Rand Paul: I won’t vote for spending bill that funds #Amnesty

[erowe1]

He is not the guy who questioned the Civil Rights act

I don't see anything here that's incompatible with what he said about the CRA.

 

[ThePaleoLibertarian]

Legal immigration is another thing. The PC Republican position has been "we're against illegal immigration, if they come here legally that's fine!" No, it's not. Immigration policy was changed radically in the mid 1960s. Since then there's been a huge change in the demographics of who's been allowed to come here, an ever-increasing flow of illegal immigrants due to a functionally open border and nonstop increases in net immigration.

I would love it for a GOP member to be brave enough to say that the disastrous immigration reforms enacted since 1965 should be repealed, that the demographics of who comes to this country matter and that there needs to be a moratorium on net immigration for the foreseeable future. It'll never happen because the right has allowed the left to control the dialectic and the narrative, so it would be political suicide.

 

[ThePaleoLibertarian]

I don't see anything here that's incompatible with what he said about the CRA.

That was a broader comment about who Rand has become since his election. He wouldn't dare say that he thinks the 1964 Civil Rights act went too far today. I wish he would, but it would never happen now. He might think it, but it's never something he'd say in public. When he runs for President, it's going to come up and you're going to see him distance himself from those comments faster than Usain Bolt.

 

[mosquitobite]

I can say that the sky is red, and that wouldn't make the sky red. The people who claim that he's for open borders are stupid and would never vote for him anyway. This won't make any difference to them. Rand has consistently advocated the exact opposite of open borders. He's consistently said that he doesn't support giving any type of legal status to illegal immigrants until the border is secure. So the people who claim that he supports "open borders" are irrational and illogical and should just be ignored and forgotten about.

Do you live in a red state? Because I'm with WT, I hear people say they don't like Rand because he's soft on the immigration issue.

 

[erowe1]

Steve Deace routinely has callers on the air that trash Rand on this issue, as does Deace himself.

Who?

 

[mosquitobite]

Who?

Huckabee's secret lover: https://www.facebook.com/stevedeace

 

[RandallFan]

The biggest problem I have is he is doing it because his consultants or pollsters told him to. Maybe he believed all the BS 2013 immigration polls that Bloomberg and Murdoch put out.

Also, it makes Rand look like he is being bought by big money. I don't think that is the case. I think Rand thinks it is some sort of act of political wizardry to come up with some halfass amnesty bill.

Cruz is as bad as Paul but he wasn't stupid enough to pal around with La Raza offshoots and Grover Norquist.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/13/u...round-on-immigration.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Asked about what to do with the people here illegally, however, he stressed that he had never tried to undo the goal of allowing them to stay.

“The amendment that I introduced removed the path to citizenship, but it did not change the underlying work permit from the Gang of Eight,” he said during a recent visit to El Paso. Mr. Cruz also noted that he had not called for deportation or, as Mitt Romney famously advocated, self-deportation.

Mr. Cruz said recent polling indicated that people outside Washington support some reform, including legal status without citizenship. He said he was against naturalization because it rewarded lawbreakers and was unfair to legal immigrants. It also perpetuates illegal crossings, he added.

Cruz is just as bad. I actually prefer Rand on immigration because I think Rand would get more pushback from the neocons and police state Republicans. The problem with Bush is they GOP rolled over because of him being there on 911.

 

[William Tell]

Dave Brat's win, and the Texas general election results, show that being for a secure border, and anti amnesty is popular.

It is laughable to think you will gain any votes by coming off as weak on those issues.

 

[Krugminator2]

Rand Paul has been FAR too wishy washy on the issue of amnesty and immigration as a whole. His pathetic "outreach" to minority voters has sent him spinning one fuzzy position after another. He is not the guy who questioned the Civil Rights act, politics turned him into a game player and made him increasingly inconsistent.

The position of any "conservative" worth the title should be clear: no amnesty, border security, mass deportations,repeal the 14th amendment. The idea that the state can't deport at least a huge percentage of them is ridiculous. You're telling me Eisenhower managed to deport illegals but modern America can't? It's a complete myth that deportation couldn't be done, maybe not for all 11 million, but for a lot of them.

