Bored Liberals Trying to Ignite a Republican Civil War: Ted Cruz vs. Rand Paul vs. Bobby Jindal?

I think liberals are really getting bored.  Just today there was one article about "The Coming Rand Paul-Ted Cruz Brawl" in Slate and then another on sparring between the Rand Paul and Bobby Jindal camps in BuzzFeed.  Both take pretty huge logical leaps, especially the Slate piece.  In that article the only evidence of a coming "brawl" is that they will be both going after similar voters and then this little nugget:

Endorsements from the Kentucky senator and his congressman father, Ron Paul, were critical in a primary race where the GOP establishment lined up against Cruz and behind Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, an arch-conservative whom the Tea Party nonetheless made out to be a moderate. But Cruz didn't return the favor by endorsing the elder Paul's presidential bid.

Oooh, Ted Cruz didn't endorse Ron Paul?  Big deal, neither did Rand Paul if you remember so I doubt Rand Paul will hold that against him.  Ted Cruz and Rand Paul agree on quite a few issues and will likely work together far more than they will fight on the Senate floor (e.g. Ted Cruz did support Rand Paul's amendment to deny F-16 fighter jets and M1A1 tanks to Egypt).  I really don't see them "brawling" anytime soon.

The BuzzFeed article just has a few people "associated" with each camp talk smack about the other, mostly anonymously.  So take all that with a grain of salt.  Over beers you can get people to talk smack about anybody.  Here are some tidbits:

"[A]nd now for the rebuttal to the GOP response from 2016 Libertarian Party Nominee Rand Paul #sotu," tweeted Brad Todd a principal at On Message Inc., a Republican media firm whose clients include Jindal (and have included Paul in the past, when they made television ads for his Senate race).

Oh wow, a tweet from a guy who makes ads for Jindal and used to for Paul.  Does he even count as being in the Jindal camp?  And then there is this nugget:

"I don't see Bobby Jindal being much of a player on Rand or Marco's side of the field," said one senior Republican operative associated with Paul. "Quite frankly I see him as the 2016 version of Tim Pawlenty without the Minnesota nice."

Try to hold back.  A comparison to Tim Pawlenty? Them's fighting words, I guess.

Nate Silver: Rand Paul is Actually the Truest Conservative Among Potential 2016 Candidates

Whatever you think of Nate Silver, the resident political number cruncher at the New York Times, he does write interesting stuff.  He came out with a way to measure the conservatism of the various potential 2016 candidates and compared them to historical Republicans.  There are some problems with it, I'm not sure Reagan was really to the left of George W. Bush but the scores are so close it probably doesn't matter.  What is clear though is that Rand Paul is the most conservative by far (and obviously the most libertarian as well) of the current crop of potential candidates.  Chris Christie, on the other hand, barely even registers a conservative score at all, he's even to the left of Jon Huntsman:

There are several statistical methods that seek to rate candidates’ ideology on a left-right scale. FiveThirtyEight uses three of these methods in evaluating the ideology of Senate candidates as part of our technique for forecasting those races. The same methods can be applied to presidential candidates. 

The first of these systems, DW-Nominate, is based upon a candidate’s voting record in the Congress. The second method, developed by Adam Bonica, a Stanford University political scientist, makes inferences about a candidate’s ideology based on the groups and individuals who have contributed to his campaign. The third method, from the Web site OnTheIssues.org, works by indexing public statements made by the candidate on a variety of major policy issues. 

Not every rating system is available for every candidate: those who have never served in Congress have no DW-Nominate score, for example. And the methods sometimes disagree. The libertarian-leaning Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky is rated as being extremely conservative by DW-Nominate and by Mr. Bonica’s method, which tend to give more emphasis to a candidate’s record on economic issues. But he is rated as fairly moderate by OnTheIssues.org, which also evaluates his stances on social policy. Sarah Palin is also rated as extremely conservative by Mr. Bonica’s system, but as relatively moderate by OnTheIssues.org. (Keep in mind that before being selected as John McCain’s running mate, Ms. Palin had some history as a reform-minded governor of Alaska.) 

