IPFS News Link • Politics: Republican Campaigns
10 Questions for Rand Paul: Excellent interview by CNBC
• popularliberty.comIn the wake of Mitt Romney's 2012 defeat, Paul initially garnered considerable attention in the Senate. In the name of privacy, he battled the Obama administration over national security surveillance practices. In the name of fairness, he reached out to African-Americans and criticized "big government" police practices in poor communities.
Yet Paul has struggled for traction on the 2016 campaign trail. He has drawn fire from some libertarians for seeming to grow more hawkish as the threat from the Islamic State group in the Middle East loomed larger. While he vows to shake up Washington and junk the IRS code in favor of a 14.5 percent flat tax, he has watched iconoclastic candidates Donald Trump and Ben Carson, neither of whom has held elective office, seize headlines and top positions in Republican polls.
Paul sat down to discuss the campaign with me at a Washington restaurant. What follows is a condensed, edited transcript of our conversation.