Posted on 05/20/2010 8:50:17 PM PDT by sickoflibs
(May 20) -- Rand Paul, the new face of the tea party movement, is in hot water because of his comments about anti-discrimination laws.
The political newcomer knocked off the GOP establishment's candidate, Trey Grayson, in Kentucky's Republican Senate primary on Tuesday and called it a "mandate" for the tea party's drive to limit Washington's power.
During a victory lap of interview programs the next day, Paul was asked about his belief that the Americans With Disabilities Act gave government too much authority over private business. NPR's Robert Siegel wanted to know whether Paul felt the same way about the 1964 Civil Rights Act, as his Democratic opponent in the Senate race, Jack Conway, has claimed.
"What I've always said is, I'm opposed to institutional racism," Paul responded, adding that he would have marched with Dr. Martin Luther King if he'd been alive at the time. Although Paul said he supports nearly everything in the Civil Rights Act, he took issue with the part that outlaws discrimination by private businesses except for clubs.
Rachel Maddow pressed Paul on the question during a lengthy interview on her MSNBC program Wednesday night. She tried to get a clear answer on whether he thought the lunch counter at the Woolworth's in Greensboro, N.C. -- a flash point in the struggle for racial integration -- should have been allowed to remain segregated.
Paul said he didn't believe "any private property should discriminate" and insisted he would never patronize such a place. But he asked Maddow, "Does the owner of the restaurant own his restaurant or does the government own his restaurant?"
Paul accused Maddow of bringing up "something that really is not an issue ... sort of a red herring." But he faced the same question a month ago in an interview with the Louisville Courier-Journal's editorial board. (Click here to watch the video. Skip ahead to the one-hour mark.)
"Under your philosophy it would be OK for Dr. King to not be served at the counter at Woolworth's?" Paul was asked. He replied that he would have boycotted the store and denounced it, but added, "This is the hard part about believing in freedom."
He continued, "In a free society we will tolerate boorish people who have abhorrent behavior. But if we're civilized people, we publicly criticize that and don't belong to those groups or associate with those people."
A week later, the newspaper published an editorial saying Paul has "an unacceptable view of civil rights, saying that while the federal government can enforce integration of government jobs and facilities, private business people should be able to decide whether they want to serve black people, or gays, or any other minority group."
Because Paul has consistently expressed his personal opposition to discrimination, "there's really no wound inflicted here," argued Hot Air's Allapundit.
"His reservations about the law have to do not with the ends but with the means of federal compulsion; he wants business owners to serve everyone but clearly prefers using boycotts and local laws to pressure them. It's not a question of being pro- or anti-discrimination, in other words; it's a question of how federalism and civil rights enforcement mesh," the blogger wrote.
Trying to turn a question about racism into a philosophical discussion about federal power "may work well in the classroom, but it's a tricky position to take as a political candidate on national television," noted Susan Davis on the Wall Street Journal's Washington Wire blog.
"Rand Paul should have been better prepared to answer this question. This isn't the first time he has encountered it," said Clifton B, who blogs at Another Black Conservative. He said Paul is caught in a "Catch-22."
"If Paul says he fully supports how the feds forced the private sector to end segregation he loses libertarian street cred, but by only supporting the results of the Civil Rights Act and not the actual legislation, Paul gives the left room to paint him as a racist," Clifton B wrote.
The Atlantic's Ta-Nehisi Coates also criticized Paul for responding to Maddow "with a series of feints and dodges."
"What's most troubling about this interview is not that Paul opposes a portion of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, it's that it's clear Paul hasn't thought much about his position," Coates said. "Lacking a rigorous intellectual framework for his opposition, Paul is wobbly on defense."
Similar, if snarkier, criticism came from Gawker's Adrian Chen, who decoded Paul's remarks this way: "But it's simple: Rand Paul hates racism, but wants to allow businesses to be racist. He would definitely support a segregated Applebee's as long as it instantly went bankrupt because no one liked its racist food. He basically loves the idea of the possibility that somewhere in America someone could open up a racist business, but as soon as that business becomes a reality he hates it."
Paul issued a statement this morning that still didn't answer the lunch counter question directly but backed the current law.
"Even though this matter was settled when I was 2, and no serious people are seeking to revisit it except to score cheap political points, I unequivocally state that I will not support any efforts to repeal the Civil Rights Act of 1964," Paul declared.
Some commentators were irked not just by what Paul did or didn't say, but what he sounded like when he said it.
"What a disappointment. Rand Paul is just another politician who won't give a straight answer to a simple question," lamented Kansas City Star reader George Harris.
Even Paul's tea party supporters "won't enjoy watching him look like a slippery politician as he fails, over and over, to answer Maddow's questions directly," added Salon's Joan Walsh.
"He turned into a politician before our very eyes. This champion of the truth-telling Tea Partiers waffled and dodged like the most seasoned of pols," Michael Sean Winters charged in America magazine. He said there's no reason to doubt Paul is against discrimination, but that's not the question.
"The question is about the role of government in society and whether or not the federal government was right to insist that it be against the law to discriminate on the basis of race in private businesses that serve the public," Winters argued.
"He would not answer. His career as a non-politician politician lasted less than 24 hours."
Why do these guys go on the these left-wing hack shows when they know they are going to be ambushed!
Exactly!
In “Conscience of a Conservative” Goldwater made it clear that he supported civil rights, he just didn’t like the Federal government mandating it. I happen to agree. If a restaurant wants to discriminate, that’s their business. Stupid of course, but they have a right to do so. I think of the Mongomery bus boycott. Blacks were treated badly, and they all but ruined the bus system by not using it. I wish it were ALL economic. If a business doesn’t want black customers, let them feel the economic losses until they come around.
Rand is right.
People don’t lose the right to freedom of association just because they own a shop.
Glad Paul poked the RNC/GOP McConnel and the rest in the eye. Now resign and go away. LOL
The Paul crowd is waaaaaaaaaaay too looney .
Why?
Not being adversarial. Just curious.
Wasn’t the Woolworth question bogus?
I was under the impression that the Jim Crow laws forbade the Woolworth Corporation from having integrated lunch counters. If the waitress or manager of the restaurant had served the protestors, could they not have been cited.
Wasn’t Jim Crow a violation of property rights itself?
The media has absolutely no credibility anymore.
Especially MSNBC Maddow. You have to wonder if he bothered to watch her show before going on it. She race baits every night. She race/victim baits on blacks, and the new races illegals and homosexuals. How could he expect to have a discussion of abstract constitutional principles there? (Abstract in that not even Republicans will back him.)
He must think he can win over some democrats, but this will teach him a lesson hopefully.
Rand Paul announced his candidacy on her show months ago. It was a lovefest. Really.
Paul still looks like he is sinking on this. It's not just the race-biting leftists. Many freepers here who hate the Pauls for other reasons always say they are crazy, and then Rand goes on MSNBC Maddow the day after the election to give them ammunition. He is now MSNBC’s Tea Party poster child MSNBC and leftist sites: “We told you those white racist tea party people want to go back to racial segregation” . That is how they killed Bork.
If he was creating a national discussion on federal power, and winning it, that would be different. But MSNBC liberals will use this as an argument for MORE federal power.
Good point! But it looks like that is the only episode that he watched.
He must have got the impression that liberals like him and Dad, but they only like him for their purpose disagreeing with Republicans. Now he is a threat to Obama and must be destroyed(where have I heard this before ?).
Everytime I would see Ron Paul on one of these MSNBC shows I would wonder what he is up to. Pretty dumb at national politics.
He's the young prince of the Paul dynasty.
He's running for president, of course.
State Run media is already attacking conservatives and Republicans and it is not even close to November 2010.
Imagine how it is going to be closer to election day.
The State-run media are disgusting and pathetic — lower than pond scum.
Not 2012. Maybe 2016 if Obama wins again. He would have to announce his run immediately after this 2010 election, not very realistic.
This PR trouble shows he is not yet ready for prime time(certainly not running for President) . He is still likely to get elected Senator . I certainly hope he does. Hoping for the best.
Yes you are not only Wright, you are totally correct too! They really have evolved from a group that exposed corruption to a group that encourages corruption.
At the same time though I can't fault him for the original interview. He had just won a big senate primary and all the networks were calling to interview. He probably said yes to MSNBC just like he did to all the others, thinking it would be a simple post-election wrapup "so, what's next?" style interview. Instead the Madcow ambushed him with a gotcha! question. Paul, to his credit, stood his ground and threw it right back at her.
How I understand the reasoning of the civil rights law, if you’re offering a service to the general public (As opposed to a private club), you can’t pick and choose what member of the general public you’re offering the services to unless those customers are clearly causing you to lose business. If you’re a store owner, you can’t refuse customer service to a customer unless he/she is creating a scene. That opens up a pandora’s box of civil rights violations if you’re picky about who you allow in your store.
The law makes constitutional sense because a free market cannot be considered truly free unless everybody has an equal chance to take advantage of a service somebody is selling or offering. It’s basic civil rights. A person who is offering a service to the public can’t pick and choose which member of the public they offer that service to.
A grocery store can’t refuse to give service to cyclists (I’ve seen that happen), a black barber cannot refuse to give service to a white customer unless the barber warns the customer that the black barber is not used to cutting straight hair (seen that too), and a drive through must allow any and every car or motor vehicle drive through service unless all those customers were causing a scene somehow or the other. A store however does have the right to enforce dress codes, weapon bans, etc if they can prove that the person’s clothing indicates that they are a member of a subculture that encourages behavior or an attitude that would detract business.
Paul stepped into this pile of doo doo big time.
I was a child when the American Civil Rights Act was passed but I remember it well. The marches of Blacks and Whites together, the dogs and fire hoses let loose on the protesters, as it all played out on our TV screen. The brilliant bravery of those who resisted who made the rest of America root for them and reject legalized racism
ACRA’s passage was only possible because the collective mindset of America toward racism had ALREADY been changed by those protesters. The American people rejected racism as unacceptable BEFORE the law was passed which is the only thing that made its passage possible.
ACRA was intended to prevent racism from ever being “legalized” again, but it added a clause that allowed the Feds to interfere with an individual’s personal & private property. That’s what Rand is pointing to and questioning — and that is what is getting ignored.
I’d like to know why, 45 years later, when even our sitting president is an African American, Maddow and others automatically assume that if there weren’t a law against it, the American people would automatically find acceptable. “segregated restaurants” and “refusing service to Blacks”. What would be the purpose of doing such a thing? Why would Americans embrace today what we rejected 45 years ago, before there was even a law against it?
Rachel Maddow and her cohorts have an incredibly low estimation of the American people.
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