Team WIN THE MORNING discovers Rand Paul is a self-serving Republican Glibertarian douchebag, and finds that civil liberties groups like the ACLU are 1) mad at Rand darnit and 2) staffed by people with the common sense of a three-week old bowl of German potato salad.
“He could have voted against the bill on final passage. That would have been a completely different thing than shutting down the debate,” said Laura Murphy of the American Civil Liberties Union, one of Paul’s strongest allies on the issue. Both have filed lawsuits against the NSA surveillance programs.
This type of criticism may become a recurring theme as Paul’s presidential campaign blossoms — the purist libertarian beliefs that built the Paul brand are going to keep crashing into traditional Republican standards, especially on national security.
His “no” vote on NSA reform even raised suspicions that Paul just didn’t want to have the debate.
“Even if Senator Paul had problems with the text he still should have voted to advance the bill, offer an amendment to fix his problem, and then vote against the final bill if it wasn’t adopted,” said Mark Jaycox of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. By voting against the procedural motion, he said, “Senator Paul made clear that he didn’t even want to debate the bill.”
You mean Rand Paul is a politician who doesn’t really give a damn about civil liberties, and will say or do anything he feels to get elected, including using organizations like the ACLU and EFF?
HOOCOODANODE.
Dumbasses. Rand. Paul. Is. A. Right. Wing. Republican. Get that through your thick skulls, guys. Your champion doesn’t just have clay feet, he’s Evil Gumby. You made common cause with the slimeball and now you’re horrified to discover the knife in your backs?
No sympathy from me. None.
Bonus Rand Paul Glibertarian Nonsense:
Well, I think that I simply point to my record. I don’t think there has been anybody who has been a bigger defender of minority rights in the Congress than myself, and that’s not saying others aren’t trying as well. But I think you can see a history and a litany of bills that I’ve put forward to not only restore voting rights, but to try to prevent people from the tragedy of losing their employability through felony convictions and other things.
People will always do things for partisan purposes, and I think some of that drummed up in the beginning for partisan purposes when I was running for office. But no, I don’t think there’s anything out there that people are going to say, “Oh, look at this, this means that you’re a racist,” or something, and I think if they do, they probably pigeonhole themselves as being unreasonable by making that kind of comment.
No, you’re a racist who employs racists, and then you call people who call you out on it “unreasonable”. Screw you. As a constituent, you embarrass me and I fervently want you out of office. You can fool the ACLU all you like, but as a black Kentucky voter, your comment on being a “defender of minority rights in the Congress” is not only factually incorrect, but completely insulting and asinine to boot.
Go talk to Rep. John Lewis, asshole. Learn a few things from him. Then apologize to him for your rank stupidity.
dp
I’m gonna go out on a limb and suggest he won’t follow any of your three suggestions.
Cacti
But GG and Ralph Nader say he’s the most dreamiest progressivist candidate evar!
Yatsuno
Yesbut….DROOOOOOONEZ!!!!
Betty Cracker
Paul is a smarmy wingnut douchebag whose first focus is and always will be personal advancement, but I don’t get all the scorn for the ACLU. They’ve got a long history of fighting the good fight to uphold civil liberties, even when advancing that agenda necessitates working with slimy political hacks and the dregs of humanity.
I doubt very much they were naively surprised by Paul’s politically motivated 180; the comments were their way of calling him out for it. As they should.
Richard Shindledecker
Stupid people never apologize for being stupid – just sayin…
GregB
Clearly Rand Paul has a better record on minority rights than John Lewis.
What a pompous dill-whacker.
Marc
@Betty Cracker: Yeah, this. The ACLU aren’t glibertarians. This was their way of calling out Baby Doc.
GregB
Oof. I didn’t see the reference to Lewis at the very bottom, I was so pissed about Paul’s grandstanding.
rumpole
Oh, man that was some quality rant. I need a cigarette.
OzarkHillbilly
@Betty Cracker: As a longtime member of the ACLU, I have never felt my money was wasted. Even when I don’t necessarily agree with how or what they are doing,
RareSanity
@Betty Cracker:
I think the scorn comes from the fact that they bought into Rand’s bullshit in the first place. Support from organizations like the ACLU and EFF allow him to leech off of their credibility.
