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“Every Republican likes to think he or she is the next Ronald Reagan,” he wrote in an op-ed for Breitbart News, responding to an attack by Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz. “Some who say this do so for lack of their own ideas and agenda. Reagan was a great leader and President. But too often people make him into something he wasn’t in order to serve their own political purposes.”“[A]lmost all of us in the party are big fans of Ronald Reagan,” Paul told Sean Hannity on Fox News in yet another defense of his foreign policy. “I’ve always been a big fan...

Washington (CNN) - Rand Paul has done something his father never did - top the list of potential Republican presidential candidates in a national poll. According to a new CNN/ORC International survey, 16% of Republicans and independents who lean toward the GOP say they would be likely to support the senator from Kentucky for the 2016 nomination. Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the 2012 Republican vice presidential nominee, garnered 15%, with longtime Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who's considering another bid for the White House, at 11%. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a 2008 GOP presidential candidate, is the only other...

Kentucky Senator Rand Paul is warning Republicans that if they expect to be relevant in the future and grow the party they will have to soften on social issues. In an interview with vocativ.com, Paul said he had "sort of a Jeffersonian belief in unity, peace and commerce with all" and that the best way to build the GOP for the future is to include people with whom they don't agree on every issue. "I think that the Republican Party, in order to get bigger, will have to agree to disagree on social issues," Paul advised. "The Republican Party is...

Via WaPo, compare and contrast. Here’s Mitch Daniels four years ago: Beyond the debt and the deficit, in Daniels’s telling, all other issues fade to comparative insignificance. He’s an agnostic on the science of global warming but says his views don’t matter. “I don’t know if the CO2 zealots are right,” he said. “But I don’t care, because we can’t afford to do what they want to do. Unless you want to go broke, in which case the world isn’t going to be any greener. Poor nations are never green.”And then, he says, the next president, whoever he is, “would...

In an interview with Vocativ.com, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) expressed a desire for factions within the Republican Party to “agree to disagree” on hot-button social issues so that the GOP tent may expand to include more young people and alternative viewpoints. Asked whether the general consensus at last week’s Conservative Political Action Conference was that the party must butt out of social issues, Paul replied: I think that the Republican Party, in order to get bigger, will have to agree to disagree on social issues. The Republican Party is not going to give up on having quite a few people...

As the U.S. Senate took up a bill to provide financial aid to Ukraine, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, R-Texas, rose to object to an IMF bailout Majority Leader Harry Reid attached to the legislation. In the process he blasted Reid for repeatedly demonizing the billionaire Koch brothers - Reid tried to blame the Koch brothers for halting progress on the Ukraine bill. "I'm beginning to think [the Koch brothers] are a character almost out of Dr. Seuss in the majority leader's mind, they are the grinch who stole Christmas in his telling," Cruz said. Cruz accused Reid of "using his...

Ted Cruz is not in a fighting mood. The Texas senator is sitting in a booth at the Capital Grille, an upscale restaurant on Pennsylvania Avenue, about halfway between the Capitol, where Cruz works, and the White House, where many suspect heÂ’d like to end up. His jacket is off, his light blue tie is tucked behind his crisp white dress shirt as he casually picks at the salmon filet on the dinner plate in front of him and sips a glass of Pinot Noir.Cruz has spent the past several days on the receiving end of a barrage of attacks....

Ron Paul has just sided with Putin over the invasion of Ukraine. Former Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) appeared on the Fox Business Network’s The Independents on Wednesday night where he was asked for his thoughts about the worsening situation in Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula. Paul said that the United States and the West have engaged in hypocrisy and alleged that they participated in the overthrow of Viktor Yanukovich’s government. He added that Russian President Vladimir Putinhas “some law on his side” in Crimea because Russia held a lease on a naval base in the Crimean city of Sevastopol.“This whole thing that...

I read the following (italicized) from the New York Young Republican Club this afternoon on another Thread here on Free Republic. Ron Paul is proud of his friendship with the late Murray Rothbard, an economist of the “Austrian” school.... Paul and Rothbard shared an affinity for sound money (i.e., gold) and a disdain for the Federal Reserve System.... Rothbard, among conservatives, is mostly known for two things: 1) His authoring of a hate piece against Ronald Reagan, entitled “Ronald Reagan: Warmonger,” published in 1983, in which he roundly criticized Reagan’s policies for fighting the Cold War in South America (specifically...

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...

Just as the last refuge of the poltroon is patriotism, the last refuge of the GOP poltroon is comparing oneself with Reagan. WeÂ’ve seen this play on in humiliating clarity over the past several days with the behavior of freshman senator and presidential hopeful Rand Paul concerning the Russian anschluss with Crimea.In the Beginning He Was Pacifist Back when the, we must note, popularly elected government of Ukraine president flamed out in a wave of popular protests, some Republicans, notably John McCain, said that Russian President Vladimir Putin should be warned not to take advantage of the situation. Rand Paul,...

