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By Salena Zito - March 1, 2015
WASHINGTON — Rand Paul is not who you might think he is.
The libertarian viewpoints of the junior U.S. senator from Kentucky put him at odds with Republican Party traditionalists. Young people like that Paul is “enough of an isolationist and cosmopolite to distinguish himself from George W. Bush, and his views on economics also distinguish him from Barack Obama,” said Curt Nichols, political scientist and Kinder Research Fellow at the University of Missouri.
In short, he said, Paul is “the anti-anti-anti-candidate.”
Other potential contenders for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination might be strong nationalists when it comes to foreign affairs, or staunch social conservatives, and some hold both ideals, Nichols said. They're “more populist in their orientation,” whereas Paul “is better described as being popular.”
Paul, 52, who was born in Pittsburgh, for months has honed his candor as if preparing to campaign beyond re-election to the Senate. He has spoken out on a variety of topics, including his opposition to the Patriot Act; whether vaccines can cause disorders in children; who is entitled to collect Social Security disability checks; and his belief that voters won't forgive former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the 2012 terror attack on the U.S. Embassy in Benghazi that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.
Paul's speech Friday to the Conservative Political Action Conference, emphasizing a return to America's founding principles, was designed to pump up CPAC's young activists and trump potential rivals.
“There comes a time, in the history of nations, when fear and forgetfulness cause a nation to hesitate, to waiver, and perhaps even to succumb,” he said. “When that time comes, those who love liberty must rise to the occasion. Will you? Will you, lovers of liberty, rise to the occasion?”
In a recent interview with the Tribune-Review, he made it clear that his sell to voters is not the traditional elevator pitch by politicians.
Asked why he might want to be president, a job that does not look like fun, Paul deadpanned: “Do you have any good advice for me?”
Then he turned serious, citing debt as one of the country's biggest problems: “If I run for president, it is for the same reason that I ran for the Senate — because I am worried about the direction of the country.”
The debt, he said, grows by $1 million a minute, and it appears no one in Congress “has the wherewithal to actually cut spending, reduce the size of government and really to get our economy growing.”
The White House hopeful plans an official announcement in late March or early April, if he clears a Kentucky law barring candidates from seeking two offices at once.
PERMISSION TO RUN
On Saturday, Paul will make his case to the Republican Party of Kentucky that it could caucus to pick a presidential nominee before the May 2016 primary so that he could run for his Senate seat without technically being on the ballot twice.
That's not a simple shift for the party, said Geoffrey Skelley, a political analyst at the University of Virginia Center for Politics.
“Its 300-member board has to approve the scheduling and methodology change, and whereas the state pays for the primary voting process, the state GOP would have to pay for the caucus and figure out the logistics,” Skelley said.
He said Paul has other options, such as challenging the state law in court, where he could argue that a U.S. Supreme Court decision on term limits held that states cannot impose candidate qualifications beyond those in the Constitution.
A physician like his father, Ron Paul — the former Republican congressman from Texas and three-time unsuccessful presidential candidate — Rand Paul knows that raising money is not all that's necessary to support a run for president.
It's important to build a professional staff, cultivate a network and visit the early caucus and primary states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.
He has visited Iowa, the first contest state, “mucho plenty,” said political science professor Steffen Schmidt.
“He was at a recent Iowa State University basketball game and got a good reception,” said Schmidt, who teaches at the university.
In New Hampshire, Republican strategist Dave Carney said he believes Paul was the first potential candidate to hire experienced campaign leadership and has done things that can pay off down the road, such as donating to the campaigns of key New Hampshire candidates in November.
“He has laid the foundation for a robust ground game here … and has worked New Hampshire hard, or harder than anyone on our side to date,” Carney said.
South Carolina could be Paul's hardest sell among the first three big races, said Chip Felkel, a GOP strategist in Greenville.
Paul's isolationism “will find him few ears in a state with a long history of military service and thousands of veterans who disagree with his views,” Felkel said.
Though Paul has visited numerous times, he needs to better define himself to voters, Felkel said: “He seems in a bit of political purgatory, in terms of who he is, what he stands for and how he wants to be perceived, and I think S.C. voters sense that.”
CHAMPION FOR FAIRNESS
Four criminal justice-related bills that Paul introduced in late January — dealing with sentencing reform, voting rights for felons and civil forfeiture — are atypical for a conservative about to begin a campaign. But they are issues about which he is passionate, he told the Trib.
