wealth redistribution. It's a retirement fund, that the wealthy do not contribute their fair share to.
and what's wrong with socialism anyway (if you even know WTF it is)
socialism had nothing to do with Cyprus' financial sector/banking failure. Cyprus attracted billions with VRWC's beloved "low tax" bait, and unlimited liquidity flowed in.
Socialism is Cyprus. The government promised all kinds of pensions, benefits, and free health insurance that they cannot afford, hence they had to borrow from banks. Socialism is bankrupt.
Nothing is wrong with socialism. I have no problem with social security either. It's just intellectually dishonest to demonized socialism and then advocate for social security since its a form of socialism and wealth redistribution.
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