Rand Paul's top goal is to cut federal spending

LOUISVILLE — Rand Paul sounds nothing like any major candidate for the U.S. Senate in Kentucky ever has, let alone a front-runner for the Republican nomination.

He complains as much about actions of those in his own party as he does about Democrats. He has said he doesn't need the Republican power structure to win the party's May 18 primary or the November election to replace U.S. Sen. Jim Bunning. And he rarely mentions Kentucky in stump speeches.

Instead, he sticks to his big-picture message of slashing spending, constraining federal powers and imposing term limits on members of Congress. And he brought with him into the race his own constituency of frustrated voters.

"I am seen as being pro-Tea Party movement, a part of the Tea Party movement," he told a crowd of hundreds last week at the Louisville Tea Party Freedom Rally. "This is a national referendum. If we win, it will be the biggest Tea Party victory in the country."

It also would mark quite a leap for a first-time candidate to win a U.S. Senate seat, although Paul is in no way a stranger to politics.

He is the son of longtime Texas congressman Ron Paul, whose 2008 bid for the Republican presidential nomination helped stir attention and concern about the national debt that became the foundation of the Tea Party movement.

"In my area, the Rand Paul message is the one that people want to hear coming from people running for office this year: We've got to shrink government and cut spending," said state Rep. Jim DeCesare, R-Bowling Green. De Cesare said he isn't endorsing in the primary because of his friendships with Paul and his rival, Trey Grayson, the secretary of state.

Paul's brand and frequent appearances in the past year on national news networks have helped him tap a campaign donor base from around the country on the way to raising more than $2.4 million.

Grayson has raised a similar amount, and both have used their coffers to take televised slugs at the other.

Grayson has tried to portray Paul as a kooky candidate with "strange ideas," especially on foreign policy issues, while Paul has sought to paint Grayson as the tool of political insiders ill-equipped to reform federal spending.

Randal Howard Paul, the third of five children, went by Randy until shortening it to Rand when he moved to Kentucky in the early 1990s, his father said.

At age 13, Rand accompanied his father, then in his first-term in Congress, to the 1976 Republican National Convention where Ron Paul was among four congressmen to back Ronald Reagan over Gerald Ford.

Rand Paul said watching his dad do that taught him one of his first political lessons that has guided him since: "The principles that you stand for are more important than gaining power."

"By going against the establishment, he chose a much more difficult path," he said.

Like his older brother, Ronnie, Rand Paul swam competitively in high school and later at Baylor University. He then followed in the footsteps of his father, who is also a doctor, by attending Duke University School of Medicine.

It was during his general surgery internship in Atlanta that he met Russellville native Kelley Ashby, who was working for Sprint at the time. After they married, they moved to Bowling Green, where Paul launched his ophthalmology practice.

He was quickly drawn into Kentucky politics. Within a year of Paul's arrival, the state legislature passed a health-insurance bill that imposed a provider tax on doctors.

"It's like, well how did I get so special that there was a special tax for me? ... How can that be constitutional?" Paul said. The legislature later repealed the bill.

Still, it prompted Paul to found the Kentucky Taxpayers Union, an advocacy group that circulated a no-tax pledge to candidates and awarded lawmakers who opposed taxes.

Paul said the group helped Brett Guthrie, now a Republican congressman from Bowling Green, win his first state Senate race in 1998 by 130 votes. "We put several thousand dollars worth of ads on saying that his opponent wouldn't take the taxpayer pledge, and he won a very close election," he said.

Well Rand is not his Dad. I didn’t support his Dad but given the weak swill the Gop wants to foist on us in this environment where conservatives are primed to win makes even Rands father look more apealing. A Paul Palin ticket now that would send the political world and the media into fits. Lol
personally I’m just tired. Look at Illinois Brady the conservative candidate for Gov is trounching the Dem Kirk is doing well now because the Dem is a corrupt dirt bag but we didn’t have to put a liberal Republican in that race but the establishment did anyway. Why? I understand going for a Scott Brown who is a liitle left of center but still fairly conservative but we are seeing retreds and Republican failures like Tom Campbell being forced on us. Do we really want the finace director of California the state with the worst fiscal record in the senate? Yeah but we keep hearing that he can win much like we heard with Rubio and Charlie Crist looks like Rush Limbaugh compared to Campbell or Kirk. We conservatives need to stop playing the dupe. Toomey and Rubio have proven that the GOP leadership are wrong in their approach and if we allow them to screw up conservative opportunities this election year then we deserve to lose.

Endorsing Rand Paul was the best thing that Sarah Palin has ever done.

Rand Paul also has the endorsements of Jim Bunning, Steve Forbes, The Right to Life Organization, The Gunowners Association, Republican Liberty Caucus, etc.

But Grayson just acquired Rudy Giuliani's endorsement.

Enough said.

Exactly. I’m convinced that those at the top in the GOP don’t really want to cut government. There are plenty in leadership who just want back in power. Maybe get rid of some of Obama’s mess but as far as really ambitious waste cutting, cutting federal agencies etc they don’t really want any part of it. They want to play the hero without every getting a scratch or messing up their manicured nails and well pressed suits. They consistently try to tell us how conservatives can’t win in the NE or the West Coast or in this or that state when what is more often the case is they don’t want conservatives to win. They want malleable persuadable good ole boys who will compromise principle for the promise of power. They don’t believe that the people are the king makers.

They don’t believe that the people are the king makers.

Well I sincerely hope and pray that this next election teaches them otherwise!

Of course the good ole boys don't want to cut the size of government. It cramps their lifestyle and minimizes their power. What g-o-b politician would ever want to do something like that to themselves? Government and the g-o-b's will never put themselves on "a diet" voluntarily. We will have to starve them back down to size -- starve them of votes, starve them of political contributions, starve them of taxes and make them start running around getting lean again, in order for them to get any "food" (votes) at all from us. Meanwhile, we start electing lean, mean machines like Rand as role models for them to follow.

Then and only then will the g-o-b's wake up, get off the sofa and start working for us again, instead of just using us to work for them.

I'll applaud that sentiment. How and where?

Rand Paul wants to eliminate the Federal Departments of Education, Energy and Commerce.

That's something like: $64 Billion at Education, $26 Billion at Energy, and $22 Billion at Commerce. $112 Billion or thereabouts; and that's just regular budgeting, not counting tens of billions more in supplemental funding being sluiced through these Departments from the Stimulus Act funds.

Proposing $112 Billion in cuts from the regular budget, as his opening salvo, is not really a bad start.

Rand Paul wants to eliminate the Federal Departments of Education, Energy and Commerce.

In other words he's not serious. His plan, even if it was approved, would reduce the deficit by about 7%. Unless he talks about tackling entitlements then he's no different from any other politician who says they'll slash the size of government in the hopes that the voters are dumb enough to believe them.

Are you daft?

A reduction of $112 Billion, or roughly 4% cut, in total Federal outlays, would represent the largest absolute or percentage cut in the Federal Budget in over 50 years.

And that's just the savings from the Departments he would eliminate; we haven't even discussed the savings from Departments which he would vote to simply reduce.

But even just looking at the proposed Department eliminations, in saying "In other words he's not serious", you clearly have no idea what you're talking about. Fact is, even a 4% cut in the Federal Budget would be BY FAR the largest Fiscal Conservative victory against Federal Spending in the last half-century.

Read a history book, for once in your life. Sheesh.

A reduction of $112 Billion, or roughly 4% cut, in total Federal outlays, would represent the largest absolute or percentage cut in the Federal Budget in over 50 years.

And even if enacted, something we both know would never happen, is absolutely meaningless in terms of the problem at hand. A $112 billion cut from a $1.6 trillion deficit is not even a good first start. It is sticking your finger in a hole the size of a pencil while the water pours in from the garage door-sized hole two feet away. It's a sound bite, nothing more and nothing less. It totally ignores the real problem while proposing a feel-good patch. If Rand Paul is serious about addressing the fiscal mess that is Washington then he had better come up with plans to rein in entitlements. Until then he's no more a part of the solution than any other bonehead in Congress.

And that's just the savings from the Departments he would eliminate; we haven't even discussed the savings from Departments which he would vote to simply reduce.

You could totally defund every single discretionary program the government has except for Defense, Homeland Security, and Veterans Affairs, wipe out every agency and department from Agriculture thru the National Zoo and you would still have a budget deficit of a triliion dollars. We're past the point for sound-bite solutions. We need Senators who will tackle the real problems.

We're past the point of needing sound-bite Non-Sequiturs. Care to name any other Senators proposing the wholesale elimination of 3 Federal Departments?

Any 3. Name the Senators.

Rand Paul has been endorsed by the Gun Owners of America, Northern KY Right to Life, Concerned Women for America PAC, Freedom Works, The National Right to Work Committee PAC, The Republican Liberty Caucus, Sarah Palin, Steve Forbes, and now, Sen. Bunning. Sen. Bunning, BTW, is the one who refused to vote for one of the unemployment extensions because it violated Senate rules by not being funded. Check out Sen. Bunning’s ACA rating.

Rand Paul’s opponent supported Bill Clinton, converted to Rep. as KY became more conservative, and supported Democrats in Northern KY congressional races. Even more so than elsewhere, there are no KY conservative Democrats.

As in every single thread that mentions Rand Paul’s candidacy, illiterate idiots start off on rants about Ron Paul as soon as they see the last name. My sons don’t believe exactly as I do, either. While Pres. Reagan said that, to paraphrase, that we can get along just fine as long as we agree 75% of the time, almost any of you would agree with Rand Paul on much more than that. The RINO establishment is going all out for Paul’s opponent, as are lobbies that work for recipients of the bail outs, particularly AIG.

I am not a Rand Paul worker and not part of the campaign, but I am going to send him what I can afford, and unlike some of you, I have done the homework that I base my opinions on.

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