Nevertheless, we can usually get a reasonably good objective measurement of a candidate’s ideology by essentially taking an average of the three approaches. (Because the measures are not on the same scale, I normalize Mr. Bonica’s scores and the OnTheIssues.org scores to give them the same mean and standard deviation as DW-Nominate.) The higher the score, the more conservative the candidate. 

DW-Nominate scores normally run on a scale that goes from negative 1 for an extremely liberal candidate to positive 1 for an extremely conservative one. To make the result more legible, I have multiplied all scores by 100 — so that, for instance, a moderate Republican might have a score of 25 rather than 0.25. Mr. Rubio achieves a score of 51 by this method. 

Jonah Goldberg on Rand Paul's Advantages

An interesting post at The Corner from the excellent Jonah Goldberg:

 In America, there's an ingrained (and for the most part healthy) tendency to assume that politicians have a more ambitious agenda than the focus-grouped porridge they offer in public. 

...

Back to Rand Paul. He's obviously moderating his image — successfully. He seems reasonable, calm and thoughtful. But he leaves room for the suspicion that there's a more aggressive agenda behind the facade. But that agenda is less scary. Whereas the typical Republican often talks in a way that fuels (unwarranted) fears of theocracy and the Handmaid's Tale, there's something about the way Rand Paul talks that fuels the suspicion he'd actually be much more libertarian than he lets on. Of course, that suspicion is one reason why conservative hawks distrust him so much and leftwing doves give him so much of a pass. But when it comes to domestic policy, he gives the impression that if he actually got his hands on the levers of power he'd just leave us alone.  

Because his rise fuels a narrative the media loves — civil war on the right — Paul's libertarianism will be treated as charming and harmless for a while more. The fact that the left likes his foreign policy dovishness and the "neocons" don't also makes him a useful foil for some liberals. But you can be sure that if he got real power and influence within the party or if he were the actual GOP nominee, his charming libertarianism would instantaneously terrify a lot of people. But for now, it all works for him.

Rand Paul on CNN: Obama's Rhetoric is Divorced from Reality

The Washington Post's Dishonest Fact Checking of Rand Paul's SOTU Response

Glenn Kessler, the Washington Post's fact-checker, published an article titled "Rand Paul's Misleading Budget Cuts" in which he gave Rand Paul 3 Pinocchios.  According to their scale, 3 Pinocchios means there was a "significant factual error and/or obvious contradictions".  Having listened to and read Rand Paul's response a few times I was wondering what huge, glaring error had I missed?  It turns out the issue that Glenn Kessler had was more of a pet peeve of his rather than an actual error on the part of Rand Paul.  Kessler's problem is that Rand Paul talked about cutting the budget and then said that we should start with foreign aid:

"Where would we cut spending? Let's start with ending all foreign aid to countries that are burning our flag and chanting 'Death to America.' In addition, the president could begin by stopping selling or giving F-16s and Abrams tanks to Islamic radicals in Egypt."

...

Over ten years, that adds up to $90 billion. (Traditional congressional baseline budgeting, which assumes inflation growth, would bring the 10-year figure even higher, but Paul in his speech suggested he rejects that approach.)

So Paul, in theory, has identified about 2 percent of the $4 trillion in cuts he says is necessary.

So apparently, foreign aid just isn't a big enough bogey for Kessler, hence the three pinocchios.  Though given his response was only 15 minutes long, how much could Rand Paul actually shove into the speech and keep it interesting?  Plus, he wasn't releasing his budget, he was making a response to Obama's speech where he proposed a laundry list of new programs.  Also, Rand Paul said we should START with foreign aid, not finish with it.  Glenn Kessler even acknowledges that in Rand Paul's budget, which he will re-introduce this year, he does specify which cuts he would make, though then attacks him for not mentioning them in this short 15 minute speech:

To be fair, Paul last year unveiled a budget plan that he said would balance the budget in five years, and it included many specific program reductions. In his response to the State of the Union, Paul said he would reintroduce the plan, but oddly he mentioned none of its proposals, such as eliminating four Cabinet agencies and cutting foreign aid from its current level of about $50 billion a year to just $5 billion.

