Free Republic

Republican Sen. Rand Paul split with senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio to vote for a healthcare bill Tuesday night that will add about half a trillion dollars to the national debt over the next several decades.Paul sided with the overwhelming majority of senators and representatives who voted for the bill, in a decision almost certain to come up in the primary race, where he is currently joined by Cruz and Rubio.The “doc-fix” bill solves a recurring problem in the way Medicare payments are made to doctors, extends a children’s health insurance program, and requires higher-income seniors to pay higher...

The NRA’s annual convention is coming up. They invited possible/announced 2016 candidates Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Scott Walker, and Jeb Bush. Two people they didn’t invite: Chris Christie and Rand Paul. It is not surprising that the New Jersey moderate was not invited. But the lack of an invitation for Paul stands out.The Daily Beast reports that Paul did request an invitation to the convention, but was denied: However, a source with knowledge of Paul’s dealings with the NRA said the claim that he did not request an invitation to the convention was “not true.”Further, the...

Senator Rand Paul is the second Republican to announce his official run for the 2016 presidential nomination. He brings some strengths to the race, and some glaring weaknesses. On the positive side of the ledger, he has emphasized outreach to members of minority groups, especially black Americans. Paul can be an appealing politician with a knack for political theater, so he has had some success in front of unfavorable audiences. Such efforts are necessary to broaden the party’s appeal, and other candidates would do well to emulate Paul’s work (if not his chummy pow-wow with racial provocateur Al Sharpton). The...

e is what you need to remember – Rand Paul is never going to get Andy Cable’s, Don Kass’, or Doug Gross’s vote. Spiker is tasked with organizing the people who he has a good rapport with. This is nothing new to politics. Campaigns of every shape and size target certain coalitions of voters, and Spiker is tasked to work with the libertarian leaning voters. Besides all of that, Spiker proved that he was one of the better organizers in Iowa in 2012. People tend to overlook the fact that his candidate received more votes at the Ames Straw Poll...

For now, senators say it’s not a problem that one of the most powerful Republicans in D.C. already has a likely presidential candidate. “I work with Sen. McConnell on stuff, I make sure he knows what I’m doing to try and get it across the finish line,” Paul said. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has made no secret that he’ll support his fellow Kentuckian, Sen. Rand Paul, should Paul run for president in 2016. And Paul has also made no secret that he very, very likely will do just that. But there’s a lot of time between now and the...

The Republicans won the 2014 midterms in a landslide. They have the most House seats since World War Two and they won the Senate. We’re two weeks into the new term and the Republicans are already losing to Obama and the Democrats. What is the Republican agenda? Rather than having bills up and ready to go, the Republicans have dithered. Rather than taking the fight to the Democrats in the Senate, McConnell is balking at the House’s effort to defund executive amnesty. Keystone XL should have been a simple bill to pass onto the President, it still hasn’t happened. What...

Former Republican presidential candidate and congressman Ron Paul says bad foreign policy is to blame for the Paris terrorist attack on the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo that left at least 12 dead and 11 wounded. “Well, you know, partially what the Secretary of State said is true — this is pretty obscene, when it comes to violence, and libertarians are pretty annoyed by anybody who initiates violence,” said Paul on NewsMaxTV’s Steve Malzberg Show Wednesday. “This is pretty bad.” Paul said the context for the attack, however, was France’s involvement in the Middle East. “But in the context of things,...

Supports the efforts by President Poroshenko and the people of Ukraine to establish a lasting peace for Ukraine that includes: full withdrawal of Russian forces from its territory, full control of its international borders, disarming of separatist and paramilitary forces in eastern Ukraine, adoption of policies to reduce the Russian Federation's ability to use energy exports and trade barriers as weapons to apply economic and political pressure, and an end to interference by the Russian Federation in Ukraine's internal affairs.

The editor of Breitbart Unmasked, a site that I enjoy immensely and find informative, recently told me that supporting Rand Paul disqualifies a person from being labeled a progressive. My rebuttal was that he might be right. However, I also mentioned that Democratic Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia agreed with my latest Congress Blog piece. In the article, I explain why Rand Paul is correct in questioning the legality of President Obama's troop deployments. Sadly, people at UC Berkeley are more interested in protesting Bill Maher than condemning a conflict George McGovern stated weakens our country in the same manner...

It looks like what we have here is a classic case of when “keeping it real” goes wrong. On Veterans Day, while most Americans were thanking members of the U.S. armed forces for their service and enjoying their community’s holiday festivities, Michael Schuette of Anniston, Alabama took to Facebook to explain that veterans are not American heroes. In fact, he believes they “kill for profit,” “terrorize” other countries, have “never sacrificed for this country” and do “nothing for the American citizens.”

The Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins broadsided the GOP frontrunner on Twitter for his insistence that the morning-after pill isn’t a form of abortion.Rand Paul’s opposition to abortion may not be enough to convince certain social conservatives that he warrants their support.Not even a week after the Kentucky senator and early frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination took to the stage at the Family Research Council-hosted Values Voter Summit, he has found himself at war with the group’s president over his contention that Plan B is birth control—not the abortion-inducing drug that some have made it out to be.While campaigning...

ISIS needs more trained fighters – Obama and Congress to the rescueThere was an expression I heard somewhat frequently growing up – particularly when working with my father. “Don't just stand around, do something, even if it's wrong!” I recognized this for the negative and facetious comment that it was, and filed it in the mental '86' compartment where it belonged, because I knew that screwing something up just to appear busy, would really get me in hot water with the old man. Whatever nasty, venomous edge that lurks beneath my ordinarily good nature, is from the paternal side. I...

It was Ted Cruz's party at the Values Voters Summit in Washington on Friday.The Texas Republican senator began the event with a deeply religious and emotional speech, pacing the stage and speaking with the cadence of a preacher, repeatedly rallying the crowd to its feet and jumping into an eager throng of supporters after his address. ADVERTISEMENT But Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal emerged as a surprising star of the conference with an alternately fiery and funny address to the crowd Friday evening, which brought them to their feet for a standing ovation with his closing declaration that “we are ready...

"My policy on cake," the ebullient Tory mayor of London, Boris Johnson, once remarked, "is pro having it and pro eating it." Rand Paul, the Kentucky senator and potential GOP presidential aspirant, has hopes of embracing a similar policy on running for office. Kentuckians, to their credit, aren't buying it. Paul was elected to the US Senate in 2010, and he has said clearly that he intends to run for reelection in 2016. But almost from the moment he took office, he has also shown every sign of wanting to run for president in 2016. And that poses a problem:...

We have been at war with Iraq for 24 years, starting with Operations Desert Shield and Storm in 1990. Shortly after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait that year, the propaganda machine began agitating for a US attack on Iraq. We all remember the appearance before Congress of a young Kuwaiti woman claiming that the Iraqis were ripping Kuwaiti babies from incubators. The woman turned out to be the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the US and the story was false, but it was enough to turn US opposition in favor of an attack. This month, yet another US president...

Former Congressman Ron Paul said the US knows ‘more than it is telling’ about the Malaysian aircraft that crashed in eastern Ukraine last month, killing 298 people on board and seriously damaging US-Russian relations in the process. In an effort to inject some balance of opinion, not to mention pure sanity, into the ongoing debate over what happened to Malaysian Flight MH17, Ron Paul is convinced the US government is withholding information on the catastrophe. "The US government has grown strangely quiet on the accusation that it was Russia or her allies that brought down the Malaysian airliner with a...

Former Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) accused the U.S. government of “hiding” the truth behind the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, which crashed in eastern Ukraine last month. “The U.S. government has grown strangely quiet on the accusation that it was Russia or her allies that brought down the Malaysian airliner with a Buk anti-aircraft missile,” Paul said on his news website Thursday. […] “It’s hard to believe that the U.S., with all of its spy satellites available for monitoring everything in Ukraine, that precise proof of who did what and when is not available,” the former lawmaker and GOP...

Ron Paul: Don’t Palestinians Have a Right to Defend Themselves Too? Ron Paul Institute August 5, 2014 Speaking on Voices of Liberty, RPI Chairman and Founder Ron Paul explains that, while he agrees with the often repeated in the media declaration that “Israel has a right to defend herself,” he wonders why more people in the media don’t voice support for Palestinians’ right to defend themselves too. Paul elaborates: And [Israel Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu says 'Don’t second-guess me, don’t push a peace treaty on me because I’m gonna defend this country.' I think Israel absolutely has a right to...

On CNN's Inside Politics, Politico’s Mike Allen reported on an new effort by Rand Paul to address the current view that he is allegedly an isolationist, reports Political Ticker. Allen said on the show that Rand is planning a high-profile speech at the National Defense University this fall to address critics, and attempt to reposition himself on the foreign policy spectrum. “He’s going to argue that he’s smack in the middle - the same place that George H.W. Bush was, that Reagan was, and that Ike was,” said Allen. There will be a lot of truth in Rand's attempt to...