More Rand Paul:
“I’ve never really favored any change in the Civil Rights Act,” he said. “They seem to have unleashed some of the loony left on me.”
Didn’t the phrase the “loony left” go out of style at roughly the same time that people stopped wearing acid-washed jeans, flipping the collar on their pink Izod, and knotting their Sperry topsider leather laces in coils?
nitpicker
Um…I need to run to Macy’s.
(Covers acid-washed jeans.)
Gus
Yeah, but I thought calling anyone to the left of Richard Nixon a Commie went out of style even longer ago. The classics always make a comeback.
Emma
Lord, this is like watching a slow-motion train-wreck!
robertdsc
What a bitch.
Anoniminous
There goes the KKK vote.
HE HAD THEM IN THE BAG!
and
swish
let ’em get away.
So Sad.
Jeff Fecke
No, you just said you thought it was a bad law. It’s the Americans with Disabilities Act you actually have said that you want to repeal.
You know, I thought that libertarians were supposed to be made of sterner stuff than this. That they were supposed to have the courage of their convictions and stuff. Evidently not.
NickM
The guy’s hair makes him look like he’s auditioning for N Sync – I don’t think he’s up on the latest style.
Nor is he very self-aware: does he really think he’s in much of a position to call other people on the fringes “loony”?
gbear
Teabaggers are still wearing that stuff, but now they buy it at Savers, The Dollar Store, Goodwill and Walmart.
…and the phrase ‘loony left’ is still very much alive and well in the comment sections of local newspaper web-sites.
Can we go back to talking about Exile on Main Street?
arguingwithsignposts
I thought we were supposed to get warnings about the Politico links?
Sadly, No!'s very own Coach Urban Meyer
Wuzza-wuzzup, loony libs?
Little Boots
No, actually, it didn’t. Reagan got a lot of mileage out of the “loony left.” And the thing is, John, you opened this can of worms, rightly so, I think, and you have to stick with it now. Where are you? Do you think Rand Paul is a racistr? A Dupe? A fake? Your whole blog is caught up in this, and you have to weigh in, again.
Triassic Sands
Well, the Randbaggers want to take us back to 1789, which as everyone knows was during the heyday of the “loony left.”
gbear
@nitpicker: Have you been to a Macy’s recently? Macy’s clothing is proof of the adage “There is nothing more dated than the recent past”. You’ll find less dated clothing at JCPenny’s.
NHDem
Popping, not flipping. And sadly that fad is still with us.
Mike Kay
Freedom isn’t Freedom unless you have the freedom to discriminate.
kay
@Jeff Fecke:
Oh, Rand Paul doesn’t have any idea what’s in the Americans with Disabilities Act. When he finds out, I’m quite sure he’ll support it.
Where are those smart Republicans that tutored Sarah Palin? Are they available?
The upcoming Kentucky Senate debates should be nationally televised. I have a feeling they’re going to be really entertaining.
beltane
60 Minutes did a segment on the loony left in Britain way back in the late ’80s. It featured an African immigrant leader demanding that okra, yam, and foo foo be served in school cafeterias. We never really had a loony left in this country, just hippies and the memory of hippies.
Rand Paul manages to be in the wrong decade and the wrong continent all at the same time. Impressive.
Cat Lady
Rachel Maddow FTW. She didn’t look loony at all. She didn’t even crack a smile or interrupt him, but that’s typical Republican projection bullshit again. Welcome to the big show, Rand. Keep digging.
Mark S.
Jesus, the Supreme Court had already done that in Brown and later cases. The Civil Rights Act was big precisely because it went after private businesses. That’s why Goldwater opposed it, “The reason for his opposition to the 1964 bill was Title II, which he viewed as a violation of individual liberty.” Title II “outlawed discrimination in hotels, motels, restaurants, theaters, and all other public accommodations engaged in interstate commerce.”
Little Boots
Why, after all these years, do I still love the “lighten up, francis.” Why do I love that?
