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IPFS News Link • Politics: Republican Campaigns

Rand Paul in Retrospect

• Antiwar.Com - Justin Raimondo

Pragmatism in pursuit of power is no virtue

by , February 05, 2016

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We are being treated to many – all too many – prognoses of Rand Paul's presidential campaign and its untimely demise: Bonnie Kristian over at Rare.us blames the rise of ISIS, the latest foreign bogeyman to scare our laptop bombardiers into hiding under their beds: Nick Gillespie blames Donald Trump, the all-purpose piñata of the moment, but otherwise Rand did just fine. Perhaps the most thoughtful of all is Daniel McCarthy, editor of The American Conservative, who sees the problem but comes up with the wrong solution.

But we'll get to all that in a moment.

I try not to repeat myself, but when dealing with Sen. Rand Paul it seems unavoidable. Indeed, in order to diagnose the disease that ate away at the heart of what could have been the most successful libertarian – and staunchly anti-interventionist campaign – ever, I have only to quote myself, writing way back in July:

"[T]he Rand Paul that we were all hoping for – someone who would stand up to the War Party and refute their propaganda – is no more, if he ever existed in the first place. Instead of refuting the lies he's joining in the telling of them – and in doing so, he's crossed the Rubicon as far as libertarians and all those who oppose war with Iran are concerned.

"What makes a sad situation far worse is that Sen. Paul's turn toward the neocons hasn't helped him one bit: instead, it's hurt him. In the past few months his support, once in the double digits, has been cut in half. The latest PPP poll has him down to a mere 4 percent. This dramatic drop coincides precisely with his efforts to appease people who are never going to support him. His campaign's effort to 'broaden the base' has in reality marked a turning away from the base of supporters who were brought into politics and the GOP by his father. Not a very smart strategy, but then again the know-it-all 'professionals' running the campaign think they're being 'realistic.' And yet: what good is a self-described pragmatism that turns out to be not very pragmatic?"

I said essentially the same thing even earlier, all the while encouraging Sen. Paul when he was right: but you get the idea.

Sen. Paul began to believe the hype he had generated in the mainstream media, back when he was polling double digits and was effectively the frontrunner. His goose was cooked when President Obama echoed all that "most interesting politician in Washington" hyperbole – it went right to his head. He began to believe that the movement his father had created and so carefully nurtured would follow him anywhere, and that his goal was to straddle the fence between libertarianism and "movement" conservatism. But as Dan McCarthy points out so effectively, there already was a Ted Cruz, who is a much cannier politician than Rand, and all thepilgrimages to Israel and all the meetings with Bill Kristol would never get the neocons off his back. Instead of taking them on, he capitulated to them – and in this election year, weakness is a vote-killer.

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