He’s been full of shit ever since he showed up on the scene, riding his father’s coattails into the Senate. Those two organizations should have made him demonstrate in deeds, not just words, that he was “on their side” before voicing their support for him.
mainmati
I seem to remember he was against extending civil rights into private owned businesses that served the public because of Glibertarianism and then tied himself into an elaborate sailor’s knot trying to explain those remarks away. He says he is no racist but he is totally fine with private racist behavior. In the Woolworths example, Woolworths, the five and dime store didn’t exist in some fantasy private domain planet but rather here in the USA so it was protected by publicly-financed police and fire departments, had its garbage and sewage managed by public services, etc. The idea of separating private businesses serving the public from public institutions serving the public (schools, courts, hospitals, etc.) quickly breaks down into complete incoherence. But then again, there is no Libertarian arrangement that could ever work beyond a unit greater than two people – if even that. Libertarians are just authoritarian monopolists in thin disguise.
Spinwheel
FTFY.
Rand Paul could make a better President, that can be debated.
We know how much of a failure Obama is on civil liberties.
That fact is not up for debate, much like your own long record of lying, false information and sock puppetry.
ruemara
If there’s one thing that’s pissed me off about the modern progressive, it’s the adoration of rhetoric over real action and the inability to know the difference. At least the bullshit factory that is Rand Paul is getting knocked on now.
chopper
I knew it was about Obama. Even when it was about rand paul, I knew it was about Obama.
Betty Cracker
@RareSanity: Well, I don’t think the ACLU supported Paul so much as they supported a particular piece of legislation he supposedly also supported, and they were willing to work with him (or anyone else, presumably, including Louie Gohmert, if that raving nutball stumbled onto the right side of an issue for once in his life) to advance it. That seems to be the way it works, and sometimes I wonder if it is we, not the ACLU, who are naive if we’re shocked or horrified that they’d make common cause with Paul.
MikeBoyScout
stands and applauds
CONGRATULATIONS!
Not Rand Paul Libertarian Jesus, son of Ru Paul, the Libertarian God? Unpossible.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@Spinwheel:
Ah, look! How cute!
Racist, dude bro, or both?
“that fact is not up for debate”
If it was a fact, it might not be, but it is not a fact. It is, in fact, an opinion.
lethargytartare
@Spinwheel:
yr kindof stupid and boring.
Citizen_X
@Spinwheel: You’re late. No Bitcoin bonus for you.
Spinwheel
@chopper:
Nothing has changed from yesterday. Paul’s vote on NSA reform is rendered moot by the unassailable fact the President Obama has had six years to end unconstitutional spying on Americans. He has chosen not to.
As far as Rand Paul’s statement on civil rights, that’s his own opinion, which last time I checked he is allowed to have. He does have a record of legislation especially on sentencing laws and drug legalization, so he is correct about that.
I do not see anyone disputing that he has done that.
Tokyokie
@Richard Shindledecker: Especially, as is the case with Baby Doc, they’re craven opportunists as well.
Citizen_X
So, does this mean that ACLU membership is now not, in Republican eyes, an automatic mark of Dhimmicrat-lawyer-loving-America’s-enemies-hugging TREASON?
LOL j/k yeah right.
chopper
@Spinwheel:
Indeed. You’re still a shitbird.
CONGRATULATIONS!
Good going, Zandar. Your stalker is not only a psycho but a Paultard.
Reminds me a lot of my last girlfriend.
Gin & Tonic
@chopper: True, but I’m kind of curious what sort of alerting system he’s got that gets him over here within a half-hour of any Zandar post.
RareSanity
@Betty Cracker:
No, I absolutely agree that the ACLU (or any organization for the matter) should always work with politicians they believe can further their goals.
I’ll admit to not knowing fully the extent to which the ACLU expressed public support for Rand. But as someone that works in software development, and therefore follows most things software in the news, some of the statements the EFF has made supporting Rand Paul over the years have made me a bit uneasy. Not that they necessarily crossed the line…but they came damn close.
I wonder if the ALCU may have done some similar things.
It’s not that I don’t believe in making common cause with people. But I just believe that organization like these need to be very careful to separate the support of cause and the people that they will deal with in the furtherance of that cause. But keep the support for the cause separate from support for the person.
Tone In DC
Xandar, great post. Glad to see that you’re back at B-J.
I knew Ayn Rand Paul was a waste of space, but he continues to demonstrate there is no depth to his utter worthlessness.
I suppose these brain donor trolls just come with the territory. If it were up to me, I’d give ’em two chances to attempt to come correct, and then drop the banhammer (with a quickness) after that grace period.
But that’s just me.
