Rand Paul is not a radical candidate. He is conservative to the bone
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Version 0 of 1. Ron Paul’s quixotic presidential campaigns appealed to young liberals who could ignore everything else he believed in: just say “legalize it!” and invoke enough spooky-government stuff to stoned kids jacked-in to the internet, and they gloss over the social issues and calls to reestablish the labor and infrastructural horrors of the 19th century. That’s always been the libertarian way, and it would make Ron’s son Rand Paul – the newly declared Republican presidential candidate – a radical candidate. But that would also require that Rand Paul be a libertarian. Which he’s not, and which the announcement of his presidential candidacy on Tuesday did little to address. To his credit, Rand cited his opposition to collecting Americans’ cell phone data and called for the repeal of “any law that disproportionately incarcerates people of color,” which would seem to include almost all American criminal law. But the rest was Republican red meat that wouldn’t be out of place in any announcement from fellow conservative candidates. Rand called for term limits and a balanced budget, which you could get from the 1994 Republican Contract with America. He proposed economic freedom zones, being a beacon for the world, peace through strength and a diplomacy that trusts but verifies, all of which Ronald Reagan brought you first. His opposition to nation building echoes George W Bush’s in the 2000 campaign and is likely to be as rigid. And he will bring American manufacturing jobs back from overseas by slashing corporate taxes, which presumably will follow by magic. Every other Republican candidate has the same vision. Related: Rand Paul announces 2016 presidential bid: 'I am putting myself forward' – live After 7 April, Rand plans to stop in reliably libertarian New Hampshire and the caucus states of Iowa and Nevada, where the Ron Paul movement’s trained ground game can be most effective. The downside is that those are places where it taught its dedicated volunteers to expect more concrete proposals and libertarian alternatives - places the centrism of Rand’s recent career trajectory has steered him away from. Paul has followed the Republican mainstream since his election to the US Senate and growing interest in the presidency, because that’s where the votes are. He gained notoriety for being a deficit hawk, but being one on all but the military isn’t a unique libertarian brand anymore: in the current Republican Party, it’s like wearing a tuxedo in a room full of penguins. Despite his branding, Rand is more of a Libertarian In Name Only, a fairly standard Republican adding performative LINO harrumphing on token issues. For instance, his Randest gesture so far was a 12-hour Senate filibuster of CIA Director John Brennan’s confirmation over US drone usage. However, the nut of his half-day oratory was an objection to the use of drones for targeted killings within the United States, something already prohibited by existing law. If he’d filibustered about the need to prohibit, say, the vice president stealing sandwiches and a pint of horsey sauce from Arby’s, everyone would have laughed at it as already plainly illegal, but the combined far-left and far-right anxiety about drones lent the stunt more gravitas than it deserved. He could have issued a strict libertarian condemnation of America’s use of drones in Yemen or Pakistan without a specific declaration of war. Instead, his Randstanding critique operated within the nearly bipartisan consensus on a president’s right to prosecute war anywhere. A year later he seemed to rediscover the Ron Paul base’s insistence on formal declarations of war, this time suggesting issuing one against Isis, a PR brand of a nation that doesn’t exist. His other conservative bona fides include a perfect rating from the National Right To Life Council for his votes against abortion, a flip-flop on budget reductions for the military (he eventually supported a 16% increase), and insisting that marriage equality – or more likely inequality – be left to the states. The latter might seem in keeping with his father’s hatred of the Fourteenth Amendment’s federal equal protections and We The People Act – which would have preempted federal judicial review of religious, abortion and marriage issues – but Rand characterized his own position on same sex marriage as an effective tactic to prolong the dialogue and win back hearts and minds on “traditional marriage”. It’s a Christian conclusion via a convenient Libertarian mechanism. Beyond his LINO murmuring, you’re left with a lot of familiar conservative ideas (“balanced budgets!” “Benghazi!” “end birthright citizenship!”) meant to be elevated by