Trump Has a Two-Front War On His Hands... Jeb And Now Rand Paul
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NBC reporter John Harwood sat down with Rand Paul this week and one of the topics was, of course, Donald Trump. Now, keep in mind that the most recent national poll of Republican voters-- from NBC News-- shows Trump leading the field and Paul still, statistically, a third-tier candidate. Trump is at 25% and Paul's at a pitiful 2%, trailing silly characters like Fiorina, Kasich and Huckabee. It must be so galling for Paul, who is trying to campaign on ideas, values, principles and policy solutions he truly believes in, while he sees Trump breezing along with not an honest thought in his head but with 8 times the support among deluded Republican primary voters. He seems certain that when conservatives find out about Trump what he already knows-- like his support for eminent domain to enrich himself-- they will abandon him in droves. Poor Rand! Harwood asked him what he thought the meaning of Trump's rise is and what it portends for the Republican Party.
PAUL: I think it shows you that we do live in a celebrity culture. And when a celebrity decides to run for office, particularly, there's what I would call a self-reinforcing news cycle. Everywhere you look, all day long, he's on TV. And people can say, "Well, that's because he's popular and people watch him. So TV will put him on more." I don't think it necessarily is helpful to the country, because I don't think having a reality TV star probably is going to be best for the country.
I worry very much about someone who is so self-absorbed with their own importance and their own ability to figure out problems, that it's sort of like, "Give me power." You know, if you give me power, I am so smart and I am so rich that I will fix all of America's problems. Because we've had times in the past when people got too much power, that then the power's used in sort of-- it's meant to be benevolent, but it turns out not to be so benevolent. that is the struggle of our country, and really, the struggle of nearly 1,000 years, beginning probably with the Magna Carta on, is the struggle to limit government. I don't think he's part of the movement to limit government. He's part of his own movement.
...[H]is megaphone is bigger. So he's able to attract more people to a superficial aspect of his philosophy that might appear similar. But I don't think we end up being very similar. For example, he supported President Obama's stimulus package. I think it's a terrible idea. He supported the bailing out of the banks by the government. Terrible idea.
One of the most noxious things that he supports is that he supports using eminent domain to take private property from individuals and give it to big corporations like his. That is so antithetical to everything about the conservative movement. Eventually, when that knowledge gets out that Donald Trump is a big lover of eminent domain, particularly when it enriches himself, and people would say, 'Well, you know, at first I liked the braggadocio. I liked all that. But you know what? Now that I found out that he's really a fake, or that he's not a real conservative, I'm going to rethink it.'
Labels: 2016 GOP nomination, John Harwood, Rand Paul, Trump
posted by DownWithTyranny @ 6:00 PM
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5 Comments:
Sen Buddha:
The Magna Carta was not so much a limitation of government but, rather, a power struggle between two branches of government. It had essentially nothing to do with your favorites: the individual and her/his liberty.
John Puma
Technically and contemporaneously, you are right, John. But by limiting the power of the king, and making the sonofabitch put it in writing, even though it was only at the time for the benefit of the barons, I think it paved the way to limiting absolute power.
I don't think it's cricket to claim that the Magna Carta had nothing to do with individual liberty without acknowledging the words "habeas corpus." If you don't think habeas corpus has anything to do with individual liberty, you need to go back to civics class.
To Mf Lehman:
But do you think that is what the GOP means by "limitation of government"?
By shrinking "big" government they mean NOT necessarily shrinking of expenditures but, rather, shrinking of the number of entities receiving some government payment. That is, it means removal of the general populace from the list of government benefactors while thus increasing the (already considerable) take of the fraction of 1% of the corporate predators and their supporting minions.
Whatever reference the GOP makes to true limitation of government power is verbalized only in their penchant, never challenged by media, to disguise their real intentions by openly professing the exact opposite.
Note the issues that allegedly enrage them about Obama in comparison to the atrocities of power he has engineered over which they droll in anticipation of wielding themselves. E.g.: 1) unilateral power to assassinate US citizens outside US borders 2) power to arrest & indefinitely detain prisoners on US soil 3) merger of Dept Homeland security with local law enforcement to quash "Occupy" dissenters, etc.
More on the interpretation of the Magna Carta can be found here:
1) text: http://tinyurl.com/pqnpr47
2) audio: http://tinyurl.com/pbpobav
Two versions of W. Tarpley commentary.
Note, therein, the right to wage civil war against the king in relation the ongoing saga of the GOP civill war in the House of reps.
John Puma
To Robert Naiman:
I'd hardly quibble with claims of the importance of civics class. As a matter of fact, it's essentially complete removal from 1º/2º curricula by the resurgent American fascists attests to that importance.
My exposure to formal civics was over fifty years ago, so I checked wiki re habeus corpus: "Habeas Corpus originally stems from the (1166) Assize of Clarendon, a re-issuance of rights during the reign of Henry II of England. In the 17th century the foundations for habeas corpus were "wrongly thought" to have originated in Magna Carta." http://tinyurl.com/8x5cnzs
My general point in this thread is objecting to substituting the worshipful misuse of history to hide the current/recent loss of liberties established for us in the past, by whatever documents/processes.
Re: loss of habeus corpus see "unilateral power to assassinate" and "power to arrest and indefinitely detain" (of the 2012 NDAA), above.
Paul would do much better to drop the Magna Carta lip service and continue to rail against the NDAA, and begin railing against unilateral assassination, as a clear and present steps backward to the governmental structure of the 12th and 13th centuries. It is quite irrelevant which documents "paved the way" for our current system if the crews are demolishing the roads behind us.
John Puma
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