Tag Archives: Rand Paul

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That was some ‘apology,’ Ted

Ted “The Motor City Madman” Nugent issued the kind of so-called “apology” a lot of us figured he would.

Which is to say he didn’t apologize to the target of some amazingly hateful remarks.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/21/ted-nugent-apology_n_4832012.html?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000013

Nugent had called President Obama a “subhuman mongrel.” Today he went on a radio talk show and said he was sorry for using that terminology on the president.

But he put it this way: “I do apologize — not necessarily to the president — but on behalf of much better men than myself,” Nugent said, calling the comments “streetfighter terminology.”

I’ve been spending a little bit of time trying to parse those remarks. It seems now that he’s saying “sorry” to others who have criticized the president, only using more dignified language than that which flies out Nugent’s mouth.

So, there you have it.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., called on Nugent to apologize. Gov. Rick Perry, R-Texas, said he had “a problem” with Nugent’s remarks. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, who has enlisted Nugent to appear with him in his campaign for governor, so far hasn’t said anything about the remarks Nugent made a month ago.

And they get a non-apologetic apology.

This is the kind of fare we can expect, apparently, from The Madman.

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‘There isn’t a Republican Party’

Vice President Joe Biden occasionally gets mocked and ridiculed because he tends to say some off-the-wall things.

This link contains a curious truth about the state of a once-great Republican Party.

http://www.msnbc.com/hardball/biden-republican-party

It is that, as Biden noted, the Republican Party has morphed into perhaps three sub-parties.

If you watched President Obama’s State of the Union speech and then listened intently to the so-called “Republican response” to it, you heard three responses.

One came from a Washington state member of Congress, Cathy McMorris-Rodgers, speaking for the “mainstream” or “establishment” wing of the party; another came from a senator, Mike Lee of Utah, who spoke for the tea party wing of the GOP; then came the response from Rand Paul of Kentucky who spoke for, well, the Rand Paul wing of the Republican Party.

The budget deal that was worked out by the Senate Budget Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray, D-Wash., and House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., divided the party along two fissures.

Then this week we saw Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, force fellow Republicans to cast a vote in favor of raising the debt ceiling without strings, which he did to embarrass members of his own party — and in the process he incurred the wrath of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who’s facing a tough primary challenge from the tea party wing at home.

The vice president said, “I wish there was a Republican Party. I wish there was one person who would sit across the table from us, make a deal, make a compromise, and know when you got up from that table, it was done.”

He added, “All you had to do is look at the response to the State of the Union. What were there, three or four?”

A Texas Panhandle Republican, the late state Sen. Teel Bivins, used to lament how Republicans occasionally would “eat their young.”

Bon appetit, GOP.

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Reliving old scandal scars a familiar victim

Now that Rand Paul has dug up an old political scandal in an effort to score points in a possible pending new political campaign, it’s good to recall one of the principals in that long-ago event.

Monica Lewinsky was “that woman” with whom President Clinton said he “did not have sexual relations.”

She was a 20-something White House intern to whom the married president became attracted in the late 1990s. He fooled around with her. A special prosecutor who had been assigned to cover another story — the Whitewater real estate investment matter — stumbled upon reports of indiscretion. The president was forced to testify before a federal grand jury and then he lied under oath about what he did with the young woman.

The House of Representatives impeached him for it. The Senate tried him, but he was acquitted.

Sen. Paul may seek the Republican presidential nomination in two years and now he is suggesting that possible Democratic nominee, Hillary Rodham Clinton — the wife of the former president — isn’t trustworthy because she’s married to a “sexual predator.”

But what about Lewinsky?

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/02/monica-lewinsky-reconsidered-103513.html?hp=t1#.Uv4Hc1KYat8

She’s been leading a fairly private life since those bad ol’ days. Few of us out here have heard or seen a thing about her. I don’t even know how she’s making a living these days.

Frankly, I had hoped never to see her face again. It looks as though those hopes have been dashed now that Rand Paul has dredged that sordid story from the trash heap.

What’s more, I feel a kind of sympathy for her now that she’s about to be dragged through the media arena once again. Maybe she just wants to be left alone. Perhaps she has turned the page on that hideous chapter in her life and her infamous activities that led to the second presidential impeachment in U.S. history.

Surely she cannot welcome this kind of attention yet again. Can she?

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Hey, Sen. Paul, Bill Clinton’s not running for president

Rand Paul needs to break out his copy of the U.S. Constitution and turn to the 22nd Amendment.

