Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said he believes that “you have to give up some of your liberty to have government,” saying he was “for some government,” BuzzFeed reports.
Said Paul: “I’m for paying some taxes. But if we tax you at 100% then you’ve got zero percent liberty. If we tax you at 50% you are half slave, half free.”
Gov. Chris Christie (R) stepped up his criticism of Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), telling MSNBC the Kentucky senator should be made to testify before Congress in the event of a future terrorist attack because his opposition to NSA data collection has made the country “weaker and more vulnerable.”
Said Christie: “He should be in hearings in front of Congress if there’s another attack, not the director of the FBI or the director of the CIA.”
“Ted Cruz and Rand Paul have created national profiles by picking fights in the U.S. Senate, and the two Republican presidential rivals will soon have a chance to engage in another, as they oppose efforts to roll back automatic spending cuts enacted as part of a 2011 budget agreement,” Bloomberg reports.
“It’s a brawl that will allow them to portray themselves as principled guardians of the public purse against a classic Washington establishment combine: Republicans who are worried about cuts to the Pentagon budget and Democrats who didn’t want spending cuts in the first place.”
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Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) “will reveal his plan to overhaul the tax code on Thursday. Expect Steve Forbes to be pleased,” the New York Times reports.
“Mr. Paul, who is hoping his small-government, libertarian-inspired approach to governing will translate into support as he seeks the Republican presidential nomination, will call for a flat tax in the midteens… That would appear to be an even lower rate than Mr. Forbes proposed in 1996 when he ran for president on a platform of lowering the rate for everyone to 17 percent. Mr. Forbes is now credited with popularizing the term ‘flat tax’ in the country’s campaign vernacular.”
“People here in town think I’m making a huge mistake. Some of them I think, secretly want there to be an attack on the United States, so they can blame it on me.”
— Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), quoted by The Hill, on his efforts to let the Patriot Act expire.
“The Rand Paul pile-on session began a few hours before sunset Sunday evening,” Politico reports.
“Behind closed doors in the Senate’s Strom Thurmond Room, Republican senators lashed out at the junior Kentucky Republican’s defiant stance to force the expiration of key sections of the PATRIOT Act, a law virtually all of them support. Indiana Sen. Dan Coats’ criticism was perhaps the most biting: He accused the senator of ‘lying’ about the matter in order to raise money for his presidential campaign, according to three people who attended the meeting.”
“The message may have gotten through to Paul except for one thing: The libertarian-minded senator skipped the hour-long meeting. That only infuriated his colleagues more.”
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) announced “that he will force the expiration of the Patriot Act’s surveillance authorities this weekend by refusing to allow any votes that would extend them beyond their June 1 sunset,” National Journal reports.
Said Paul: “I believe we must fight terrorism, and I believe we must stand strong against our enemies. But we do not need to give up who we are to defeat them. In fact, we must not. There has to be another way.”
“In a presidential campaign defined by billionaire sugar daddy donors, Rand Paul has a problem: He doesn’t seem to have one,” Politico reports.
“While his rivals cultivate wealthy backers who will pump millions of dollars into their candidacies, Paul has struggled to find a similar lifeline. It’s led to considerable frustration in his campaign, which, amid rising concerns that it will not be able to compete financially, finds itself leaning heavily on the network of small donors who powered his father’s insurgent White House bids.”
“It hasn’t been for lack of trying. In recent months, Paul has sought to woo a string of powerful Republican megadonors — from Silicon Valley executives to a Kentucky coal mogul to the billionaire Koch brothers — who, it was believed, would be philosophically aligned with his free-market views. In each case, he met disappointment.”
“ISIS exists and grew stronger because of the hawks in our party who gave arms indiscriminately, and most these arms were snatched up by ISIS.”
— Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), in an interview on Morning Joe.
“If you want to march down the street and you’re a part of the Ku Klux Klan, I’m horrified by that and I object to it, but the First Amendment is about the right to be despicable.”
— Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), quoted by The Wrap.
Dana Milbank says Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) has a problem: “He isn’t running for the Democratic nomination. And though Paul may think his Republican Party’s brand sucks, the primary voters don’t necessarily share his view that the party is too old and too white. His candidacy has so far failed to ignite — and, indeed, he seems to be fading as a force within the party.”
“The most recent national poll, by Fox News, has Paul in sixth place, with 7 percent, trailing Jeb Bush, Ben Carson, Scott Walker, Mike Huckabee and Marco Rubio. Paul averages only about half the support he had late in 2013. Paul doesn’t appear to be winning over young voters — perhaps the most important justification for his candidacy — and does not do better than other Republicans.”
Sen. Mithc McConnell (R-KY) “has studied Senate procedure firsthand over five decades, and there is not much that can leave him flummoxed, even momentarily. But here he stood — thanks to, of all people, his fellow Republican, fellow Kentuckian, close political ally and the man he has endorsed for president — Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY),” the Washington Post reports.
“With a dramatic series of procedural maneuvers, Paul had just dashed McConnell’s public pledge to extend a controversial National Security Agency surveillance program beyond a June 1 deadline before the Senate left for a week-long holiday break. The program allows the government agency to collect vast troves of call data from telephone companies as part of the fight against international terrorism. Paul sees it as a violation of individual privacy.”
Rick Klein: “Sen. Rand Paul didn’t get the same backing from his Republican colleagues than the last time he talked his way through legislative deadlines – but that’s part of the point. This was a stunt that was about his 2016 candidacy, if the campaign merchandising push and online trolling of Ted Cruz and Hillary Clinton didn’t make that clear. It shows, again, that Paul will inject a strain of national-security thinking into the GOP debates that will push his rivals in uncomfortable ways. It’s possible that his timing is off; the march of ISIS, with scenes of beheadings seared into memories, might change the tone of any discussion inside the Republican Party. But Rand standing alone will make him stand out, for better or worse.”
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) “ceded the Senate floor just before midnight Wednesday after more than 10 hours,” The Hill reports.
New York Times: “The legislation that Mr. Paul hopes to delay, the U.S.A. Freedom Act, would actually overhaul the Patriot Act — curtailing the government’s bulk collection of phone records, for example. But Mr. Paul has cast himself as the lone Republican presidential candidate who would safeguard civil liberties, and he knows that a filibuster is an effective way to spotlight the issue.”
Politico: “People in Paul’s orbit believe that the decision to take to the floor to fight the NSA — via a long, filibuster-like speech — will galvanize the libertarian base that supported his father, Ron Paul, without turning off more mainstream Republicans.”
“Right now, the Republican brand sucks. I promised Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, that I would stop saying the GOP sucks, and I will (except for this last time.)”
– Rand Paul, quoted by the Washington Post from his forthcoming book Taking a Stand: Moving Beyond Partisan Politics.
Gawker: “On the campaign trail, absolutely everything you say is fair game—which is why both parties will send trackers to record the competition’s every move. And how do you swat these camera-toting pests? For Rand Paul’s camp, the answer is apparently a drawn-out, tender loving lick.”
“Hillary Clinton’s war in Libya, I think, made it less safe… It made it a hotbed for jihadists. And, in fact, I Libya is now a jihadist wonderland.”
— Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), quoted by The Hill.
Days before Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) launched his bid for president, his campaign shelled out more than $100,000 to a domain-buying firm to purchase the domain name RandPaul.com, according to National Journal.
“The payment is an enormous sum even in the murky world of political cybersquatting… Patrick Ruffini, a veteran GOP digital strategist, said that he had never heard of a campaign paying so much for a URL, though he was not shocked.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.
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