Cronin
The really funny thing about this whole blow up is that this is exactly what real libertarians are for–getting government out of business in every respect.
I’ve had this argument with so many non-politician libertarians that his position isn’t really at all surprising, and it shouldn’t be to anyone who understands the philosophy. He himself may abhor racism, but he doesn’t believe government has a place telling any business ordering private institutions how to operate. That includes who they serve.
It’s not very complicated. Overly simplistic, ignorant (or indifferent to) real-world consequences, sure (and in my opinion a horrible, horrible way to operate), but it shouldn’t surprise anyone.
jl
“knotting their Sperry topsider leather laces in coils”
I confess I do not know what that means. I guess I have always been out of it.
Hope the bleftlogosphere starts a ‘the mean loony left made him do it’ watch on the Village Media regarding the Rand Paul looniness today.
People can quibble about whether poor ol’ Cole of DougJ appeared to excuse Rand Paul of being racist. It would have been more accurate to say we just do not know what his personal prejudices or lack thereof from his statements. Like all good extreme libertarians (like Stoessel defending the initial Rand Paul Mark I comments, just in time for Rand to kind of change his mind) he did say he would personally reject, renounce, revile, and repudiate any private business that discriminated on the basis of race. That is always a good escape hatch.
What is important to point out is that even if Paul can invoke the ‘no practical consquences’ of his views on the Civil Rights Act, he should not escape scrutiny for what practical consequences his views would have today. Seems like, what with discrimination against certain types of sexual identities, financial industry run amok, big oil spills by Big Oil that increasingly seem due to gross negligence inspired by money grubbing, contaminated food, ripped off and cheated wage earners with no unions, there are plenty of places where a sane person would want to know what the practical implications of his view are.
And then there is the issue of the new voter suppression acts, sanctioned by the Supreme Court. Perhaps Rand would not feel like addressing that issue, since it involves on both sides the one true evil of collective social decision making and vile government coercion. But I am curious about Paul’s views. Is it OK to make it more difficult to vote for the poor in society based on fears of hypothetical individual voter fraud that never seems to happen in real reality?
Edit: I guess we do know the implications of his views for health care reform: let the free unregulated market make a chaotic desert and call it the optimal free market paradise, no matter what happens and how many people die prematurely.
gbear
@Cat Lady: That clip with Maddow was impossible to watch all the way through. As soon as Maddow got into the meat of any of her questions, Paul would interrupt her and go off on an endless, incomprehensible word-pile. She finally lost her cool a little and forced him to hear out a question, but I still ran screaming for the exits with a couple minutes left on the video.
Keith G
I could never do that coiled lace thing and I do miss the comfort of my old top-siders, thank you.
Khakis only. Acid washed must have been a WV thang.
Mike in NC
Nah. Down here the teabaggers have stashed away their polyester leisure suits, which they’ll put on when Jim Bob DeMint is elected president of the New Confederate States of America in 2012. Wolverines! Yeehaw! Polident!
kay
@Mark S.:
My head is spinning. Did he just change his mind again? We’re back to “public”? He’s going the wrong way! In another 48 hours, he could be at “repeal”.
Can someone on his staff sit him down and explain this whole civil rights thing to him? It would save time.
Jibeaux
For a party supposedly of “personal responsibility”, they sure do duck and bob. Not only backpedaling on the civil right act, but blaming the nefarious “they” for the fallout. Welcome to life as a public figure, Rand!
Little Boots
What I think john and doug are getting at is this: to fling around charges of racism is risky because proof, even superficial proof, of non-racism (say, the old stand-by, some of my best friends are black) does lead to problems. and once the charge has been flung, and the black friend has been produced, it becomes harder to look at the underlying racism of their beliefs or policies. that is what they’re getting at, and they have a point, a really good point, actually.
mextremist
actually, that whole 80’s preppy douchebag look is kinda in again.
Cat Lady
@ gbear
Imagine a Palin/Paul debate, then go stick needles in your ears for relief.
I can haz reply funkshun bak plz?
