Rand Paul Depression comments are already drawing a flurry of criticism after the senator's speech at Howard University on Wednesday. Rand Paul gave a quickly divisive lecture about race and Republicans, and why the party of Lincoln is now complete anathema to 95% of a group of people the party sparked a war to save. The speech has already drawn criticism for deliberate amnesia of the harm Republicans have wrought upon particular demographics, driving them for perfectly legitimate reasons out of the arms of the party. The largely poor reception of Paul's speech comes in the wake of more recent successful engagements that improved the senator's popularity.
The Rand Paul Depression remarks took place Wednesday at Howard University, a D.C. university historically predominantly attended by a minority that voted 95% for Barack Obama in the latest presidential election. During Rand Paul's 52 minute lecture, the Kentucky senator primarily tried to argue that the particular minority group should vote predominantly with the Republican Party, rather than the Democratic Party with which they have been closely aligned since the 1960s.
The Rand Paul Depression argument came during a long discussion of the Republican Party's relationship with that minority group, starting with the Republican Abraham Lincoln. Senator Paul correctly explained that Lincoln and the 1860s Republican Party led the effort to abolish slavery, and championed Reconstruction and civil rights for minorities throughout the 19th century and beyond, while Southern Democrats were a deeply discriminatory and segregationist party for much of the same period. Rand Paul asked, "How did the Republican Party, the party of the great emancipator, lose the trust and faith of an entire [minority group]?" The Party received less than 5% of the votes of the group in the 2008 presidential election, and less than 7% in 2012.
That's where Rand Paul's Depression comments come in, and where they get controversial. According to the Senator, the Republican Party lost the faith and votes of the minority group during the Great Depression, when the group "languished below [majority] Americans in every measure of economic success." According to Paul, the solutions to that problem drove the minority from the party's wings:
The Democrats promised equalizing outcomes through unlimited federal assistance while Republicans offered something that seemed less tangible: the promise of equalizing opportunity through free markets... Democrats still promise unlimited federal assistance and Republicans promise free markets, low taxes and less regulations that we believe will create more jobs.
Critics have said that the Rand Paul Depression comments are ignorant, discriminatory, and wilful amnesia, accusing the minority group in question of simply taking handouts. The truth, they (correctly) allege, is that the Republican Party abandoned any strong support for civil rights in the 1960s, at the same time that Democrats embraced it. The Civil Rights Act, which ended segregation in the South, passed in a Democratic environment and drove Southern Democrats out of the party and into the Republican party permanently.
The Rand Paul Depression argument is, essentially, that the group incorrectly perceived that the Democratic Party offered it greater economic advantages than the Republicans, whose laissez-faire approach offered more actual benefits in the long run. It's an entirely economic argument, and, whether it's correct or not (it isn't), it entirely leaves out the generations of discrimination and oppression that followed the United States Civil War and the long fight for civil rights that modern Republicans largely opposed. Such an economic argument is typical for Senator Paul, who in the past has suggested only tenuous support for the landmark Civil Rights Act.
Rand Paul Depression comments come in the wake of the Senator's filibuster contra dronem, which brought a great deal of positive attention to the child of Republibertarian firebrand Ron Paul. Rand Paul may be considering a presidential run for 2016, but discriminatory and wilfully ignorant comments like these may sink his chances. At the very least, it won't help the senator pull any more votes from that particular minority group.
Seriously, the Rand worship is sickeningly stupid. I have nothing against Rand. I have plenty against sycophants who can't stomach someone simply saying "He could have said that better." And the truth is....he could have. The Civil Rights Act has nothing to do with smoking or calorie counts on menus. That was a "Sarah Palin" moment, as in an unnecessary soundbite that might bite him in the butt later. I sincerely hope it doesn't. But I'm not going to turn my brain off just to avoid any slight criticism of Rand or to avoid offending those who can't seem to take any slight criticism of Rand.