DavidDPhilly
Laura Murphy of the ACLU is a long-time lobbyist who knows what she’s doing. Paul is a right wing republican, but not everyone knows that. Publicly embarrassing him like this is how you either get Paul to change his behavior or get the media to stop buying his bullshit.
cmorenc
Rand Paul would be the kind of libertarian I could almost support, if I didn’t already know that Rand Paul is completely full of shit (and so are all libertarians who talk glibly about being “for” trendy social liberties like marijuana legalization but whose real priority is sugar-coating “I’ve got mine FU” principles into policy and law.)
Paul in KY
@OzarkHillbilly: I’m a proud member of the ACLU. All BJers should be.
sharl
Sooo, is this Spinwheel critter Zandar’s old personal troll Knockabout? Or is it a brand new obsessed intertoobz stalker?
Comrade Dread
As Charlie Pierce is fond of pointing out, any member of the Paul clan sounds perfectly sane and reasonable for about 5 minutes and then the train derails, plunges over a canyon and falls into the Twilight Zone where everything is zonkers.
the Conster
@Spinwheel:
He also supports personhood amendments, so fuck you, you creepy ass dudebro.
cmorenc
@Cacti:
Or, watch Bill Maher swoon over his guest Rand Paul as Paul snows Maher with purported glibertarian warm-and-fuzziness toward progressive goals like the need to address climate change, but somehow without inconveniencing the Kentucky coal industry. Watch Maher’s act oblivious to the lying double-speak tap-dance being performed by Paul right before his admiringly glowing eyes.
Paul in KY
@cmorenc: I think Bill has the hots for him.
Zandar
@cmorenc:
I’ve always said that I agree with about 33% of what Rand Paul has to say. The other 67% is complete batshit craziness.
kindness
Rand Paul: the Andrew Cuomo of the libertarian set.
samiam
Ha…as if this is news to anyone with half a brain. So that would exclude anyone who reads stuff from one of Pauls biggest fans….Griftwald.
Amazes me just how dumb people can be.
kindness
@Spinwheel: Dude. It is really inappropriate to be beating off in front of us all the time. I for one want nothing to do with your perviness.
FlipYrWhig
Rand Paul does this “Oh,” “Ooh” thing A LOT. Usually with pursed lips, jazz hands and/or head-bobbing. It was part of his spat with Chris Christie; it comes up here. It’s incredibly irritating.
Betty Cracker
@RareSanity: I agree that support for the cause and the politician should remain separate. The ACLU seems to adhere to that principle pretty well, I think. (I don’t read their every utterance, but I am a member and am familiar with their style.)
I think the alleged level of support for Paul from liberals is vastly overblown. The only high-profile, so-called liberal I’ve heard make noises about supporting Paul for president is Bill Maher, who isn’t a liberal so much as a gadfly and entertainer, and even he walked it back quickly.
CONGRATULATIONS!
Speaking of libertarian idiots, there’s a guy in parking lot this morning with a vintage “I don’t believe the liberal media” bumper sticker. Mint condition. I kinda want to steal it.
I’m sure the free market will punish me adequately.
Mandalay
@RareSanity:
I have never seen the ACLU support Rand Paul, so I’ll be interested to see any links you have to back your claim, which is pretty volatile.
The ACLU supports positions, not people. They were opposed to the State of Florida obtaining Rush Limbaugh’s medical records, but that doesn’t mean they support Rush Limbaugh. The ACLU was opposed to the formation of a national gun registry, but that doesn’t mean that they support Wayne LaPierre. And the ACLU supported some of the positions that Rand Paul (dubiously) claimed he held on government surveillance, but that doesn’t mean the ACLU support Rand Paul.
IANAL, but as a non-profit organization I would think that the ACLU has to be very, very careful about actively supporting any politician. And since the ACLU has lawyers coming out of its ears I think it is unlikely that they would ever cross that line, and support Rand Paul.
Mnemosyne
@Spinwheel:
Yes, Congress is completely powerless to, say, pass laws ending surveillance. They have to beg the president, hat in hand, to do what they want and have absolutely no power to do anything. They’re certainly not a co-equal branch of government that can override a presidential veto if they wanted to.
Schoolhouse Rock time.
Mnemosyne
@sharl:
Same old, same old.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Spinwheel: You have a funny definition of “moot” then…
Last I looked, Obama hasn’t had a vote in the Senate since 2008. Paul, on the other hand, ran for and won a seat in the Senate. One of the jobs of Senator is to vote on bills that align or don’t with one’s positions. Blaming Obama for Paul not voting aye on a bill addressing an issue that he very loudly claims to support doesn’t pass the laugh test.