Little Boots
In other words, stop caring too much about the question of whether Rand Paul is some kind of racist and focus more on whether his belief that Court decisions, circa 1964, should really be overturned and what that would mean for all of us. Is that about it, John/Doug? This is your blog, after all.
tavella
Except that he *does* want government power used to arrest those people for trespassing, and he *does* want the government to protect the owners from any consequences for violence they unleash. So no, libertarians aren’t about freedom — they are about enforcing their privileged position in society.
slag
Who knew that engaging in an interview with the “loony left” would be the even harder part of freedom? If all those black folks wanted to feel some real pain, they’d now be walking a mile in Rand’s shoes.
ellaesther
@NickM: I hate to admit (no, really, I hate it, and have said as much to my beloved husband) how attractive I find him.
It kind of grosses me out, actually.
kay
@slag:
What a whiner. One interview and he’s running to FOX to lodge a complaint.
Incidentally, most of the Republicans in Congress either ran like hell from him or openly repudiated him, so I don’t know that it’s the “loony left” that is his problem.
Mark S.
@kay:
I’m not sure ever changed his mind. In his statement:
I don’t know exactly what he means by the “public sphere.” Does that include public accommodations, like hotels and restaurants?
Of course, he is in favor of reducing the size of government to what could be fit into a bathtub, so there will be a much larger private sphere to discriminate to our heart’s content!
Jason Bylinowski
Shyeah whatevs, nerd, everybody knows the coolest shoes were Sebagos or Bass (but preferably Sebagos) and it didn’t matter how you did the laces as long as you wore them with Duckhead khakis.
This is a regular Loserama.
Mike Kay
“I say, segregation today! segregation tomorrow! segregation forever!” ~ Rand Paul
fortygeek
I’m all for a ‘looney left’ if it forces his brand of stupidity out in the open.
Mike Kay
@gbear:
Hmmmm. Who does that remind me of.. Someone, but I just can’t place my finger on it… Hmmmm
Fern
So – he’s been the Republican candidate for a senate seat for – what – two days now? And he’s already playing the victim?
slag
@kay:
Exactly. Rosa Parks only had to sit in the back of the bus. Poor Rand Paul is getting pushed under it. Swing low, sweet chariot. Swing low!
Mark S.
@ellaesther:
Oh dear. Ron looks okay for an old guy. Rand looks like Lyle Lovett.
Cronin
@Mark S.: The short version is no, because according to libertarians restaurants et al are private business, and the government in their eyes has no right to tell them who they have to serve.
It’s absolutely naive and abhorrent, but it’s at least straightforward.
Hell, I’m pretty sure most libertarians are ok with companies paying in company scrip rather than money.
thejoz
“Rand Paul has this tendency to get in public or get on national cable shows and feel like he wants to give me a lecture on constitutional law,” said Conway. “I’m the attorney general of Kentucky. He didn’t go to law school. I did. I don’t need a lecture on Constitutional law from Rand Paul or Sarah Palin.”
That man is Rand Paul’s opponent.
I think I need a new pair of pants.
Lizzy
Oh damn, I’d forgotten about coiled laces!!! JC your slip is showing….
Michael
@slag:
Somebody needs to goad him into saying that Rosa Parks was uppity. It prolly wouldn’t take much.
Anyway, since we’re on an early 80s kick, can I take this moment to shout out to my girl Nena of 99 luftballon fame?
Console
replace izod with polo and i think you just described every black guy in atlanta
gbear
Coiled laces were a FSM-send to my dad when he got too old and arthritic to tie his shoes. I’d never seen them before I saw them on his shoes. It looked like he’d laced them with ramen noodles.
slag
@Jason Bylinowski:
Seriously, you may as well be speaking Latin here. I have no idea what any of this means.
Mark S.
