Ok, I've been seeing quite a few diaries in the thread today applauding Tea Party Senator Rand Paul's (R. KY) talking filibuster in slowing down John Brennan, President Obama's nominee for the head of the C.I.A. Here are a few diaries like this one:
http://www.dailykos.com/...
And this one:
http://www.dailykos.com/...
And this one:
http://www.dailykos.com/...
And of course this one:
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Hell, even I gave him a little shout out in my OR-Sen diary:
http://www.dailykos.com/...
So before you start thinking, "Hey, these Libertarian Republicans like Rand Paul aren't so bad", AlterNet (which I am a little angry with for engaging in the stupid "Seth MacFarland was such a sexist/racist Oscar host" argument) did at least remind us that Rand Paul is still a huge douche bag and his motives for his filibuster must be under question:
http://www.alternet.org/...
Instead of lauding the anti-woman, anti-civil rights neo-libertarian senator, progressives would do better to ask: Why have all the Senate Democrats signed onto the Brennan nomination?
Just last week, John Kiriakou, a former CIA agent who blew the whistle on the U.S. Government’s torture program, began a two-and-half year prison sentence for having done so. Meanwhile, in his nomination hearing before the Senate, Brennan admitted that, while serving in the CIA’s number two spot, he never spoke against the agency’s practice of torture. And now, through the acquiescence of Senate Democrats, he’s to lead the agency.
And instead of applauding Rand Paul’s ostensible bravery, why are his progressive fans offering scant analysis of his motives?
It’s important to recall how Rand Paul made his way into the Senate in the first place, and who put him there, namely the neo-libertarian Tea Party-fomenting astroturf group, FreedomWorks, and the Senate Conservatives Fund led by Jim DeMint, the former senator from South Carolina who now leads the Heritage Foundation. Those two organizations backed Paul’s primary challenge to a candidate hand-picked by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Kentucky’s senior senator, as a reminder to the Republican leader that he’d better toe the Tea Party line. And he has.
In his anti-drone filibuster, which admittedly offered C-SPAN viewers an often-enlightening education on the Obama administration’s flouting of the U.S. Constitution in its pursuit of al Qaeda and the Taliban, Paul also played to his paranoid base, suggesting that the U.S. Government was targeting survivalist right-wingers as potential terrorists and might soon be launching drones against them.
As right-wing activist Lee Stranahan tweeted: “I believe what Rand Paul is doing is showing how to run for president in 2016.” - AlterNet, 3/7/13
Emphasis mine.
AlterNet is right because Paul certainly likes going on this but job's show:
I'll let you read the rest of the article and you can make up your own mind about Rand Paul. But any time anyone says a nice thing about the Keebler Elf of the Tea Party movement, I just remember what Matt Taibbi said about little Randy back in 2010:
http://www.rollingstone.com/...
Early in his campaign, Dr. Paul, the son of the uncompromising libertarian hero Ron Paul, denounced Medicare as "socialized medicine." But this spring, when confronted with the idea of reducing Medicare payments to doctors like himself — half of his patients are on Medicare — he balked. This candidate, a man ostensibly so against government power in all its forms that he wants to gut the Americans With Disabilities Act and abolish the departments of Education and Energy, was unwilling to reduce his own government compensation, for a very logical reason. "Physicians," he said, "should be allowed to make a comfortable living."
Those of us who might have expected Paul's purist followers to abandon him in droves have been disappointed; Paul is now the clear favorite to win in November. Ha, ha, you thought we actually gave a shit about spending, joke's on you. That's because the Tea Party doesn't really care about issues — it's about something deep down and psychological, something that can't be answered by political compromise or fundamental changes in policy. At root, the Tea Party is nothing more than a them-versus-us thing. They know who they are, and they know who we are ("radical leftists" is the term they prefer), and they're coming for us on Election Day, no matter what we do — and, it would seem, no matter what their own leaders like Rand Paul do. - Rolling Stone, 9/28/10
And don't forget who bank rolled Rand Paul's 2010 victory:
Suddenly, tens of thousands of Republicans who had been conspicuously silent during George Bush's gargantuan spending on behalf of defense contractors and hedge-fund gazillionaires showed up at Tea Party rallies across the nation, declaring themselves fed up with wasteful government spending. From the outset, the events were organized and financed by the conservative wing of the Republican Party, which was quietly working to co-opt the new movement and deploy it to the GOP's advantage. Taking the lead was former House majority leader Dick Armey, who as chair of a group called FreedomWorks helped coordinate Tea Party rallies across the country. A succession of Republican Party insiders and money guys make up the guts of FreedomWorks: Its key members include billionaire turd Steve Forbes and former Republican National Committee senior economist Matt Kibbe.
Prior to the Tea Party phenomenon, FreedomWorks was basically just an AstroTurfing-lobbying outfit whose earlier work included taking money from Verizon to oppose telecommunications regulation. Now the organization's sights were set much higher: In the wake of a monstrous economic crash caused by grotesque abuses in unregulated areas of the financial-services industry, FreedomWorks — which took money from companies like mortgage lender MetLife — had the opportunity to persuade millions of ordinary Americans to take up arms against, among other things, Wall Street reform.
Joining them in the fight was another group, Americans for Prosperity, which was funded in part by the billionaire David Koch, whose Koch Industries is the second-largest privately held company in America. In addition to dealing in plastics, chemicals and petroleum, Koch has direct interests in commodities trading and financial services. He also has a major stake in pushing for deregulation, as his companies have been fined multiple times by the government, including a 1999 case in which Koch Industries was held to have stolen oil from federal lands, lying about oil purchases some 24,000 times. - Rolling Stone, 9/28/10
Plus lets not forget that he is this guy's bitch:
Plus he uses Islamaphobia as a campaign issue just like the rest of his GOP colleagues:
http://www.salon.com/...
Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul has worked hard to distance himself from his party’s hawkish foreign policy, carefully cultivating an image as libertarian hero that may one day carry on the legacy — and potentially presidential ambitions — of his father, Rep. Ron Paul. He goes out of his way to criticize his party’s foreign policy, writing an Op-Ed on CNN.com last week attacking Mitt Romney’s “bellicose[ness]” in the Middle East during the debate. Paul has railed against military interventionism, vowed to cut the defense budget, called for a reduction in military bases overseas and otherwise alienated himself from the party’s powerful neoconservative wing as much as possible.
But there’s one area where Paul’s self-described libertarian freedom agenda is trumped by the ugliest type of neoconservative fear-mongering: Muslim-baiting. RandPAC, Paul’s political committee, is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars attacking three Democratic senators for voting for foreign aid to Muslim countries. Paul introduced a bill to cut off foreign aid to Egypt, Pakistan and Libya. While there are some totally valid arguments supporting his bill, instead of making them, the commercials go for the nastiest attack possible, essentially accusing Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Bill Nelson of Florida and Sherrod Brown of Ohio of siding with jihadis and terrorists over Americans.
“Instead of putting hard-working West Virginians first, you voted to send billions of taxpayer dollars to nations where they shout ‘death to America,’ kill our Ambassador and allow radical Islamists to burn our embassies,” a petition on the RandPAC website accompanying the Manchin ad reads. “As one of your constituents, I demand that you start putting the interest of American taxpayers above those of Anti-American regimes and radical jihadists overseas.” - Salon, 10/15/12
So yeah, you still feel like cheering Rand Paul? I didn't think so. It's no secret that Ran Paul would like to one day run for President and he might as well do it in 2016 because he's not that well-loved back in Kentucky:
http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/...
Paul's 43/39 approval makes him more popular than his senior colleague Mitch McConnell. Steve Beshear is the most popular of the state's politicians with a 51/34 approval rating. Despite Beshear's popularity voters in the state say they would generally prefer a Republican than a Democrat to be their next Governor, 42/39.
A hypothetical 2016 match up between Beshear and Paul would have Beshear ahead by a 46/44 margin. Paul would lead a hypothetical match up with Ashley Judd just 47/46, a little better than her 4 point deficit against McConnell on yesterday's poll. Taking a longer term view to the Judd for Senate craze, her prospects for election might be better in 2016 with Clinton on the ticket than they would be in 2014. - PPP, 12/12/12
If you want to be critical of Brennan and Obama, that's fine. i encourage that. But don't be fooled by who Rand Paul is and by his motives. Ok?
P.S. If you want to thank anyone, thank this guy for being the only Democrat to join the talking filibuster: