Posted on 12/22/2014 11:23:10 AM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
De Blasio? Sharpton? Nope. The biggest blowback will be against the “reforming” Kentucky senator, because Republicans back cops, period.
After New York City Police Officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu were gunned down in a retaliatory ambush on Saturday afternoon, the collateral damage was immediate.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio relationship with the police went from horrible to horrendous. Rev. Al Sharpton’s campaign to cleanse his race-baiting past grew more difficult, and Sen. Rand Paul—who had gone out of his way to break bread with Sharpton and to criticize police militarization—may now be facing an even more difficult task as he seeks the Republican presidential nomination. Indeed, for Paul, the shooting may have turned his nascent 2016 campaign into the Paul family’s fourth quixotic presidential quest.
Even before the shootings, New York policeman were telling the Mayor not to attend their funerals. After the shooting, the police literally turned their backs on de Blasio during a press conference. New York’s Finest are feeling abandoned by City Hall. The killings will also cast a long shadow over the Democrats holding their 2016 Convention in Brooklyn (if they choose that venue) as the cops were killed just a few miles from the Barclays Center, which the Mayor has proposed as the convention site.
As for Sharpton, after leading the protests over Ferguson and the death of Eric Garner, he expressed his “outrage” over the deaths of Officers Ramos and Liu. Sharpton proclaimed that he had “stressed at every rally and march that anyone engaged in any violence is an enemy to the pursuit of justice for Eric Garner and Michael Brown.”
Sharpton’s attempt to distance himself from the bloodshed however lacks credibility. This is the same Al Sharpton who championed Tawana Brawley’s 1987 rape hoax, and who in September 1995 referred to the Jewish owner of Freddy’s Fashion Mart as a “white interloper”—just three months just before the shop was burned down and seven people were killed.
But in the latest postmortem to Bonfire of the Vanities, the biggest political loser may be Kentucky’s junior senator. The Democrats’ upstairs-downstairs coalition will absolve de Blasio and Sharpton of any wrongdoing. After all, Rachel Noerdlinger, the former chief of staff to de Blasio’s wife, was a former senior Sharpton publicist whose live-in boyfriend had an “extensive” criminal record. However, the Republican base will be far less forgiving of Paul for his criticism of police policy and his courtship of Sharpton.
For half a century, the Republican Party has been the law and order party, and in the words of Eleanor Clift, my Daily Beast colleague, the relationship between the GOP and the police has been a love story. Looking back, in 1966, Ronald Reagan defeated incumbent California Governor Pat Brown after Brown looked weak in the face of student demonstrations and disruptions at U.C. Berkeley. Then, two years later, America elected Richard Nixon as president.
Nixon’s victory was driven by the public’s revulsion toward rioting, urban unrest, and the debacle that was the 1968 Democratic Convention. “Burn Baby Burn,” a cry heard in the inner city and birthed in the 1965 Watts riots, ultimately engendered fear and loathing amongst the voting classes—not sympathy. Fast forward to 1988, and history again repeated itself.
George H.W. Bush came roaring back from a 17-point deficit and defeated Mike Dukakis, the Massachusetts governor who gave weekend furloughs to convicted felons, and boasted of being a card-carrying member of the American Civil Liberties Union. Ironically, unlike Dukakis and apparently Paul, Bill Clinton and Al Gore had each “read the memo” back in the day.
As Arkansas’s governor, Clinton presided over the execution of Ricky Ray Rector, a convicted cop killer with an IQ under 70. During the 1988 Democratic presidential primary debates, Gore took Dukakis to task for being soft on crime and his furlough policy.
Paul’s flirtation with Sharpton is not just a matter of ignoring the past. Paul’s minuet is also a matter of disregarding what Republican voters are thinking in the here and now, the here and now being December 2014. The latest NBC/Marist and Pew Polls show the Republican rank and file squarely behind the police, and rightly or wrongly embracing the proposition that police treat blacks and whites alike.
Numbers speak for themselves. According to NBC/Marist Poll, 73 percent of Republicans have a great deal of confidence in the police doing a good job in enforcing the law, seven-in-0 Republicans believe that the police treat blacks and whites equally , and two-thirds disagree with President Obama’s reaction to the Ferguson and New York City grand juries’ decisions not to indict policemen. Pew reports that “Republicans widely support the Ferguson grand jury’s decision (76 percent right vs. 12 percent wrong).”
Against this backdrop, Paul breaking bread with Sharpton may be too much for Republican primary voters to watch or stomach. Unlike Barack Obama or MSNBC, the GOP hasn’t forgotten that it was Sharpton who proclaimed that Tawana had told the truth, or that Sharpton owes more than $4 million in back taxes.
Right now, Paul lags behind Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush, and if Paul continues to buck the GOP over law-and-order his upside will remain limited. With the exception of New Hampshire, Paul has not demonstrated potential enthusiasm in the early primary states. He trails in Iowa and South Carolina.
Further, in the Super Tuesday states of Florida, Texas, and Virginia, Paul is operating at a decided disadvantage. Without a win in any of those three states Paul’s candidacy will be doomed. For Paul, the thrill of breakfast with the Reverend, may be giving way to the taste of burnt toast.
If I close my eyes I can pretend I’m shaking hands with Frederick Douglas.
The MSM realizes Paul is a phony conservative, but also that many Republicans voters will not recongnize him as a phony, so he will drain votes from any real conservatives in the primaries. I’ve noticed many times how favorable his treatment by the MSM has been for quite some time.
Of course, no favorable treatment for the “firebrand” Ted Cruz.