@Cronin:
Rand’s a big states rights guy; I wonder if he’s one of those who thinks the Bill of Rights shouldn’t apply to the states. Because it would be awesome if Ohio could outlaw Judaism, or if Virginia could put you in prison for criticizing the government. Why shouldn’t we let these laboratories of democracy work their magic?
dww44
@beltane:
After today’s market action and employment numbers, I needed that laugh. Thanks.
Hunter Gathers
@thejoz:
Game.
Set.
Match.
tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/05/conway-rand-pauls-ideology-has-dangerous-consequences.php?ref=fp…
Alex
@thejoz:
Ho-lee shit.
Cronin
On a side note, can we please start calling libertarians economic anarchists? It seems like a more accurate appellation.
Michael
Here y’all go. My girl Nena.
youtube.com/watch?v=jQYQTFudrqc
And for more fun, here’s the Land of Confusion video by Phil Collins.
youtube.com/watch?v=oepXF2B5NK4
It is amazing that the old fool didn’t get us all killed. We got lucky.
Jason Bylinowski
@slag: Imagine the voice of David Attenborough:
What we are seeing here, in Jason Bylinowski’s most able commentary is what amounts to a description of the common social rituals observed by that special subclass of adolescents known to the American South as the preps. Their main competition in this ecological niche was the somewhat poorer but, inexplicably, just as formidable tribe known as the hoods, who battled with the preps for social purchase throughout the early 1990s.
/end
Me, I never fit in anywhere, because I was always either a left libertarian or a DFH, more or less, and if there’s one thing that those guys could all agree on, it’s that Democrats were all idiots.
Cronin
@Mark S.: I don’t think he’d be for that, honestly.
Most libertarians I know are remarkably consistent: They basically seem to think that government is fundamentally tyrannical and has little to not place outside of defense and enforcement of a very few laws.
So, no, he’d be against Ohio outlawing Judaism at the exact same time as he’d have no problem with every business IN Ohio refusing to serve Jews or refusing to rent apartments to Jews. Because, you know, it’s there private property / business.
They don’t live in reality, but it’s a very consistent unreality.
dww44
@kay:
That was my other very much deserved laugh of the day, watching DeMint, Cantor, et.al. trying to dodge the questions and avoid angering their party’s far right while not exactly coming out for “settled law”. Couldn’t happen to a more deserving bunch. More, please.!!!
Redshift
My favorite Rand development for the day was his admission that yes, federal intervention was necessary in the South where things were really bad. I hope that gets lots of play, because it should piss off the types who show up in the Confederate History Month threads to argue that things were just as bad in the North, as well as the committed libertarians and TPers who won’t like any walkback, but will still do him no good with normal people.
SIA
@Mark S.:
Then it can be more easily drowned.
@ellaesther: We all have our weak points. I have at times found Christopher Hitchens attractive.
Mike Kay
it takes alotta never for Ron Paul’s son to call anyone loony.
gbear
@NickM:
Paul’s hair was triggering memories with me too and I finally just realized who I was reminded of:
Eddie Haskell
Redshift
@thejoz: Excellent. I imagine Conway’s campaign is spending their time figuring out how they’re going to goad Paul into talking about his deeply held beliefs on different issues at key points in the campaign. Issues that can’t be dismissed as hypotheticals because the Senate will be dealing with them. He does seem like the kind of guy who (like most libertarians I’ve met) is so accustomed to talking only to people who either agree with him or who he can talk down to because he knows he’s right that it’ll be hard for him to restrain himself for campaign purposes.
“Dr. Paul, do you believe the federal government should have the power to regulate how private businesses can drill for and refine oil?”
“Dr. Paul, do you believe the Constitution allows the federal government to constrain what private financial firms do with their money?”
The possibilities are endless…
ellaesther
@Mark S.: See, I think that Lyle Lovett is kinda cute… if lopsided. Paul looks like a non-lopsided Lyle Lovett!
@SIA: Oh my goodness gracious. Well. I, um… /stares at feet/ I feel much better now, thank you! And very brave of you to admit it!