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Ken T
I also lurk/occasionally comment at a website that caters to the paleo segment of the conservative spectrum, and which attracts a lot of libertarians as well. I have never been able to understand why so many folks there are so enamored of Rand. He is so pathetically obvious about cozying up to the neocons and authoritarians. And yet they are all convinced (despite all evidence to the contrary) that if he can just get elected, his “true self” will emerge and he will lead the charge for civil liberties and non-interventionism.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Mnemosyne: The brutal truth, and it’s one that a lot of folks have a hard time accepting (don’t blame them) is that the executive, legislative, AND judicial branches has zero interest whatsoever in stopping these programs.
Which means they will not be stopped until this entire generation of politicians is out of government. And that will be a few decades.
Boots Day
The reason Rand Paul can get away with stuff like this is that most libertarians feel so marginalized that they get a boner every time a prominent politician even pretends to be a libertarian, no matter what policy positions they take. See Bob Barr, Libertarian Presidential Candidate.
It’s all about the theater.
burnspbesq
@Yatsuno:
I got yer DROOOOOONZE right here.
http://www.laxmagazine.com/college_men/DIII/2014-15/news/111914_next_level_christopher_newport_embraces_drones
Villago Delenda Est
Rand Paul is a fucktard.
But I’m repeating myself.
YET AGAIN.
burnspbesq
@Betty Cracker:
I hear what you’re saying about the ACLU (FWIW, I’ve been a member for over 40 years), but:
(1) Lie down with dogs, you get fleas; and
(2) Aligning with Paul in a situation where anyone with more than three functioning brain cells could have predicted the bad outcome casts doubt on your judgment generally.
NonyNony
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
The even more brutal truth, which seems to be even harder for people to accept, is that there is a very good reason that the executive and legislative branches have zero interest in stopping them.
And that’s because of the voters. There are not enough voters who care about these issues and who will vote on these issues to make an impact. In fact I strongly suspect that there are more voters who will punish legislators/presidents for being “soft on terrorists” and “making the country less safe” if they try to reign in the national security state than there are voters who want to punish them for the lack of restraint.
It’s going to take more than a generation of politicians dying off – it’s going to take a new generation of voters that is more concerned about individual privacy than they are about hypothetical terrorist attacks.
I’ve seen the next generation of voters and what they put in the their public profiles on the Internet. I am not sanguine about the prospect that they actually give a fuck about their own personal privacy, let alone other people’s or the national security state.
Villago Delenda Est
@Ken T: This is because all these people you mention are fucktards.
Just like their hero.
We need a fucking meteor. NOW, dammit.
Joe Buck
The ACLU and the EFF are the good guys. In the past, Rand Paul has been wrong about most things and right about some things, and it has made sense for groups actually trying to get things done to ally themselves to him on some issues. This doesn’t represent an endorsement of him for any position, and it’s only a reasonable thing to do as long as Paul doesn’t betray his alleged principles. He’s now demonstrating that he wants the Republican nomination so badly that he will no longer take on his own party, so you’ll see less of this in the future.
But right now, when Obama is seriously wrong about something, really the only avenues we have to make progress involve tactical alliances with some Republicans (who are increasingly hard to find because almost every time Obama is wrong about something it’s because he is taking a basically Republican position).
Roger Moore
Which show just how twisted the system has become, since vote for cloture is supposed to be a vote to end debate and a vote against cloture is supposed to be a vote to extend it. That it has become essentially the opposite- that a vote for cloture is a vote to move the bill forward and a vote against is an attempt to kill it- shows that the Senate rules aren’t working anything like the way they’re supposed to.
Villago Delenda Est
@Joe Buck: Obama’s primary problem, from a Rethug perspective, is that he’s blah.
End of discussion.
Spinwheel
@Joe Buck:
Correct. Furthermore, since Obama supports NSA reform and Congress has now failed to act, doesn’t this mean the President must end these unconstitutional programs with his executive authority?
Villago Delenda Est
@Spinwheel: You haven’t found that needs your participation yet.
Soon, I will grow weary of asking politely.
Roger Moore
@Ken T:
I think you’re looking at the mirror image of the purity pony progressives who are sure that their current crush is the one true progressive leader. They’re perfectly happy to suspend disbelief until that person actually gets some power and is shown not to be the magical leader they were hoping for, at which point they become as angry as a spurned lover and want to tear their former crush to pieces.
