Free Republic

Ramesh and Reason’s Nick Gillespie have been going back and forth over Rand Paul’s claim (from a number of years ago) that Jimmy Carter was a more fiscally conservative president than Ronald Reagan. Mother Jones collected a series of appearances over the years in which the Kentuckian argues that Reagan’s budget performance, compared with Carter’s, is evidence Republicans don’t really mean it when they claim the mantle of fiscal conservatism. Gillespie argues that Reagan’s deficits means he wasn’t a fiscal conservative, while Ramesh argues (and Nick seems to agree to some extent) that probably a better measure is rate of increases in spending...

Telegram: You’re going to join U.S. Sen. Susan Collins for a state party fundraiser today. She’s defended National Security Agency spying programs you oppose, and she’s also running against a Democrat, Shenna Bellows, who comes pretty close to sharing your views on that and other privacy issues. Do you support her, despite disagreement on many of those issues? Rand Paul: I wholeheartedly endorse Senator Collins for re-election. I think she’s doing a great job for Maine and for the country. ... I don’t really know, exactly, what her position is on the NSA; you’d have to ask her about that....

Paul, according to CNN, also talked about making the Republican party “bigger” and much more inclusive, saying that unless Republicans “broaden their message” to reach more people, winning future elections is going to be a bit of a problem. “You go to a Republican event and it’s all white people—not because we’re excluding anybody, but because we just haven’t done a good enough job encouraging people to come into our party.”