Chuck Butcher
SIA,
You can tell me I have a nice Harley but please never say anything nice about my looks. I say that as someone who only looks in the mirror to insert/remove contacts and comb hair – once daily.
SIA
@Chuck Butcher: Chuck, I have always thought you have a nice Harley. :)
fledermaus
Yeah, the guy who thinks Jim Crow was just going to go away if we gave it a year or two is calling people “loony” Gotcha.
Bill Murray
@Mark S.: didn’t the 14th amendment take care of that fairly explicitly?
Mark S.
@Bill Murray:
It took a while.
Joseph Nobles
I am so disappointed. I was expecting Dr. Paul to Black Knight it all the way to November. Now he’s going to try to appeal to the middle to win? Dang it.
Wonder if I can get my Costco.com order of a skid of microwave popcorn stopped?
**grumble**
HeartlandLiberal
Many of our relatives down in Alabama still think we are a bunch of “hippies”, they still actually use the term, not realizing we were never hippies, never part of the drug culture, never part any of the culture that characterized the true “hippies” from nearly a half century ago.
Ouch. It WAS nearly that long ago. There’s a scary thought.
What we did was flee the state for graduate school at a “Yankee” school (I eventually gave up trying to explain that Illinois was NOT “Yankeeland”).
What they cannot handle is liberal, progressive, compassionate thought and action that recognizes that people who are not white Anglo-Saxons are human beings, too. And they cannot deal with “intellectuals” and all that book-learnin’.
So they tar anyone like that with the label “hippies”.
It is actually just another indicator of now stuck in the past and unable to evolve and move forward as society changes these people are. The literally are still stuck in the 60’s. In fact, for many, that is the 1860’s, not the 1960’s.
Backbencher
If those of us on the “looney left” are now supposed to be taking our cues from failed Labour leaders then I want to be Michael Foot
Shygetz
@gbear: I thought he was the teacher from Glee.
matoko_chan
Look Cole….Paul IS NOT A LIBERTARIAN.
REAL libertarians don’t say shit like this.
Paul is a white patriarchy racist with a libertarian-looking stealth cloaking device.
FormerSwingVoter
I love the implication that support for the Civil Rights Act is loony.
Svensker
@SIA:
O.M.G.
That is all.
Svensker
@matoko_chan:
Yeah, just like Stalin was not a communist.
Let it go, matoko. Let it go.
kay
@FormerSwingVoter:
I love the implication that asking Rand Paul his opinions on the role of government is loony.
Tea Partiers have been screeching senselessly that government is too big since January of 2009.
When they’re asked to tell us what that means, they’re the victims of liberal media.
This question wasn’t about his personal life, or his friends, or his pastor. It was about how he sees government, the job for which he is applying. We can’t ask him that?
ksmiami
All libertarians are selfish assholes
Rand Paul is a so-called libertarian therefore
Rand Paul is a Selfish Asshole
One more episode of Syllogisms for dummies
Syndicalist
“Arnold, I’m afraid you can’t eat here. This is the hard part about freedom.”
“What you talkin’ ’bout, Dr. Paul?!!” (studio audience guffaws, claps)
ricky
I am not sure when or if the phrase “loony left” was ever in or out of style. Loonies who fancy themselves leftists are ever present. Never stylish. Just present. And presentatious.
MaximusNYC
@Svensker:
Exactly.
Libertarians are the Trotskyites of the right.
maus
@Redshift:
Ah, but as soon as things immediately “got better” BIG GUBMINT should have been drowned in the bathtub. Just as it was “good” that children are not working in sweatshops, but governments should still not regulate factory conditions.
He doesn’t mean any of what he says, he just wants to take credit for the progress we’ve made while COMPLETELY discounting the need for regulation and at the same time get rid of our current oversight because “we wouldn’t have needed it anyway” these things would have happened all on their own.
maus
@ricky: Yeah, but you have to admit that they had a false prominence on the newsmedia during Bush’s reign. We were all tarred with “loony left” and these people were pushed to the forefront of the serious beltway pundits to act as our spokesloons.