Free Republic

The messages from Sen. Rand Paul seem to get less conservative whenever he speaks to students on liberal college campuses, Boston Herald columnist and radio host Howie Carr says. On Friday, Paul, a Kentucky Republican who is considering a run for the GOP presidential nomination in 2016, tested his libertarian-leaning brand of politics on students at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. . . . Carr told J.D. Hayworth and John Bachman on "America's Forum" on Newsmax TV on Monday that Paul has that appeal to young voters because he tells them what they want to hear, not necessarily the...

What if Washington politics were no longer defined by partisan gridlock but instead by a cross-party alliance that forged solutions? The alliance would be unstoppable. - snip - Ralph Nader contends that such a left-right alliance is not just the stuff of imagination but is actually emerging.

Via Dan Riehl, people are going nuts over this in the Headlines thread but I don’t know why. He’s not endorsing her over some tea-party primary opponent. She has no primary opponent. He’s endorsing her over the Democrat in the race, Shenna Bellows (whose civil-libertarian cred from working at the ACLU evidently gave Paul no pause).Even Jim DeMint, who once said he’d rather have 30 principled conservatives in the Senate than a 60-seat majority of RINOs, saw fit to endorse Scott Brown on the eve of his big special election upset in 2010. If Rand can hold an extra Senate...

Paul, according to CNN, also talked about making the Republican party “bigger” and much more inclusive, saying that unless Republicans “broaden their message” to reach more people, winning future elections is going to be a bit of a problem. “You go to a Republican event and it’s all white people—not because we’re excluding anybody, but because we just haven’t done a good enough job encouraging people to come into our party.”

Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) appears to be a double-minded man on abortion.  How he can last week be the primary sponsor for a Life at Conception bill and then the following week tell CNN in an interview that there are “thousands of exceptions” is beyond me.  The Hill reports: Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said Tuesday he’s open to “thousands of exceptions” to a ban on abortion.Paul has said he believes life begins at conception, but in an interview with CNN the Republican emphasized he is also a physician who treats each case individually.“What I would say is that there are...

The nation’s attention has for the past few weeks been riveted by a standoff in Nevada between armed federal agents and the Bundys, a ranching family who believe the federal government is exceeding its authority by assessing “fees” against ranchers who graze cattle on government lands. Outrage over the government's use of armed agents to forcibly remove the Bundys’ cattle led many Americans to travel to Nevada to engage in nonviolent civil disobedience in support of the family. The protests seem to have worked, at least for now, as the government appears to have backed off from direct confrontation. Sadly,...

In 2013, freshmen senators Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) seemed like two peas in a pod. Both railed at the NSA, backed the government shutdown, opposed intervention in Syria and championed the tea party faithful. But 2014 has been a different story. Cruz has become a serious, vocal proponent of a tough foreign policy and harsh critic of President Obama’s approach to Iran and Russia. He gave serious speeches on the importance of standing up to Vladimir Putin and on the folly of expecting Iran to give away its nuclear weapons program without stringent sanctions and/or the threat...

It looks like Michigan will remain solidly in the blue column if Hillary Clinton runs for President in 2016. She leads her potential Republican opponents in the state by anywhere from 9 to 12 points: it's 46/37 over Chris Christie, 48/39 over Rand Paul, 49/38 over Jeb Bush, and 50/38 over Mike Huckabee. Republicans are split a lot of different ways when it comes to who they'd like as their nominee in 2016. 16% want Rand Paul, 15% each support Chris Christie and Mike Huckabee, 11% are for Ted Cruz, Jeb Bush is at 9%, Paul Ryan and Scott Walker...

Sen. Rand Paul claimed in 2009 that former Vice President Dick Cheney exploited the 9/11 attacks in order to lead the United States into war in Iraq to benefit military contractor Halliburton, where Cheney had been CEO before heading to Washington, a video unveiled by blog Mother Jones' writer David Corn shows. In the video unearthed of a speech given at Western Kentucky University, Paul argues that Cheney opposed the first Bush administration's plans but changed his mind over Halliburton, Corn reports. "He's being interviewed (in 1995), I think, by the American Enterprise Institute, and he says it would be...

After a horde of Republican Presidential contenders from Gov. Chris Christie to Sen. Ted Cruz descended on Las Vegas to speak in front of the Republican Jewish Coalition — and kiss the ring of PAC billionaire benefactor Sheldon Adelson — one contender’s absence was noted. Sen. Rand Paul was nowhere to be found. His positions on Israel, foreign aid, drone warfare and intervention make him unpalatable to this particular crowd. GOP donors there were vocal in their opposition to Paul’s candidacy. According to Time magazine’s Zeke Miller, “Five donors huddled with a reporter pledged to reach into their deep pockets...