It says that no person can serve more than two full terms as president of the United States. Were he to read it again — I’m sure he knows what it says — then he might be brought back to Earth in his budding campaign to become the 45th president.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/02/07/rand-paul-keeps-attacking-bill-clinton-why/

The Kentucky Republican U.S. senator keeps mentioning the 42nd president’s scandalous relationship with a White House intern in the late 1990s, which led to his impeachment by the House of Representatives. He says Democrats cannot claim the mantle of being the Party of the Woman because the president committed a terrible act of sexual harassment against that intern.

Paul also is urging those who took money raised by Clinton should give it back.

Oh, did I mention that Bill Clinton isn’t running for the presidency, that the Constitution forbids the former two-term president from seeking the office?

I also haven’t mentioned — yet — that the ex-president’s wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, is a possible candidate for the high office in 2016.

Do you get it? Sen. Paul is seeking to link Hillary Clinton to the misdeeds of her husband — even though Bill Clinton’s popularity has soared into the stratosphere in recent years because of his great work on all kinds of worldwide issues.

Rand Paul is sounding like a fool if he intends to smear the former secretary of state and ex-U.S. senator with that kind of defamatory rhetoric.

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GOP response to SOTU reflects huge split

Could there be a more telling example of the political schizophrenia afflicting the Republican Party than its response Tuesday night to the State of the Union speech?

There were three of them — four if you count the response given by U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtenin of Florida, who essentially translated one of the responses in Spanish.

You had Rep. Cathy McMorris-Rogers of Washington giving the “establishment wing” response; then you had Sen. Mike Lee of Utah delivering the tea party response; and then — and this is the strangest of all — you had Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky delivering what can best described as the Rand Paul wing response.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/multiple-gop-responses-to-state-of-the-union-are-they-a-sign-of-party-division/2014/01/28/0d1c68c0-883b-11e3-916e-e01534b1e132_story.html

What’s going on here?

Are Republicans speaking with one voice or three? I get that the tea party wing is trying to “legislate” by obstructing everything under the sun. The establishment wing that includes Speaker John Boehner wants to do certain things and wants to actually legislate, but it’s being held hostage by the tea party cabal.

And Rand Paul? Who or what in the world bestowed this guy with the gravitas to speak independently of either the establishment or tea party wings of a once-great political party?

All of this seems to suggest to me that Republicans can’t sing from the same hymnal, let alone from the same page.

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Is Bill Clinton going to run as well in 2016?

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., may be considering a run for the presidency in 2016, which is partly why he appeared today on “Meet the Press.”

As a potential GOP candidate, therefore, the conversation turned to — who else? — Hillary Rodham Clinton, a possible (if not probable) Democratic candidate for president.

Paul then dropped this little nugget: If the former secretary of state runs, the impeachment of her husband, the former president, could become an issue.

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/rand-paul-women-have-already-won

Interesting, yes?

It’s also a bit of a stretch for those of us who want to judge the former first lady, U.S. senator and chief diplomat on her own merits. Paul sees it differently, which is no surprise. He and those in his party are going to seek every possible advantage they can find — even if they make things up — against the Hillary Juggernaut that could await them in 2016.

Paul said Democrats’ assertion that they are the party that cares about women doesn’t hold true, given President Clinton’s dalliance with a young female intern that led to his impeachment and Senate trial.

“Meet the Press” host David Gregory asked: “Is it something that Hillary Clinton should be judged on if she were a candidate in 2016?” Paul’s response: “Yeah – no, I’m not saying that. This is with regard to the Clintons, and sometimes it’s hard to separate one from the other. But I would say that, with regard to his place in history, that it certainly is a discussion.”

OK, he said “no” after he said “yeah,” meaning that it is an issue.

I would beg to differ. Hillary Clinton has made her mark on U.S. history, first as a U.S. senator from New York who distinguished herself in the eight years she served in that body. Then came her unsuccessful run for the presidency in 2008 in which she gave eventual nominee Barack Obama all he could handle. Then she got the call to become secretary of state in the Obama administration, and she distinguished herself in that service.

She’s a player and a big hitter all on her own.

Whatever her husband did to warrant impeachment should have no little if any bearing on a possible second run for the presidency. She’ll have her own record to defend.

However, as NBC White House correspondent Chuck Todd noted, her task will be to run as “Hillary” not as a “Clinton.” I’m guessing Hillary is going figure it out.

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Senate needs ‘anti-bullying ordinance’?

U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., is continuing to make the high-minded case that Senate Democrats have become “bullies” and that their changing the filibuster rules to take the teeth out of Senate Republicans’ ability to have their voices heard.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2013/11/21/rand_paul_harry_reid_is_the_dictator_of_the_senate.html

If that’s the case, then perhaps Sen. Paul can declare as well that if Republicans take over the Senate next year that they’ll give back to the newly minted Democratic minority the same weapons the GOP has been denied.

