While Other Republicans Tiptoe, Rand Paul Openly Challenges

An insightful piece in the New York Times, especially this part:

This is something that the party's other ambitious officeholders have been slow to recognize. Since the 2012 election, a number of prominent Republicans — Eric Cantor, Bobby Jindal, Marco Rubio, and so on — have given speeches that tiptoe toward new ideas, new policies, new visions of what their party might stand for and support. But ultimately they've all stopped short of actually breaking with the policy consensus that sent Romney down to defeat.

Paul, by contrast, has actually challenged that consensus in a substantive and constructive way. And far from being excommunicated for it, he's been rewarded with greater prominence and increased conservative support.

For those with ears, let them hear.

Former Hillary Staffer: Rand Paul is the New Leader of the GOP

A nice piece from Hillary's former Press Secretary:

At least for the time being, tea party darling Sen. Rand Paul is the effective leader of the Republican Party. And that's a pretty big deal.

The GOP's shellacking in 2012 has thrust a new generation of Republicans -- including leaders like Rubio, Rep. Paul Ryan, Sen. Ted Cruz, and Govs. Bobby Jindal and Chris Christie -- into the spotlight. But it's Paul who has become the clearest voice of the new guard in the Republican Party. And he is effectively driving the entire GOP message right now.

Think about it. No one else in the GOP has been able to step into a real leadership position, no matter how hard they try. Paul Ryan? He's back in the halls of Congress trying to figure out how to repackage his failed fiscal approach. John Boehner and Eric Cantor? Congressional Republicans have an approval rating in the low teens.

John McCain and Lindsey Graham? Each day they seem less like elder statesmen and more like Statler and Waldorf from the "Muppet Show." Chris Christie? He may be the nation's most popular governor, but conservative groups find Sarah Palin and Donald Trump more compelling these days. Bob McDonnell? He's already got a conservative SuperPAC running ads against him in Iowa! Jeb Bush? His reentry to the national political dialogue this week was clumsy at best.

Paul is the only guy who appears able at this point to step into the GOP leadership void. There are two reasons why.

First, Paul has proven that he has the ability to punch his message through in a way that no one else in the Republican Party can.

He's clear. Whether or not you agree with him (and I rarely do), you know where he stands. He articulates his message more clearly than most people in Washington.

He's principled. He's more ideologically consistent than many people in Washington (though admittedly, that's not the highest of bars these days). He's willing to take on leaders of both parties to make a point.

While many senators in his party have held up nominations for petty political reasons, Paul held up John Brennan's nomination over a principled stand that attracted attention from both progressives and conservatives. And as several commentators said after the fact, it's easy to believe that he would have done the same under a Republican president.

Paul's also proven to be a master of both old and new media. Just look at this week. He had the entire traditional political press corps and mainstream media focused on him like a laser beam by utilizing one of the most old school tools available to a senator -- the filibuster. Yet he made it feel new.

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The second reason why Paul has become the party's most effective messenger is that everyone across the entire ideological spectrum -- from John McCain, Rubio and The Wall Street Journal to Majority Leader Harry Reid and Attorney General Eric Holder -- is responding to him.

Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz rushed to floor to bask in the glory of Paul's "filiblizzard." Attorney General Holder sent him a letter clarifying the administration's position on drones. Reid and Minority Leader McConnell took to the Senate floor to applaud Paul's conviction (and bladder control).

Newt: Rand Paul is a Pioneer of the Future

Rand Won!

Holder now says the President does not have the authority to kill Americans not engaged in combat on American soil with a drone.  Now the question is, why was this so hard to say?:

It has come to my attention that you have asked an additional question:  "Does the President have the authority to use a weaponized drone to kill an American not engaged in combat on American soil?"  The answer to that question is no.

How Well Did Rand Paul Do? Even Jonathan Tobin Was Impressed

For those of you who don't know, Jonathan Tobin is editor of Commentary Magazine and is a regular critic of Rand Paul's from both a neocon and a RINO perspective.  He's criticized him incessantly, and even found something to damn about Rand Paul's trip to Israel.  He also wrote critical pieces of Rand Paul while the Senator was in the midst of the filibuster itself (here and here) So I was pretty amazed when he wrote a glowing piece this morning titled "Rand Paul's Moment of Glory":

Along with millions of others who followed the filibuster throughout the day and into the night, I had to admire Paul's determination as well as the principled manner with which he conducted himself. During his long moment on our national stage, he set an example for other politicians and taught us again that there is still space in our public square for the sort of high-minded approach to public policy that we once associated with the Senate. It was no surprise that throughout the day many other Republicans, and even Democrat Ron Wyden, joined Paul on the floor giving his voice a rest (even if he could not sit down) and allowing them to share a bit of his glory. Paul probably will not succeed in getting the administration to budge on the issue of drones or stop the confirmation of John Brennan as director of the C.I.A., whose nomination Paul was filibustering. But over the course of those 13 hours he made it clear that he is no longer just a libertarian outlier with a fringe following like his extremist father. Whether you like him or not, there's no escaping the conclusion that he is a Republican star of the first magnitude who will be a first-tier contender for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016.