There is a fierce battle brewing between three sects of a divided Republican Party. The Rand Paul libertarians and the Ted Cruz social conservatives are drumming up support for what could be a bloody competition to rule the roost of 2016. In the safe middle is the establishmentarian moderates and the elites of the Republican Party, like Chris Christie and Marco Rubio. The most watched and most important battle, however, will be the battle between the GOP's two rights – the battle between Paul and Cruz. In an interview with Vocativ, Rand Paul spoke of a Republican Party that requires...

WASHINGTON – Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said the future of the Republican Party depends on what the Republicans do to expand its appeal among Hispanic voters and show them that the GOP is not “just the party of deportation.” “I’ve been saying over and over that the Republican Party cannot win until it’s more diverse, until it looks like the rest of America,” he said. During a Tuesday symposium hosted by the Media Research Center (MRC) and the American Principles Project (APP), the Kentucky Republican and potential 2016 presidential candidate said that if the GOP wants to appeal to minority...

At the Washington Post, Jennifer Rubin this weekend highlighted a video of Rand Paul speaking in 2012 about sanctions on Iran. In it, Paul disparages the notion of use of force, and for some reason claims the United States was partly to blame for World War II! “There are times when sanctions have made it worse. I mean, there are times .. leading up to World War II we cut off trade with Japan. That probably caused Japan to react angrily. We also had a blockade on Germany after World War I, which may have encouraged them … some of...

The views in the video aren’t surprising. CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO They’re the views of Ron and Rand Paul and their intellectual milieu which believes that most wars are set up by banks. According to them, the US need not have gotten involved in WW2. “There are times when sanctions have made it worse. I mean, there are times .. leading up to World War II we cut off trade with Japan. That probably caused Japan to react angrily. We also had a blockade on Germany after World War I, which may have encouraged them … some...

Kentucky GOP Sen. Rand Paul told fellow Republicans on Tuesday that the future of their party depends on them connecting with Hispanics in a more empathetic way and on getting in front of immigration reform – a message that further signals his flirtation with a 2016 presidential run. “If we are to change people’s attitudes toward … the Republican Party, we have to show up and we have to have something to say,” Paul told a small group of conservatives gathered at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. “I hope to be part of that dialogue.” This certainly was not the...

WASHINGTON — Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul said Tuesday that Republicans need to show Hispanic voters that they are not “just the party of deportation.” During a symposium at the Newseum on conservative engagement with Hispanic media outlets, Paul also said Republicans have plenty of ideas that appeal to Latinos, but acknowledged, “We got to get beyond deportation to get to the rest of the issues.” “The bottom line is that the Hispanic community, the Latino community, is not going to hear us until we get beyond that issue. They’re not going to care whether we go to the same church...

Sen. Rand Paul has become the first Republican to assemble a network in all 50 states as a precursor to a 2016 presidential run, the latest sign that he is looking to build a more mainstream coalition than the largely ad hoc one that backed his father’s unsuccessful campaigns. Paul’s move, which comes nearly two years before the 2016 primaries, also signals an effort to win the confidence of skeptical members of the Republican establishment, many of whom doubt that his appeal will translate beyond the libertarian base that was attracted to Ron Paul, the former Texas congressman. Rand Paul’s...

Gun owners beware. Squirt gun owners, that includes you. If a Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team SUSPECTS you of crime, you may receive a late-night visit from an armed SWAT team. That’s right, an armed and militant SWAT team could trot right through your front door as you slumber this summer. No-knock warrants are increasingly used by military-style police units, like SWAT teams for drug raids. Unfortunately, SWAT teams can obtain these warrants too easily from judges and consequently do not always perform sufficient due diligence. As a result, tens of thousands of decent, law-abiding American citizens are surprised...

RUSH: Rand Paul went to Berkeley yesterday, last night. Rand Paul got a standing O from the students at the University of California-Berkeley. Do you know the issue that he hit on that they just jumped out of their seats and applauded him on was the government spying on the citizens? He came out firmly against it, highly critical of it, and they couldn't be quiet. They were just cheering him like Republicans don't get cheered on college campi. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that Rand Paul "delivered a scathing rebuke to the US intelligence community Wednesday, calling it 'drunk...

The “Ron Paul Revolution,” as it is sometimes called, is a self-described Libertarian movement that preaches individual liberty, limited government, and – above all else – personal freedoms. Such freedoms include, apparently, racial segregation at private institutions (they call this property rights) and recreational narcotics usage. Ron Paul is proud of his friendship with the late Murray Rothbard, an economist of the “Austrian” school (which dates back to Carl Menger, and was developed fully by Ludwig von Mises, both Austrian). Paul and Rothbard shared an affinity for sound money (i.e., gold) and a disdain for the Federal Reserve System, which...