Democrats this week changed the rules to make it easier to end filibusters that have blocked several judicial and other appointments made by President Obama. The rule used to require a 60-vote majority to end a filibuster; now it only takes a simple majority of 51 votes. The new rule, by the way, will still require a 60-vote majority to end filibusters of Supreme Court appointments.

Why deploy the so-called Senate “nuclear option”? Democratic Leader Harry Reid said he’d grown tired of Republicans’ efforts to stymie the president’s ability to fill key executive and judicial spots.

Republicans have complained that Democrats simply have changed the rules to suit their own political agenda. They have cited the Founding Fathers’ intent to create a “cooling environment” in the Senate that would temper a more “populist” House of Representatives. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., says the Senate now looks just like the House, that it will be driven more by partisan anger than by reasonable discourse.

Please.

If that is as Republicans say it is, and if the GOP wins control of the Senate next year, then surely they’ll restore civility, collegiality and fairness to the body, yes? They’ll no doubt want to level the playing field for Democrats to show that they, Senate Republicans, are more fair-minded than their “friends” on the other side of the aisle.

That’ll happen, right?

Do not bet a nickel on it. Revenge will be the order of the day.

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Tea party support hits the skids

This is a most interesting report: The Gallup Poll organization says 22 percent of Americans support the tea party movement, which I’ve taken to calling the “insane wing” of the Republican Party.

The Gallup survey gives the tea party its near-lowest rating since the movement hit its peak around the time of the 2010 mid-term elections.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/324771-tea-party-hits-a-low-point-

It begs the question: Why are tea party darlings in the U.S. Senate, such as Ted Cruz, R-Texas, Rand Paul, R-Ky., and Mike Lee, R-Utah, getting so much air time and print space? I think it’s because they’ve been yapping the loudest and have discovered some secret formula for getting their faces on national television.

Gallup isn’t exactly a lefty-leaning polling group. The Gallup group actually tends to lean to the right, but its findings often are cited as being authoritative.

Cruz is the latest tea party golden boy to hog the spotlight, blabbering on for 21-plus hours in an attempt to derail the Affordable Care Act in the Senate. He ended up voting with the rest of them to keep funding the ACA, which seems to suggest that his Senate floor gabfest was all for show.

I’m suspecting that showboating is beginning to wear thin among Americans who want their federal government to actually do something on their behalf.

That, of course, is anathema to the tea party wing of the Republican Party.

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Rand Paul making sense? Wow!

Someone pinch me. Throw some cold water on my face. Give me a slap. Pass the smelling salts.

I think I just read something regarding Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., that actually made sense. Paul, the tea party golden boy and possible 2016 GOP presidential candidate, said a government shutdown to defund the Affordable Care Act is a bad idea.

http://thehill.com/blogs/healthwatch/health-reform-implementation/317531-rand-paul-i-dont-think-shutting-down-the-government-is-a-good-idea

He told his pals at Fox News Sunday as much this morning.

I think I’ve just entered a parallel universe.

Paul, of course, is right about the shutdown. His views on “Obamacare” need work. He’s swallowed the argument that the Affordable Care Act is some sort of evil deed perpetrated by the federal government, even though data are showing that its initial impact on the nation actually is proving to be a net positive.

The shutdown notion being pushed by his tea party brethren, though, is what deserves attention. The idea of shutting down the government — and punishing tens of millions of Americans who depend on government to help them get through the day — is an outrageous overreach by zealous partisans who have no clue about what it all means.

I’m glad to see Sen. Paul understand the consequences of what these goofballs are proposing. At least on this issue he is joining the shrinking ranks of sensible Republicans who don’t see the government as their mortal enemy.

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We’re polling ourselves to sleep

This just in: Hillary Rodham Clinton might win Georgia’s electoral votes if the election were held today.

Got that? But here’s the kicker. The next presidential election ain’t happening until November 2016. That’s more than three years from now. As the saying goes, it might be a dozen lifetimes away from now. Heck, it might be a hundred, or a thousand lifetimes.

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/08/georgia-2016-poll-hillary-clinton-95343.html?hp=l3

It’s all kind of interesting, I suppose, to release these polls on the spot. But they matter not one little bit in the grand scheme.

HRC might not run. I’m betting she will, though, especially when she sees polls that show her putting places like Georgia in play. President Obama lost the state in 2012, but not by landslide proportions.

So much of this polling just feeds the frustration some of us out here in Flyover Country have about the national political media. They’re obsessed with the horse race aspect of these campaigns. Yes, they do cover the issues — such as what candidates say about the economy, national defense, the environment, the big stuff.

The public seems to demand so much of this horse race coverage that the media fall into the trap of reporting on all these polls even when there still are years remaining until the next election.

Enough of the polling, already.