“It is important that everybody believes that our justice system is just — whether you are white, black, brown, rich or poor — that all people are treated the same,” he said.
“Twenty years ago, we had 300,000 people in prison in the United States. Now we have 2½ million people in jails. If you look at the percentages, three out of four people for nonviolent drug crimes are black or brown, but if you survey people who are using illegal drugs ... it is really way more white people are using drugs than black people.”
The system needs to be reformed, he said, because “people who are poor, or who have less representation, and people who live in communities that have more police activity get arrested more often.
“... I don't say that there is any purposeful racism, but there has been an inadvertent racial outcome to it.”
Statistics show 58 percent of inmates in state and federal prisons in 2012 were black or Hispanic and 33 percent were white, according to The Sentencing Project, a Washington-based nonprofit organization. The 2.2 million people incarcerated represented a 500 percent increase over the 40 years prior, the group's website shows.
D.C. DICONNECT
Though many Americans distrust government — “they do not feel like government is treating them fairly” — poor people especially “feel that they are not treated correctly,” Paul contends.
He should know: Census data show Kentucky's poverty rate in 2013 was 18.8 percent, higher than the national level of 15.4 percent.
At home in Kentucky, or when traveling outside the bubble of Washington, Paul finds striking differences between the thinking of average Americans and their elected officials.
“For example, if you asked people anywhere in America whether or not we should send money to countries that hate us, burn our flag, persecute Christians or put Christians in jail for interfaith marriage or blasphemy, not one American will say we should do that,” he said.
“But I had a vote in committee up here, where I introduced an amendment that read, ‘Any country that puts to death Christians by law or imprisons them for life for those things shouldn't get any of our money,' and it got only two votes.
“So really, what happens up here is not only disconnected from the rest of the country, it is completely the opposite of what would be common sense.”
BLACK AND YELLOW
Born in Pittsburgh in 1963, U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., says his first childhood memory was visiting his grandparents in Dormont and thinking that they lived in the Land of Oz “because of all of the yellow brick roads.”
“My other favorite thing was the giant swimming pool there ... 100 yards long, with the slide located in the middle of the pool,” he recalled.
The borough pool remains the largest outdoor pool in Western Pennsylvania.
Paul grew up a Pittsburgh sports fan in the 1970s era that produced legendary Steelers and Pirates. His memorabilia collection includes autographed photographs and baseball cards of Roberto Clemente, Willie Stargell and Al Oliver, obtained through “my granddad, (who) knew someone who worked at the Pirates.”
Being a Steelers fan did not make Paul popular in Texas, where the family moved in 1968. Hall of Fame quarterback Roger Staubach, who guided the Dallas Cowboys to two Super Bowl wins, could not do so against the Pittsburgh Steelers in Super Bowl X (1976) and Super Bowl XIII (1979).
Salena Zito is a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review editorial page columnist. E-mail her at [email protected]
By Salena Zito - March 1, 2015
WASHINGTON — Rand Paul is not who you might think he is.
The libertarian viewpoints of the junior U.S. senator from Kentucky put him at odds with Republican Party traditionalists. Young people like that Paul is “enough of an isolationist and cosmopolite to distinguish himself from George W. Bush, and his views on economics also distinguish him from Barack Obama,” said Curt Nichols, political scientist and Kinder Research Fellow at the University of Missouri.
In short, he said, Paul is “the anti-anti-anti-candidate.”
Other potential contenders for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination might be strong nationalists when it comes to foreign affairs, or staunch social conservatives, and some hold both ideals, Nichols said. They're “more populist in their orientation,” whereas Paul “is better described as being popular.”
Paul, 52, who was born in Pittsburgh, for months has honed his candor as if preparing to campaign beyond re-election to the Senate. He has spoken out on a variety of topics, including his opposition to the Patriot Act; whether vaccines can cause disorders in children; who is entitled to collect Social Security disability checks; and his belief that voters won't forgive former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the 2012 terror attack on the U.S. Embassy in Benghazi that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.
Paul's speech Friday to the Conservative Political Action Conference, emphasizing a return to America's founding principles, was designed to pump up CPAC's young activists and trump potential rivals.
“There comes a time, in the history of nations, when fear and forgetfulness cause a nation to hesitate, to waiver, and perhaps even to succumb,” he said. “When that time comes, those who love liberty must rise to the occasion. Will you? Will you, lovers of liberty, rise to the occasion?”