Rand Paul’s erudition, but his deep-thought pose lacks the charisma to sell minor apostasy to an increasingly orthodox base. Rand doesn’t do “personality” well. He mentions the band Rush a lot, in the same sort of “did you know that a guitar can unlock the power of the individual to destroy the tyranny of we” way that you remember from only the most unbearable high school drummers. He mocked Obama fans by quoting Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here” with such portentous poetic intonation that only the presence of a feverish CPAC audience prevented it from inducing mass laughter. He also shushed a reporter on live TV. Rand’s demeanor doesn’t help. While Ted Cruz says simple things and expresses contempt for those who would challenge them, Rand seems more exasperated that his ideological enemies aren’t paying attention. (Did students at the historically black Howard College know that Republicans founded the NAACP? Yes, actually.) If they’d just stop being stupid for a second and listen, he seems to suggest, they’d know how right he is. The overall effect on people who aren’t already fans is that of an undergraduate who tells anyone who will listen that the teaching assistants and professors are idiots and that he was a valedictorian back home. It’s easy to be a star when the curriculum is your dad’s reading list. Paul’s career has been coddled by his father’s movement, the fervor of Tea Party and negotiations within the Republican ideasphere, and he falters outside of them. Rachel Maddow famously got him to admit that he opposes the private business provisions in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. (What passes for Libertarian thought leadership declares that the community ostracism and the economic downside of refusing to serve minorities would lead businesses to rationally follow the market instead of indulging their bigotry, despite the history of Jim Crow undermining African-American economic potential to gainsay that.) He’s been unsuccessfully clarifying that for ages. People are forever misunderstanding him. There are good reasons to watch the Rand Paul campaign. He’s for medical marijuana, and it could be fun to see if his messaging leans on vague language about that to give college students 420 reasons to think of voting for him. He likely won’t, but imagine the tumult that would ensue from his praising the capitalistic potential that marijuana has unleashed in weed-legal states like Colorado. More importantly, Paul seems genuinely interested in criminal justice reform, especially in the case of targeting minorities and mandatory minimum sentencing. And after using “tough on crime” to beat up effete and weepy Democrats for decades – making pro-welfare lefties seem like they were robbing you to give handouts to minorities while going soft on punishing minorities supposedly literally robbing you – the right is enjoying a real Only Nixon Could Go To China moment on criminal justice reform. Unfortunately, this means that Rand isn’t alone here anymore. But while the right will be more than happy to let lefties assume that clearing out prisons will free up the budget for other necessary government services, they’ll probably just call for a proportional reduction in the tax rates. Moreover, Rand’s hostility to a federal war on drugs might have more to do with the word federal than anything – 50 individual wars on drugs is a Tenth Amendment right – but any progress is welcome, and his candidacy could cement this issue as one for legitimate bipartisan debate. And maybe these tokens of alternative thought are enough to bill him as someone capable of snatching votes from across the aisle: a few soft words about some legal marijuana, some criminal justice reform and some chaff about drones and the CIA might really win over millennials happy to hear that much and hope for the best. Paul’s campaign stops in the narcissistic “self-made” enclave of Silicon Valley suggests he’s betting as much. And maybe he’s right in assuming that Republican voters will want a hit of Only Superficially Lite Republican when they could mainline Uncut Pure Republican from someone like Ted Cruz. Probably not, but maybe! Meanwhile his ideas will be sold by Rand Paul’s perpetually peevish attitude, the purse-lipped impatience that anyone would think they need follow-up questions after his self-evidence. And there will be Martin Luther King quotes (all ignoring that the man died a socialist) and arrayed around Rand like “I can’t be racist!” warding spells. And rock quotes. Maybe Jethro Tull next. Or something from Tarkus. Rand Paul has a peculiar talent for making the borrowed seem fresh in his hands, and he’s doing a lot of boilerplate conservative borrowing. Hell, we can always watch just to see what he borrows next. |