Roger Moore
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
But none of them want to admit it, so they’re all happy to pass the buck for the responsibility of ending them. Legislators claim the executive could stop at any time, judges say the laws are clear and they’re just enforcing the law as written, and executives say it’s in the legislature’s power to change the law. It’s always somebody else’s job to fix the problem.
Belafon
@Yatsuno:
The ones he thought should be used against liquor store thieves?
Mandalay
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
This is undeniably true of the legislative branch, because the employment of anyone opposing those programs is at stake if anything bad happens, especially on American soil. Such politicians will be smeared as soft-on-terror and unfit-to-govern, and probably be elected out of office.
Openly opposing those programs requires a courage that politicians (and most of us) lack when we have a big personal stake in the outcome. It is very risky for any politician to oppose surveillance programs.
So I don’t see things changing. Politicians will always face that same problem.
ETA: I’ve just seen that NonyNony said it much better than me in post #53.
Belafon
@Roger Moore: And I mostly blame the legislature.
Tractarian
I say: More Zandar, less garden blogging.
Villago Delenda Est
@Villago Delenda Est: Hmmm, the fire got dropped from my post here, or I just forgot it.
Well, there is a fire with your name on it somewhere, Spinwheel. Find it and make us all proud.
Thank you, and have a terrific day!
Mandalay
@NonyNony:
Right. Which is why Paul’s vote was politically smart. He’s taking some heat at the moment, but during the Republican primaries he can accuse Cruz of being an ISIS enabler: “Don’t believe Ted Cruz when he claims to support the war on terror – look at how Ted Cruz voted!”.
Tone In DC
@Villago Delenda Est:
That Philae craft could direct the comet (67P?) to hit the next big wingnut get-together at the Koch brothers’ estate/compound/bunker. All that rock and ice couldn’t burn up in the atmosphere before it hit, right?
Actually, all kidding aside, such an action isn’t remotely fair. Not fair to the comet, to end up in a place like that.
Marc
@NonyNony:
Case in point: Mark Udall, who has been one of the most vocal critics of the NSA (and whose votes back it up.) This got him absolutely no credit from the glibertarians–Bill Maher wasn’t fluffing his campaign–and he just lost to a guy who supports personhood amendments.
Even the few libertarians who aren’t just rebranded Republicans didn’t or couldn’t do a damn thing to save one of the few senators who was advocating for their views. That’s why no one is sticking their neck out to stop these programs.
Villago Delenda Est
@Mandalay: The thing is, the primordial slime of the Rethug base will actually buy into such an argument.
Betty Cracker
@NonyNony:
I think you’re right about that. It will probably take some really high-profile incident that illustrates the potential for a flagrant abuse of power for people to start giving a shit about surveillance, if ever.
Calouste
@ruemara: There’s a quote, which I think is from Meteor Blades, one of the frontpagers on Daily Kos, which goes along the lines of :
“Don’t tell me what you think. Show me what you do and I’ll tell you what you think.”
Well, Mr. Rand Paul technically is a minority (of one), and Mr. Rand Paul definitely has been a big defender of the rights of Mr. Rand Paul.
Keith G
@Betty Cracker: You are certainly correct about that. The ACLU does not deserve criticism for this and doing so is a bit immature. I really get worn out by the simple minded thinking that people are either all good or all bad …or that politicians are only worthy of either blanket support or blanket criticism.
Democrats that I like very much have taken actions or inactions that I find extremely repulsive.
Republicans who I think are shite-lickers have sponsored/supported legislation that I feel is very important.
Such is the reality of of the politics of a legislative process.
Mnemosyne
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
You miss my point. The troll claims that Paul’s vote doesn’t matter, because Obama should end surveillance. My point is that if Paul actually felt that surveillance was an important issue, he could do his fucking job and vote on the bill that he claimed he wanted.
We do not live in a monarchy. We live in a democracy. We have three co-equal branches of government. If Congress wants something done, they can goddamn well pass a law to do it, as is their goddamned responsibility under the Constitution. I’m really fucking sick of Congress sitting with their thumbs up their asses claiming they can’t do anything because they goddamned well can.
Mnemosyne
Question for people who think that Obama should end surveillance through an executive order: what happens to that executive order when Obama leaves office in January of 2017? Anyone? Bueller?
You can Google “Mexico City policy” if you’re unsure.
Archon
I suspect Rand Paul is genuinely libertarian, why else give the tortured, ideological response to Rachel Maddow on the Civil Rights Act? The standard Republican answer is to pretend you think the CRA was the greatest thing ever, and that you would have been marching with MLK if you could, facing fire hoses and police dogs.