Just because you disagree with him doesn't make him wishy washy. Immigration doesn't have an easy answer. There are issues with making sure people don't get welfare and people aren't incentivized to come here illegally in the future because of amnesty. I get that. But it sure as hell has nothing to do with the Civil Rights Act. I am not going to speculate on why you brought that up. I could guess why you brought it up but I am not going to say it. I am against the public accommodation part of the Civil Rights Act but I am in favor of making easier to immigrate here. One has nothing to do with the other.


Immigrants who work make the country better off and raise the average standard of living. That isn't just my opinion. That is something every remotely free market economist from Ludwig Von Mises to Milton Friedman on down to Larry Kudlow agrees with.

If people want to make the case that immigrants change the culture for the worse or whatever. Fine. Immigration is an issue where there can be legitimate disagreement. But I don't get why people have to impugn someone else's motives. I am solidly with Grover Norquist and libertarian economists on this issue. And isn't some sellout position. Being for a free market in labor is the libertarian position. It will also create the most economic growth in the long term all else being equal.

 

[ThePaleoLibertarian]

Just because you disagree with him doesn't make him wishy washy. Immigration doesn't have an easy answer. There are issues with making sure people don't get welfare and people aren't incentivized to come here illegally in the future because of amnesty. I get that. But it sure as hell has nothing to do with the Civil Rights Act. I am not going to speculate on why you brought that up. I could guess why you brought it up but I am not going to say it. I am against the public accommodation part of the Civil Rights Act but I am in favor of making easier to immigrate here. One has nothing to do with the other.


Immigrants who work make the country better off and raise the average standard of living. That isn't just my opinion. That is something every remotely free market economist from Ludwig Von Mises to Milton Friedman on down to Larry Kudlow agrees with.

If people want to make the case that immigrants change the culture for the worse or whatever. Fine. Immigration is an issue where there can be legitimate disagreement. But I don't get why people have to impugn someone else's motives. I am solidly with Grover Norquist and libertarian economists on this issue. And isn't some sellout position. Being for a free market in labor is the libertarian position. It will also create the most economic growth in the long term all else being equal.

I do wish you would just say what you think of me and my opinions instead of beating around the bush. Don't worry, being painted with the scarlet R doesn't send me into fits of hysterics like it does to some.

Again, the comment regarding the CRA was a broader comment about who Rand Paul's principles and who he has presented himself as since being elected. He has been on a fruitless crusade to appeal to minority voters, and it's made his once seemingly principled positions very fuzzy. If you want proof, it will soon abound when the Presidential race gets underway. See what happens when he runs for President and his opinions on the 1964 CRA comes up. I guarantee you he won't be talking about property rights, limitations of federal power and freedom of association allowing people to disassociate. I don't know what spin he'll put on it, but he spin he will.

I'm fully aware of what the doctrinaire libertarian position is on the economics of immigration. My political and social philosophy, however, goes far beyond economics. You stand with Norquist, I stand with Hoppe. In the nightmare that is American democracy, "free immigration" is tantamount to forced integration. Open borders can't coexist with a welfare state; further, it can't coexist with democracy. The benefit of slightly better economic outcome does not--in any sense-- outweigh the social and cultural decay caused by a massive influx of poor, uneducated Hispanics. It really is incredible that libertarians think that open borders is a win for the movement. All open immigration will bring is even more big government, political pandering to possible voters and a cultural shift detrimental to what liberties we have remaining in this country. Libertarians seem largely incapable of seeing what mass immigration will do to negative liberty; namely it will erode it even further.

Open borders are a function of big government; the border is unsecured only because of the massive federal government we toil under. If power was decentralized to the states, or even further to the localities and the property owners, you better believe there wouldn't be an open border down south. It is centralized state power that has allowed open illegal immigration to occur. The only way to defend open borders is to create some "right of movement" which is a positive liberty wholly opposed to propertarian conceptions of freedom. If libertarians want to preserve what little negative liberty still exists, we have to reconsider the doctrinaire approach that the movement has been peddling.

 

[William Tell]

Rand has already addressed the CRA since the Maddow interview, including this year. Its not like this has not come up yet: