Posted on 05/20/2010 8:50:17 PM PDT by sickoflibs
(May 20) -- Rand Paul, the new face of the tea party movement, is in hot water because of his comments about anti-discrimination laws.
The political newcomer knocked off the GOP establishment's candidate, Trey Grayson, in Kentucky's Republican Senate primary on Tuesday and called it a "mandate" for the tea party's drive to limit Washington's power.
During a victory lap of interview programs the next day, Paul was asked about his belief that the Americans With Disabilities Act gave government too much authority over private business. NPR's Robert Siegel wanted to know whether Paul felt the same way about the 1964 Civil Rights Act, as his Democratic opponent in the Senate race, Jack Conway, has claimed.
"What I've always said is, I'm opposed to institutional racism," Paul responded, adding that he would have marched with Dr. Martin Luther King if he'd been alive at the time. Although Paul said he supports nearly everything in the Civil Rights Act, he took issue with the part that outlaws discrimination by private businesses except for clubs.
Rachel Maddow pressed Paul on the question during a lengthy interview on her MSNBC program Wednesday night. She tried to get a clear answer on whether he thought the lunch counter at the Woolworth's in Greensboro, N.C. -- a flash point in the struggle for racial integration -- should have been allowed to remain segregated.
Paul said he didn't believe "any private property should discriminate" and insisted he would never patronize such a place. But he asked Maddow, "Does the owner of the restaurant own his restaurant or does the government own his restaurant?"
Paul accused Maddow of bringing up "something that really is not an issue ... sort of a red herring." But he faced the same question a month ago in an interview with the Louisville Courier-Journal's editorial board. (Click here to watch the video. Skip ahead to the one-hour mark.)
"Under your philosophy it would be OK for Dr. King to not be served at the counter at Woolworth's?" Paul was asked. He replied that he would have boycotted the store and denounced it, but added, "This is the hard part about believing in freedom."
He continued, "In a free society we will tolerate boorish people who have abhorrent behavior. But if we're civilized people, we publicly criticize that and don't belong to those groups or associate with those people."
A week later, the newspaper published an editorial saying Paul has "an unacceptable view of civil rights, saying that while the federal government can enforce integration of government jobs and facilities, private business people should be able to decide whether they want to serve black people, or gays, or any other minority group."
Because Paul has consistently expressed his personal opposition to discrimination, "there's really no wound inflicted here," argued Hot Air's Allapundit.
"His reservations about the law have to do not with the ends but with the means of federal compulsion; he wants business owners to serve everyone but clearly prefers using boycotts and local laws to pressure them. It's not a question of being pro- or anti-discrimination, in other words; it's a question of how federalism and civil rights enforcement mesh," the blogger wrote.
Trying to turn a question about racism into a philosophical discussion about federal power "may work well in the classroom, but it's a tricky position to take as a political candidate on national television," noted Susan Davis on the Wall Street Journal's Washington Wire blog.
"Rand Paul should have been better prepared to answer this question. This isn't the first time he has encountered it," said Clifton B, who blogs at Another Black Conservative. He said Paul is caught in a "Catch-22."
"If Paul says he fully supports how the feds forced the private sector to end segregation he loses libertarian street cred, but by only supporting the results of the Civil Rights Act and not the actual legislation, Paul gives the left room to paint him as a racist," Clifton B wrote.
The Atlantic's Ta-Nehisi Coates also criticized Paul for responding to Maddow "with a series of feints and dodges."
"What's most troubling about this interview is not that Paul opposes a portion of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, it's that it's clear Paul hasn't thought much about his position," Coates said. "Lacking a rigorous intellectual framework for his opposition, Paul is wobbly on defense."
Similar, if snarkier, criticism came from Gawker's Adrian Chen, who decoded Paul's remarks this way: "But it's simple: Rand Paul hates racism, but wants to allow businesses to be racist. He would definitely support a segregated Applebee's as long as it instantly went bankrupt because no one liked its racist food. He basically loves the idea of the possibility that somewhere in America someone could open up a racist business, but as soon as that business becomes a reality he hates it."
Paul issued a statement this morning that still didn't answer the lunch counter question directly but backed the current law.
"Even though this matter was settled when I was 2, and no serious people are seeking to revisit it except to score cheap political points, I unequivocally state that I will not support any efforts to repeal the Civil Rights Act of 1964," Paul declared.
Some commentators were irked not just by what Paul did or didn't say, but what he sounded like when he said it.
"What a disappointment. Rand Paul is just another politician who won't give a straight answer to a simple question," lamented Kansas City Star reader George Harris.
Even Paul's tea party supporters "won't enjoy watching him look like a slippery politician as he fails, over and over, to answer Maddow's questions directly," added Salon's Joan Walsh.
"He turned into a politician before our very eyes. This champion of the truth-telling Tea Partiers waffled and dodged like the most seasoned of pols," Michael Sean Winters charged in America magazine. He said there's no reason to doubt Paul is against discrimination, but that's not the question.
"The question is about the role of government in society and whether or not the federal government was right to insist that it be against the law to discriminate on the basis of race in private businesses that serve the public," Winters argued.
"He would not answer. His career as a non-politician politician lasted less than 24 hours."
These American hating leftist need to keep bringing up skin color...
Eventfully the entire country will be so sick of minorities using their skin as defense, an excuse to attack anyone that disagrees with them being racist, with their constant never ending playing the victim act......That they'll recoil in disgust when it's even mentioned.
Paul was interviewed today and clarified everything. He said he would have voted for the civil rights act. He said this is what happens when you go on a liberal talk show and try to discuss something logically and intelligently. What a zinger. The more I hear of Paul, the more I like. But the media is going to try and “Bork/Palin” him.
Government has been infiltrated by very controlling individuals who long forgot who they work for.
Government has caused great harm to America, our economy, and our sovereignty. It's way past time the government butt out of our freedoms.
Nope...Those days are over...Even the restrained idiots out here understand the media is a state run cabal of orchestrated propaganda.
Most of their broadcasts are twisted deceitful half truths...And most everyone knows it.
I remember years ago hearing William F. Buckley commenting on the Supreme Court School Busing decision, saying that it had crossed a line, which I happened to agree with. He added with a note of melancholy that there were those who thought it had crossed that line long ago.
... whatever happened to school busing, anyway?
I’m not sure Palin belongs alongside Bork.
Quayle? Allen?
You know I own some rental units. When they become vacant I NEVER put up a “For Rent” sign or take out an ad in the paper. I always advertise by word of mouth. I do not want someone telling me that I have to rent to them or they will sue me. I would rather the unit be vacant then forced to rent to someone I don’t want to deal with.
If liberals think such answers acceptable, why don't they accept Dr. Paul's answers?
I saw a member of the communist caucus aka black only caucus in the house complaining about him on tv today. Really sick.
You have to take the fight to the enemy.
Milk what? He is right as rain.
Racism??? The blacks are 90 or more percent commucrat no matter what. They have enslaved themselves in the welfare state and let the government become their master. They are hopelessly mired in it.
Yes, but perception is everything, and the liberal media will use this to drive a wedge with some supporters. Either way, Rand needs to get ready for anything. It’s obvious that the rats will play dirty.
How can the insane stream media be SILENT on almost every anti American thing this socialist president Obama says and does!? With the stimulus that stimulated NOTHING then obamacare, people out of work by the thousands,then all the bailouts and takeovers now open borders. The media just sets on their hands feeding the mindless followers filler news and they lap it up like the idiots they are. But as soon as a conservative like Rand Paul is elected they try to set him up by shoving a mic in his face and ask him civil rights questions? They’re destroying his credibility right away! The pack of socialist wolves in the insane stream media are trying to destroy his credibility right from the start! So that everthing he says from here on out might be suspect!
IMHO the media are far more than willing accomplices, they are more socialist than the so-called president himself!!
you don’t Talk to the ENEMY... you DESTROY THEM...
if he had used that line about logic. IN Whatshername’s FACE.. he may have gone up a step in my book..
otherwise.. the Nut doesn’t fall far from the tree.
That nut theory doesn’t wash. The Good Lord puts folks in position to be Statesmen.
Racists (People who look down on other races as inferior) that I have seen in my lifetime are people who are bitter, angry and resentful of other people in general.
Their resentments feed their deep disconnection from God and other people that is also reflected in their addiction to lust, drugs and alchohol.
White people want to point a finger at non-whites and then there are non-white people who want to blame their problems on “racism.”
Both kinds use resentment to hide their defects like addiction to alcohol, drugs, lust etc.
Quite often we have political activists and politicians trying to capitalize on the idea of “racism” like the Obama’s on Arizona’s new law.
Tell me which of the Ten Commandments says: “Thou shalt not be a racist.”
I think the answer is that racism stems from the disobedience of God’s basic laws starting with the most important Commandment about loving God and one’s neighbor.
RACISM ISN’T THE PROBLEM
SOCIALISM ISN’T THE SOLUTION
Thanks for the sermon.
Amen!
It's called "Cultural Hegemony". It's why every TV show pushes leftist ideals, why science has been politically compromised, etc. From Wikipeidia...
"To understand this, Gramsci posits a strategic distinction, between a War of Position and a War of Manoeuvre. The war of position is intellectual, a culture war in which the anti-capitalist politicians (communist leaders sponsors, socialist scholars, and ideological subversives) seek to have the dominant voice in the mass media, other mass organisations, and the schools (and actively conduct ideological subversion). Once achieved, this position will be used to increase class consciousness, teach revolutionary theory and analysis, and to inspire revolutionary organisation. On winning the intellectual war of position, communist leaders would then have the necessary political power and popular support to begin the war of manoeuvre — the armed insurrection against capitalism."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_hegemony
To understand where we are today, substitute communist for progressive and realize the strategy of cultural hegemony is so successful that there could likely be be no need for armed socialist insurrection. Indeed, when ideally implemented (i.e. like now) few even realize what is occurring.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.