Posted on 07/31/2015 3:58:56 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
In his pursuit of the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, Rand Paul has made sure to put lots of distance between himself and his fatherand Dad appears to be firing back.
Ron Paul does not approve of his son Rand Pauls position on the Iran deal, and he let him know Thursday evening in a speech that called him outthough not by name.
Right now one of the big issues, you know, in the news, probably on foreign policy, is whether or not the Obama administration should talk to the Iranians, the elder Paul told the crowd at the Young Americans for Liberty Conference. If anybody listened to any of my speeches over the last five or ten years, I advocate diplomacy! A long time before you advocate war!
Five or ten years ago, Rand did, too.
In 2007, when he was campaigning for his dads presidential campaign, Rand was vocally skeptical not just of the idea that the Iranians could obtain a nuclear weapon but also of the notion that if they were to, it would present much of a threat to the United States. If you look at it, intellectually look at the evidence Iran is not a threat, he told radio host Alex Jones. Its ridiculous to think that theyre a threat to our national security.
Today, presidential candidate Rand Paul takes a very different positionone completely at odds with his fathers.
In response to the agreement reached among Iran, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, China, Russia, and Germany, Paul released a statement calling the deal unacceptable because sanctions relief precedes evidence of compliance, Iran is left with significant nuclear capacity, and it lifts the ban on selling advanced weapons to Iran.
This is, according to Ron Paul, nonsense.
Last Monday, the elder Paul wrote a column for the Ron Paul Institute that characterized the deal as one of the two most important achievements of an otherwise pretty dismal Obama presidency. On Thursday, he explained why he believes those who disagree with himflesh and blood or notare dead wrong.
Opponents of diplomacy with Iran, Paul told the crowd, say, Oh, theyre bad people. Theres a bunch of nutty people in Iran, and they say nasty things. Well, if you were in Iran and listened to some of the nasty things our leaders say about them, you probably would understand this a little bit better! The crowd erupted into applause.
But my practical argument for this is that the founders actually gave us pretty good advice: We should stay out of entangling alliances and mind our own business and trade with people. But in my lifetime, there were certain episodes that I was very glad our government was willing to talk to other governments that were considered evil and monstrous.
Drafted into the military in 1962, Paul said, Do you think I complained when Kennedy called up Khrushchev and said, Hey, maybe theres a better way? You take your weapons out of Cuba and Ill take em out of Turkey, and the thing was over. So I would say that diplomatic conversation was very beneficial. So, to say that the Iranians arent perfect people and we shouldnt talk to them? You know, we have been so obsessed, for probably 30 years, on the emergency of a nuclear weapon next week, next month, or next yearon a weapon that doesnt exist. The Soviets had 30,000 of them, and then theyd come back to us and say that were a bunch of kooks for wanting to talk to these bad people? I would say that the advice is that friendship is a wise idea.
When the younger Paul first began testing the waters for a presidential run, in spring 2014, one of his pseudo-campaigns central priorities, it seemed, was to dispel the notion that he was his fathers clone. The emancipation is now complete, but the effect has been catastrophic for his presidential ambitions. Being a watered-down version of Ron Paul, the evidence suggests, doesnt make Rand Paul more appealing to other factions of the GOP his dad couldnt reachit just makes him less appealing to his natural base of supporters.
No one can know what goes on within a family, of course. But the elder Paul seemed to be sending a message to his son during his hourlong remarks.
At another point in the speech, he noted that in the presidential race, Theres two individuals right now who have sort of caught the attention: Trump and Sanders.
His son, who is polling at 6 percentbehind not just Trump but Ben Carson and Mike Huckabeedid not receive a mention.
Update: Doug Stafford, a senior adviser for the campaign, sent me an email taking issue with the premise of this story. He included a statement which does not contradict the premise of this story at all, but Im including it here nevertheless: Being against a bad deal that is the product of bad diplomacy does not make one against diplomacy. In fact, Senator Paul has stated before, during and after these negotiations that he favors diplomacy and negotiations. He still favors them. He would leave the current interim deal in place and keep going as he has said publicly several times. He also believes in negotiating from strength as Reagan did, and believes this administration has failed to do that and came up with a deal that doesnt work.
strange.
maybe this is just Daddy’s odd way of trying to promote his kid’s campaign (by trying to claim that the boy does NOT share one of Daddy’s worst weaknesses, an unreliability or apparent unwillingness to defend America and our interests)
or something like that.
stranger things have happened, that’s for sure.
Ron Paul has been getting increasingly crazy in recent times...
After the isolationist foreign policies expounded by Ron Paul in the last presidential debates, Ron is in no place to begin to brow beat an adult son, who does not toe his line.
Its just bad cop, good cop, its all theater, they’re both libertarians.
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