Though Karl Rove, Ronald Reagan, and Barry Goldwater weren’t in attendance at the 2014 edition of the Conservative Political Action Conference last week, the contrasting visions each had for the Republican Party were well represented. Championing Rove’s cynical realpolitik wing that believes in winning simply for winning’s sake was New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who essentially told the CPAC audience the GOP should keep doing what lost the last two presidential elections — but do it even worse. Showing he’s either out-of-touch with reality or really just a liberal, Christie even said Republicans have lost because they’ve been nominating candidates...

Jonah’s column today discusses recent comments by Senators Rand Paul and Ted Cruz about foreign policy, Ronald Reagan, and each other. (I said my piece about the topic yesterday.) Jonah points out that while Senator Paul speaks warmly of Reagan today–he even cites the “Eleventh Commandment” and warns against “splintering” the Republican party–his reaction at the time to eight years of his presidency was to join his father’s anti-Reaganite third-party campaign.I don’t think primary voters will weigh that episode heavily against Paul because it was his father’s campaign, and because people change. The more Paul talks about Reagan, though, the...

In the midst of the war of words between Senators Rand Paul (R-Ky) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas) over who best represents Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy, the late president’s son Michael Reagan has weighed in on Twitter. “Rand Paul Gets it” Reagan wrote Tuesday, Tweeting the link to Paul’s Breitbart op-ed, “Exclusive–Rand Paul: Stop Warping Reagan’s Foreign Policy.” Reagan is an author, talk host and adopted son of our 40th president.

It's on! Ostensible allies for the last couple years, Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) have commenced the battle for the unofficial title of conservative front-runner. That's no surprise, but what is remarkable is their choice of weapons: foreign policy. For the last several years, there has been a lot of overblown hype about how the GOP, particularly the party base, is becoming isolationist. So it's interesting that Cruz would seek to get to Paul's right on the issue.. . . "I'm a big fan of Rand Paul. He and I are good friends. I don't agree with...

<p>It's on! Ostensible allies for the last couple years, Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) have commenced the battle for the unofficial title of conservative front-runner. That's no surprise, but what is remarkable is their choice of weapons: foreign policy. For the last several years, there has been a lot of overblown hype about how the GOP, particularly the party base, is becoming isolationist. So it's interesting that Cruz would seek to get to Paul's right on the issue.</p>

A Tea Party split in foreign policy? The feud [1]between Kentucky Senator Rand Paul and Texas Senator Ted Cruz is about foreign policy, yes. But there is a political element to their fight as well. Both are jockeying for position in a crowded Republican presidential-candidate field, and Vladimir Putin’s aggression in Ukraine has presented the opportunity for the candidates to separate themselves from the pack.Both are invoking Reagan’s sacred memory to justify their positions, with Cruz criticizing Paul for adopting a non-interventionist stance that he says is encouraging Putin: [2] “I’m a big fan of Rand Paul. He and...

It’s on! Ostensible allies for the last couple of years, senators Ted Cruz (R., Texas) and Rand Paul (R., Ky.) have commenced the battle for the unofficial title of conservative front-runner. That’s no surprise, but what is remarkable is their choice of weapons: foreign policy. For the last several years, there has been a lot of overblown hype about how the GOP, particularly the party base, is becoming isolationist. So it’s interesting that Cruz would seek to get to Paul’s right on the issue. The first round began in earnest less than 24 hours after Paul — to no one’s...

In a Breitbart column insisting that Ronald Reagan was not as assertive as commonly believed on military and foreign policy issues, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) mentions, in passing, “I met Ronald Reagan as a teenager when my father was a Reagan delegate in 1976.” . But his father, Ron Paul, is hardly a Reaganite today. Indeed, he is now claiming that Crimea has a right to leave Ukraine and join Russia, and that U.S. sanctions against the Russian regime are “criminal.” “That’s just people looking to start a war,” Paul said. “This is criminal, it’s stealing and will just aggravate...

If Sen. Rand Paul has any hope of capturing the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, he'll have to convince the conservative base he can be trusted on foreign policy -- which is exactly why Sen. Ted Cruz is his most dangerous critic.Though they have often been allies on domestic policy, anybody paying close attention knew that there was always a big gulf on foreign policy issues between Cruz, R-Texas, and Paul, R-Ky.Whereas Cruz has a much more traditional Reaganite view of a strong role for America in the world, Paul seeks to advance his father's brand of non-interventionism, which advocates...