Paul deserves enormous credit for having the courage to pull off such a stunt in an era where real filibusters of the "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" style are anachronisms. It took audacity to seize the floor and hold it, albeit with some help from a few friends, and to make his point about drones and the Constitution the focus of the Capitol's attention. Though his real goal was not so much to derail Brennan's nomination as to use it as pretext to highlight this issue, Paul was right in the sense that it was entirely appropriate for the Senate to avoid a rush to confirmation of a candidate whose views on any number of security issues are questionable. Watching Paul's stand with admiration, I could only think how much I wished his colleagues had possessed the guts to do the same thing when Chuck Hagel's nomination as secretary of defense was up for debate. Hagel, whose qualifications and out-of-the-mainstream views made him far less suitable for high office than Brennan, truly should have been filibustered and it's a shame that no senator had the intestinal fortitude to do it then.

The point here is that no one who witnessed Rand Paul's performance will soon forget the articulate and intelligent manner with which he conducted his filibuster (there was no reading of the U.S. Constitution as in "Mr. Smith," even if Paul's ally Ted Cruz did quote inspiring passages from Shakespeare's "Henry V" and recited William Barrett Travis's last letter from the Alamo). In a sea of congressional mediocrity he stood out as someone who might have fit in nicely with the legendary giants of the Senate of an earlier era. Even those of us who have grave concerns with his approach to foreign policy and think his point about drone attacks may needlessly feed paranoia about the potential for constitutional abuses had to admire him yesterday. After this, no one should underestimate his chances of leading the Republican Party in the future.

Reason on the Rand Paul Filibuster

A great piece in Reason on the 3 takeaways from the Rand Paul filibuster:

Yesterday's 12-hours-plus filibuster led by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is among the most electrifying and insipiring events in recent political memory. The point of the filibuster - which derailed a confirmation vote on John Brennan as Barack Obama's CIA head - was to call attention to the president's insufficient answers to questions about his policy of targeted killings via drones and, one assumes, other methods.

Here are three takeaways from yesterday's epic event:

1. It shows what one man can do to call attention to a hugely important issue that nonetheless is largley ignored by the mainstream media and the political establishment.

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2. It shows the power of transpartisan thought and action. Make no mistake: Despite the presence of Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) and Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), yesterday's filibuster was a GOP-conducted orchestra. But what was most bracing and ultimately powerful thing about the filibuster was that none of the speakers exempted the Republican Party or former President George W. Bush, whose aggrandized view of executive power still roils the sleep of the Founding Fathers, from withering criticism and scrutiny. How else to explain that hard-left groups such as Code Pink were proud to #standwithrand yesterday on Twitter? The same with reliable Rand and GOP critic Eugene Robinson and many others who up until yesterday thought little of Rand Paul.

The filibuster succeeded precisely because it wasn't a cheap partisan ploy but because the substance under discussion - why won't the president of the United States, his attorney general, and his nominee to head the CIA explain their views on limits to their power? - transcends anything so banal or ephemeral as party affiliation or ideological score-settling.

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3. It ties a direct line between the abuses of power and the growth of the state.

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A year or so ago, we were debating whether the government had the right to force its citizens to engage in particular economic activity - that was the heart of the fight over the mandate to buy insurance in Obamacare. That overreach - and the fear that a government that can make you buy something can also theoretically make you eat broccoli - was at the heart of Rand Paul's opposition to the Affordable Care Act. The Supreme Court ruled that in fact, the federal government not only has the right to regulate commercial transactions that take place anywhere in these United States, it has the right to force them to take place.

And now, we're arguing over whether the president of the United States in his role as commander in chief in an ill-defined, barely articulated "global war on terror" has the right to kill U.S. citizens without presenting any sort of charges to any sort of court. In fact, it's worse than that, since the president won't even share his rationale for what he may or may not believe with the country's legislature.

By foregounding the issues of limited government, transparency, and oversight as they relate specifically to the most obvious and brazen threat to civil liberties imaginable, Rand Paul and his filibuster have also tied a direct line to a far more wide-ranging and urgently needed conversation about what sort of government we have in America - and what sort of government we should have.

Video: Rand Paul's Post-Filibuster Interview with Glenn Beck