Posted on 08/16/2014 3:43:17 PM PDT by Jim Robinson
Robert Patterson, a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, said Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) gave "aid and comfort to the rioters and the protestors" with his op-ed in Time against the militarization of local police forces.
Appearing on Breitbart News Saturday, Patterson said that Paul was "outdoing" President Barack Obama's "attempt to show moral equivalence between the rioters and the police" with a Time op-ed that even Al Sharpton praised.
Patterson said that it is "another illustration of out-of-touch Republicans who are looking for love in all the wrong places" by "pandering to liberal and corporate elites instead of the middle america that the party needs to rebuild the center-right majority."
Patterson, who also worked for Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett, said Paul "wants the affirmation of the elites and the media" because it is "a lot more fun to be lionized to by the New York Times and Time magazine" and "sit in corporate luxury boxes" than to understand the middle class that Nixon and Reagan understood is "decisive" in any national election.
Patterson said the New York Times and other mainstream media elites "look down on average, ordinary Americans" because they think they "are not as sophisticated as their intellectual" and foreign friends.
But Patterson noted these voters got Republicans out of the wilderness in the 1960s and can do so again. Echoing themes from Pat Buchanan's Encouraging The Greatest Comeback: How Richard Nixon Rose from Defeat to Create the New Majority, Patterson said Ronald Reagan ran on a law and order platform to become California's governor two years after Lyndon Johnson's landslide. Two years after that in 1968, Richard Nixon carried 32 states to win the White House, and Republicans saw significant gains in Congress and governorships.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
Like you I'm against militarizing the police. That's for 3rd world $hit holes.
I'm astounded how many people on this board want to see the police in military hardware.
No. But I don’t want to blame the police for the riots in Ferguson either. And I certainly do not agree with Paul that the death of Mike Brown was a race issue.
Rand Paul is trying so hard to be all things to all people for the 2016 presidental run that he keeps sticking his FEET in his mouth.
The more he talks, the less he actually stands for.
In the News/Activism forum, on a thread titled FORMER GEORGE W. BUSH SPEECHWRITER: RAND PAUL GAVE ‘AID & COMFORT’ TO RIOTERS, Jim Robinson wrote:
Look up “useful idiot” and you’ll see a picture of Rand Paul.
I agree Jim!
Rand Paul is nothing but a politician.
However, riots are spontaneous and so unpredictable so it will be some time getting the Guard on scene and organized prior to being effective.
The police can expect to be the only thing between the rioters and the public for a time.
I don’t want to see cops in tanks, with military weapons, either-that is not riot gear-that is war gear. And American citizens are not terrorists or enemy combatants, even when they are being ass***s. In the past, when this crap happened, the natguard was called-not the gestapo or the USSR equivalent. That gear and those tanks need to be given to the Border Patrol in Texas and Arizona and put to use against drug and human traffickers-not handed to a police force in a city.
Some innocent person is going to get hurt or killed in the fog of power-madness, and everyone on both sides of the argument will be past talking.
If someone had the presence of mind to keep out the rent-a-mobs and imported looters, I don’t think it would have come to this-the blame is squarely on the agitators and race hustlers like Sharpton-but that police chief doesn’t seem very assertive or effective...
Rand is going to fit awkwardly into the Republican left.
I agree that we need to demilitarize our police forces, but can’t imagine a worst context or combination of wrong-headed thinking to frame it in.
Those cops aren’t to blame-Sharpton’s rent-a-mobs and looters-probably also Sharpton’s-were there before the first news came out, knowing this was ripe to go bad, courtesy of the social media-they are to blame for this.
Living here in Southern California in 1992, I know it was highly effective in the great L.A. hullabaloo. Although we're talking about two different scenarios and probably number of rioters and looters. But no one fussed about it back then I could remember. I don't think the unrest lasted more than three days or so. Of course, the military and police were using lethal force to quell the riot.
Sorry I don't want our streets to look like Afghanistan or some other 3rd world $hit hole.
Occupied by Obama's army!
That’s another other good argument for using the National Guard—they are apolitical. Yes, governors call them up, but once military command is set up, the political situation is greatly defused since the troops are not part of the local power structure. And, quite frankly, the Army has a large percentage of minorities—not a bad thing in these situations.
His honeymoon is clearly over and he's letting his freak flag fly. Add him to the list of politicians who gave conservatives some hope, only to turn his back on us once he started to feel comfortable in Washington DC.
I am also against the militarization of the police. If the police lose control of a place, then you bring in the National Guard. You don’t suit up a bunch of yahoos in swat outfits and tell them to control a riot. You don’t act like an occupying force.
I agree with you about Rand Paul. I think he is probably a nut like his Dad, maybe not quite as bad, but he is smart enough to know how to hide it, and he is ambitious enough to come out with positions that he thinks will help him gain higher office. He is not conservative in his outlook.
Never like Ron Paul nor his son Rand Paul.
Can’t we have a fair discussion on the militarizing of the police without unfairly suggesting that those against it are in favor of criminals and against law and order?
Rand Paul is showing that he is his father;s NUT!!!
Paul was "outdoing" President Barack Obama's "attempt to show moral equivalence between the rioters and the police" with a Time op-ed that even Al Sharpton praised.
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.