Oh yeah, that would have been great.  A Tea Party response that features getting rid of the Commerce Department, a department that 75% of Americans probably don't know exist.  That would have been really effective.  Anyway, let's check the transcript to put all of what Rand Paul said in this segment into context, he was clearly not just referring to foreign aid:

It is time Democrats admit that not every dollar spent on domestic programs is sacred. And it is time Republicans realize that military spending is not immune to waste and fraud.

Where would we cut spending; well, we could start with ending all foreign aid to countries that are burning our flag and chanting death to America.

The President could begin by stopping the F-16s and Abrams tanks being given to the radical Islamic government of Egypt.

Not only should the sequester stand, many pundits say the sequester really needs to be at least $4 trillion to avoid another downgrade of America's credit rating.

Both parties will have to agree to cut, or we will never fix our fiscal mess.

Bipartisanship is not what is missing in Washington. Common sense is.

Trillion-dollar deficits hurt us all.

...

Next month, I will propose a five-year balanced budget, a budget that last year was endorsed by taxpayer groups across the country for its boldness, and for actually solving the problem.

I will work with anyone on either side of the aisle who wants to cut spending.

But in recent years, there has been no one to work with.

The President's massive tax hikes and spending increases have caused his budgets to get ZERO votes in both houses of Congress. Not a single Democrat voted for the President's budget!

But at least he tried.

Senate Democrats have not even produced a budget in the time I have been in office, a shameful display of incompetence that illustrates their lack of seriousness.

This year, they say they will have a budget, but after just recently imposing hundreds of billions in new taxes, they now say they will include more tax hikes in their budget.

We must stand firm. We must say NO to any MORE tax hikes!

Only through lower taxes, less regulation and more freedom will the economy begin to grow again.

Our party is the party of growth, jobs and prosperity, and we will boldly lead on these issues.

Under the Obama economy, 12 million people are out of work. During the President's first term 800,000 construction workers lost their jobs and another 800,000 simply gave up on looking for work.

With my five-year budget, millions of jobs would be created by cutting the corporate income tax in half, by creating a flat personal income tax of 17%, and by cutting the regulations that are strangling American businesses.

So let's see, he says Democrats must be willing to cut domestic programs and Republicans must be willing to cut defense.  That clearly covers more than foreign aid.  He also says he favors the sequester which cuts discretionary domestic spending across the board, again, clearly more than foreign aid.  Then he talks about specific pro-growth policies such as cutting corporate taxes, introducing a flat tax and cutting regulation.  All of those pro-growth policies could cut the deficit by sparking economic growth which leads to greater tax revenues.

I'm not surprised that the Washington Post would use these dishonest tactics against Rand Paul, that's doesn't make them any less wrong though.  

Glenn Beck: I feel about Rand Paul the way I used to feel about Chris Christie

The Republican Establishment Seems to Be Making Nice with Rand Paul

I almost feel like I stepped through the looking glass.  Both Karl Rove and Jen Rubin, establishment types through and through, who 10 times out of 10 would always prefer a Mitt Romney or Chris Christie over a conservative, said positive things about Rand Paul this weekend.

Karl Rove, on Fox News Sunday, was beating his chest saying that he was the largest outside group supporting Rand Paul in his race in 2010 and that we need more Rand Paul's and less Christine O'Donnell's.  See the video here:




And then Jen Rubin actually wrote a column titled "Why Rand Paul is Formidable" just a little more than a week after she wrote that he was confused.

I guess they feel that they shouldn't dismiss him so easily.  He could be the nominee in a few years.