I think Rand Paul is dangerous because he will drain votes from real conservatives and many voters who pay little attention until near election day will not be informed about some of his whackier beliefs.
Sharpton does not deserve respect. It isn’t just now. It’s the T Brawley fraud against the police, and its the racist boycott and fire bombing of Korean businesses, including murder!
The only way Rand Paul has a chance is if he runs third party with a disgruntled populist dem. If it’s tweedle-dum vs tweedle-dee for the two political parties, an outlier ticket could get a lot of votes, perhaps a plurality in many states.
Rand looks like he just got out of bed and washed his head in the toilet.
Sharpton bumping bellies with Holder reveals the whore he is:
Man, his hair graft looks terrible in that photo.
Rand Paul's immigration speech...The Republican Party must embrace more legal immigration.[Posted on 03/19/2013 7:04:07 AM PDT by Perdogg]
Unfortunately, like many of the major debates in Washington, immigration has become a stalemate-where both sides are imprisoned by their own rhetoric or attachment to sacred cows that prevent the possibility of a balanced solution.
Immigration Reform will not occur until Conservative Republicans, like myself, become part of the solution. I am here today to begin that conversation.
Let's start that conversation by acknowledging we aren't going to deport 12 million illegal immigrants.
If you wish to work, if you wish to live and work in America, then we will find a place for you...
This is where prudence, compassion and thrift all point us toward the same goal: bringing these workers out of the shadows and into being taxpaying members of society.
Imagine 12 million people who are already here coming out of the shadows to become new taxpayers.12 million more people assimilating into society. 12 million more people being productive contributors.
Rand Paul calls on conservatives to embrace immigration reformLatinos, should be a natural constituency for the party, Paul argued, but "Republicans have pushed them away with harsh rhetoric over immigration." ...he would create a bipartisan panel to determine how many visas should be granted for workers already in the United States and those who might follow... [and the buried lead] "Imagine 12 million people who are already here coming out of the shadows to become new taxpayers...[Posted on 04/21/2013 1:52:42 PM PDT by SoConPubbie]
[but he's not in favor of amnesty, snicker, definition of is is]
Rand Paul On Shutdown: "Even Though It Appeared I Was Participating In It, It Was A Dumb Idea"I said throughout the whole battle that shutting down the government was a dumb idea. Even though it did appear as if I was participating in it, I said it was a dumb idea. And the reason I voted for it, though, is that it's a conundrum. Here's the conundrum. We have a $17 trillion debt and people at home tell me you can't give the president a blank check. We just can't keep raising the debt ceiling without conditions. So unconditionally raising the debt ceiling, nobody at home wants me to vote for that and I can't vote for that. But the conundrum is if I don't we do approach these deadlines. So there is an impasse. In 2011, though, we had this impasse and the president did negotiate. We got the sequester. If we were to extend the sequester from discretionary spending to all the entitlements we would actually fix our problem within a few years.[Posted on 11/19/2013 12:16:51 PM by Third Person]
Rand Paul: Time for GOP to soften war stance...by softening its edge on some volatile social issues and altering its image as the party always seemingly "eager to go to war... We do need to expand the party and grow the party and that does mean that we don't always all agree on every issue" ... the party needs to become more welcoming to individuals who disagree with basic Republican doctrine on emotional social issues such as gay marriage... "We're going to have to be a little hands off on some of these issues ... and get people into the party," Paul said.[Posted on 01/31/2013 5:08:50 PM PST by xzins]
Thanks 2ndDivisionVet.
Say wha'?!? LOL
Rand made my electoral decision about him easy when I saw him with Brawley Sharpton: NO.
He appears desperate to be President-will say or do anything. He is like his father.
Huh? This is a critical article from a leftist rag, the Daily Beast. This is hardly what I would call "protecting":
Right now, Paul lags behind Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush, and if Paul continues to buck the GOP over law-and-order his upside will remain limited. With the exception of New Hampshire, Paul has not demonstrated potential enthusiasm in the early primary states. He trails in Iowa and South Carolina.
More like hard-hitting political reporting. I don't usually like the Daily Beast, but I do like the way this author nails Sharpton, and in the process Paul.
Unlike Barack Obama or MSNBC, the GOP hasn’t forgotten that it was Sharpton who proclaimed that Tawana had told the truth, or that Sharpton owes more than $4 million in back taxes.
Ouch! That's gotta hurt.
Stick a fork in Paul. Two down, (Paul and Cristi).
OBVIOUSLY his nutcase dad affected him. Initially, he showed some hope. His filibuster could have propelled him to the White House, as he better-connected with a HUGE NUMBER of voters (those in their 20s, 30s, and early 40s) than the Hag could ever hope to.
But he squandered ALL OF THAT away...by supporting felon voting rights, using Democrat talking points against Voter ID, and who knows what else.
Hmm, I don’t think Paul is going to run. I think he’s pretty smart and will realize he has no chance of winning. When the Daily Beast is telling you that, it’s pretty obvious. I think he’s decided to take on a different role, in the Senate. But who knows, time will tell.
I think Christie has too big an ego not to run. And, because of how screwed up the cross voting is in the GOP primary, he might do pretty well. I still think Romney and Jeb both end up not running. In which case Cristie Creme will run for sure.
We’ll know in a few months.
If anyone here could send me even ONE article from the mainstream or leftist press that I would deem “favorable” to Ted Cruz I’d send them a restaurant gift certificate. I don’t mean some Tea Party outfit, Breitbart, some blog or the Federalist, but a real MSM news site.
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