I don’t pay that much attention to Rand, frankly, but it’s significant that today it appears the entire Right has risen up against him and called him crazy.
The story thus far: Not long ago Rand wrote an op ed for the Wall Street Journal arguing (I’m told; it’s behind a firewall) that the U.S. should stay out of Iraq and not take sides between ISIS and the Iraqi government. I can see that a reasonable argument could be made along those lines, so I’ll assume Rand made it.
But now calls for ignoring ISIS are not politically tenable, so a couple of days ago Rand published an article in Time magazine denying that he is an isolationist and blaming President Obama for not doing enough to stop ISIS and for allowing Syria to become a “jihadist wonderland.” Unfortunately for Rand, the ideas expressed in Time still were far too moderate to pass muster on the Right, so he’s being fired upon from many rightie positions, from the Hoover Institute to NRO to Hit & Run.
Steve Benen notes a recent speech by Rand that took another position from those first two. Like Chickenman, he’s everywhere! He’s everywhere!
On Wednesday, Paul said he had no use for “interventionists†and the “hawkish members†of his own party who are calling for using force in the Middle East. But just 48 hours later, Paul supports U.S. military intervention abroad to destroy ISIS?
Also keep in mind, less than a month ago, Paul was asked about U.S. airstrikes targeting ISIS targets in Iraq. The senator said he had “mixed feelings†about the offensive. Apparently, those feelings are no longer mixed and Paul is now eager to “destroy ISIS militarily†– says the senator who complained last week about Hillary Clinton being a “war hawk.â€
At what point do Rand Paul’s loyal followers start to reconsider whether Rand Paul actually agrees with them?
Sarah Smith recently noted that the Kentucky senator has changed his mind about federal aid to Israel, use of domestic drones, immigration, elements of the Civil Rights Act, Guantanamo Bay, and even accepting donations from lawmakers who voted for TARP.
Now, even the basic elements of his approach to using military force are up for grabs.
Oooo, politics is hard.
Good thing he is a Republican, and can’t be accused of Flip-Flopping!
He’s maximizing his options?
That mop-topped fop is a dim-bulb inside an empty suit.
When you call yourself a “Libertarian,” are against a woman’s right to choose, but call for foreign military intervention, then you’re either a very confused “Libertarian’ whose only beliefs are to make pot and other drugs legal for your own consumption, or a lying sociopathic, greedy, vain, and power-hungry sack of shite, who doesn’t believe in anything except your own superiority.
Or – also too – all of the above.
Hoover Institute???? If this isn’t an organization named after a vacuum cleaner manufacturer, then it’s the namesake of the president whose policies precipitated the Great Depression. The content of the article cited was pretty horrible – a hawkish libertarian who dismisses the debacle of Iraq with, “Whether that invasion was right or wrong is irrelevant today.” WTF???!!! The author is dead set on all-out intervention in the Mid-East without a single word on an exit strategy. (He also fails to muster a logical argument that ISIS, however despicable, does or will constitute a serious threat to the US in the future.)
The neo-cons are all in a lather that Obama ‘doesn’t have a strategy’ for dealing with ISIS. The deliberation looks pretty smart when you look at the ‘strategy’ that conservatives want to enact. The cluster-flock that was the Iraq ‘strategy’ is proof that thinking out an engagement before you commit to it is a sound strategy all by itself.
Nah, politics is easy if you are made of Silly Putty and infinitely malleable.
BTW his original WSJ article was not bad, considering the source. It opens, necessarily, with obeisances to the smartness of Ronald Reagan, and then goes on to cite the Weinberger doctrine on the conditions that should be fulfilled before the country goes to war; and that part is quite good enough for an op-ed. The rest is largely about how Iraq shouldn’t be blamed on either Bush or Obama, since Both Sides Did It.
All in all, it contains a good deal that would go in an argument for staying neutral, and a reasonable Republican or conservative Democrat, if you could find any, would hardly find any anathema in it.
Naturally, he’d be under pressure to backtrack on this, with the situation looking much worse than it did in June. It could be done pretty well in terms of what he first wrote. Naturally, that’s not what he did. Naturally, what he did is still nowhere acceptable to his party.
Incidentally: Bleep them all.
Oh, my. The circus freaks like Palin, Paul, bachmann should maybe get together and have a cooking show on the Palin network. They need an outlet for their craving of attention.These “folks” love the spotlight, but lack the imagination and intelligence to be leaders of anything larger than a cub scout den. Like the really bad karaoke my neighbors are into. I held off cutting up a fallen tree last week because I didn’t want to disturb the karaoke; the chainsaw would have been a welcome relief.