Rand Paul On The Warpath

Posted by Kirby Harris

Not long ago, the Washington grown-ups who run the Republican Party would have dismissed the junior senator from Kentucky making cracks about an establishment pillar like McCain as little more than the goading of a gadfly. But over the past two weeks, it has become clear that Paul’s brand of Republicanism has spread deeply within his party. He successfully rallied a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers against a military intervention in Syria; thoroughly embarrassed Republican leaders who supported the air strikes; and temporarily elevated himself to the role of de facto foreign policy spokesman for the GOP. When President Obama took his case for war to the American people in a primetime address this week, it was Paul who delivered the unofficial Republican counterargument in a series of interviews and a widely covered speech.

Paul, in short, is winning. The Syria debate marked the first time since House Republicans tried to keep America out of the Kosovo conflict in 1999 that a libertarian approach to foreign policy seriously challenged the GOP’s old-guard caucus of hawks. And this time, the libertarians came out on top. In this context, his McCain mocking didn’t come off as mischievously trolling for a couple headlines — it seemed a little like punching down.

Don’t expect Paul to stop swinging. The plainly ambitious libertarian and prospective 2016 presidential candidate has big plans for his party and his country — plans that will require winning a lot of arguments, defeating a lot of opponents, and effectively conquering a GOP establishment that often treats him like a tumor that needs to be surgically removed. He is always on offense: Over the course of his 20-minute interview with BuzzFeed, he took swipes — with varying degrees of force — at Bill Kristol, Samantha Power, Chris Christie, President Obama, President Bush, Cory Booker, humanitarian interventionists, and pro-war Christians (to name a few).

One of his favorite targets — and the one that most delights the political press — is the Bush-era army of neoconservative Republicans who championed the Patriot Act and led the U.S. into war with Iraq. (Paul believes the U.S. should only use military force when the country’s national security is directly at risk.)

“So many of the neocons in our party, they think they’re the great defenders of the military. They think, Oh, the soldiers must love me because I want to be involved in war,” Paul said, before criticizing the assumption that members of the military are eager to fight. “They will, they volunteered, and they’re the most patriotic of our young people. But they’re not excited about war. They want to go to war if it’s the thing they have to do to defend our country.” (Read the Entire Story Here)

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