He’s trying to find a balance between the authoritarian instincts of the Republican party and probably some genuine held beliefs. The problem with Rand Paul is that it’s impossible to have it both ways. True libertarianism and movement conservatism are incompatible. The only thing both ideologies agree on is that poor blacks shouldn’t get welfare of any sort. All that criminal justice, NSA, corporate welfare reform would get laughed off the agenda by Republicans on day 1 of a Rand Paul Presidency.
Spinwheel
@Mnemosyne:
Better hope the Democrat nominated in 2016 supports doing that then. If the Republicans nominate somebody who does and the Democrats put up Clinton…
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Mnemosyne: Please be assured I did not miss your point. Others have clarified, most notably the good NonyNony, and the equally fine Roger Moore, who cut right to the heart of the problem – buck passing and the voters themselves, who really, really seem to want this, as they punish the hell out of politicians who take any steps to stop it.
The imbecilic Shitheel does not seem to understand the last; the reason these programs are still here is because the vast voters approve of them. Sucks but that’s stone-cold hard fact. Rand Paul certainly knows this, hence the absence of anything more effective than grandstanding.
NonyNony
@Archon:
But what does “genuinely libertarian” mean? “Libertarian” is a fuzzy word that has no meaning that is easy to pin down.
I suspect that Rand Paul is a fairly overprivileged, narcissistic, ass pustule of a human being who would screw his grandmother out of her last dollar if he thought he needed (“deserved”) that dollar. He certainly would have no issues with screwing over someone else’s grandmother out of her last dollar. And he would be able to come up with all sorts of clever rationalizations for his action based on “liberty” and “freedom” while doing it. And he can do the same for whatever action he wants to justify taking, because the core of his philosophy are the twin dogmas of “take what you can when you can” and “I’ve got mine, so fuck you.”
So if that’s what you mean then, yeah, he’s genuinely libertarian. I’d call that “overprivileged asshole” rather than “libertarian”, but the older I get the more those two terms seem like synonyms instead of two overlapping groups.
NonyNony
@Betty Cracker:
I’m honestly not sure WHAT it would take to get people to care.
Actually I can – it would take a gross abuse of power targeting very rich people who are rich because they’re second or third generation rich and have friends in the Senate but are private citizens themselves. I imagine Koch level funding would come down like a hammer to stop that kind of abuse and that level of pushback would be enough to at least create the illusion that people care and force Congress to do something about it – which is why I highly doubt we’ll ever hear of such a thing happening.
But beyond that I’ve got nothing – I think most people have many other things that they’re worried about. And the idea that the government might be “reading their e-mail” is so far down their list of concerns that it might as well not even be on the list. And I also suspect that as time passes the younger generation is going to become more jaded about this, because technology seems to be pushing us to a world where the expectation is that you have very little privacy in your online activities, and that seems to be carrying over offline as well.
Mnemosyne
@Spinwheel:
I’m not the one screaming that Obama needs to create a temporary, easily reversed stopgap. You are. So what’s your Plan B for when Obama does what you want and a Republican president reverses it as soon as he takes office?
Roger Moore
@Calouste:
Shorter: actions speak louder than words.
Villago Delenda Est
@Archon: Sorry, but “libertarians” are all authoritarians at heart. Seeing how the only authority they’re willing to respect is their own. The society they envision would be a tyrant’s dream come true.
When they rail about “government”, what they’re really upset about is other human beings restraining what they can do.
Wipe them out. All of them.
Mandalay
@Archon:
I see it more that Rand is trying to find a balance between electability and probably some genuine held beliefs.
He has already done a massive flip flop on Israel. He originally believed that they shouldn’t get a dime from the taxpayers, but now his libertarian streak has him sniveling: “If somebody asked me where to build in Israel, I would say it’s none of my business”.
And so it goes with his position on government surveillance. As many have pointed out here, Rand will say whatever it takes to get elected. Any of Rand’s genuinely held beliefs no longer have much to do with anything.
Sondra
In poker you look for the “tell” that alerts you to what another player does consistantly: like coughing when he bluffs. Every little cough signals a bluff.
In politics when I look for the subject of a sentence like this one:
“People will always do things for partisan purposes, and I think some of that drummed up in the beginning for partisan purposes when I was running for office”…and I don’t find it, I wonder some of what? What was drummed up?
I know at that point that he isn’t going to be defending his real position. He is just going to dribble word salad dressing over wilted lettuce.