In a recent interview with the Tribune-Review, he made it clear that his sell to voters is not the traditional elevator pitch by politicians.
Asked why he might want to be president, a job that does not look like fun, Paul deadpanned: “Do you have any good advice for me?”
Then he turned serious, citing debt as one of the country's biggest problems: “If I run for president, it is for the same reason that I ran for the Senate — because I am worried about the direction of the country.”
The debt, he said, grows by $1 million a minute, and it appears no one in Congress “has the wherewithal to actually cut spending, reduce the size of government and really to get our economy growing.”
The White House hopeful plans an official announcement in late March or early April, if he clears a Kentucky law barring candidates from seeking two offices at once.
PERMISSION TO RUN
On Saturday, Paul will make his case to the Republican Party of Kentucky that it could caucus to pick a presidential nominee before the May 2016 primary so that he could run for his Senate seat without technically being on the ballot twice.
That's not a simple shift for the party, said Geoffrey Skelley, a political analyst at the University of Virginia Center for Politics.
“Its 300-member board has to approve the scheduling and methodology change, and whereas the state pays for the primary voting process, the state GOP would have to pay for the caucus and figure out the logistics,” Skelley said.
He said Paul has other options, such as challenging the state law in court, where he could argue that a U.S. Supreme Court decision on term limits held that states cannot impose candidate qualifications beyond those in the Constitution.
A physician like his father, Ron Paul — the former Republican congressman from Texas and three-time unsuccessful presidential candidate — Rand Paul knows that raising money is not all that's necessary to support a run for president.
It's important to build a professional staff, cultivate a network and visit the early caucus and primary states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.
He has visited Iowa, the first contest state, “mucho plenty,” said political science professor Steffen Schmidt.
“He was at a recent Iowa State University basketball game and got a good reception,” said Schmidt, who teaches at the university.
In New Hampshire, Republican strategist Dave Carney said he believes Paul was the first potential candidate to hire experienced campaign leadership and has done things that can pay off down the road, such as donating to the campaigns of key New Hampshire candidates in November.
“He has laid the foundation for a robust ground game here … and has worked New Hampshire hard, or harder than anyone on our side to date,” Carney said.
South Carolina could be Paul's hardest sell among the first three big races, said Chip Felkel, a GOP strategist in Greenville.
Paul's isolationism “will find him few ears in a state with a long history of military service and thousands of veterans who disagree with his views,” Felkel said.
Though Paul has visited numerous times, he needs to better define himself to voters, Felkel said: “He seems in a bit of political purgatory, in terms of who he is, what he stands for and how he wants to be perceived, and I think S.C. voters sense that.”
CHAMPION FOR FAIRNESS
Four criminal justice-related bills that Paul introduced in late January — dealing with sentencing reform, voting rights for felons and civil forfeiture — are atypical for a conservative about to begin a campaign. But they are issues about which he is passionate, he told the Trib.
“It is important that everybody believes that our justice system is just — whether you are white, black, brown, rich or poor — that all people are treated the same,” he said.
“Twenty years ago, we had 300,000 people in prison in the United States. Now we have 2½ million people in jails. If you look at the percentages, three out of four people for nonviolent drug crimes are black or brown, but if you survey people who are using illegal drugs ... it is really way more white people are using drugs than black people.”
The system needs to be reformed, he said, because “people who are poor, or who have less representation, and people who live in communities that have more police activity get arrested more often.
“... I don't say that there is any purposeful racism, but there has been an inadvertent racial outcome to it.”
Statistics show 58 percent of inmates in state and federal prisons in 2012 were black or Hispanic and 33 percent were white, according to The Sentencing Project, a Washington-based nonprofit organization. The 2.2 million people incarcerated represented a 500 percent increase over the 40 years prior, the group's website shows.
D.C. DICONNECT
Though many Americans distrust government — “they do not feel like government is treating them fairly” — poor people especially “feel that they are not treated correctly,” Paul contends.
He should know: Census data show Kentucky's poverty rate in 2013 was 18.8 percent, higher than the national level of 15.4 percent.
At home in Kentucky, or when traveling outside the bubble of Washington, Paul finds striking differences between the thinking of average Americans and their elected officials.
“For example, if you asked people anywhere in America whether or not we should send money to countries that hate us, burn our flag, persecute Christians or put Christians in jail for interfaith marriage or blasphemy, not one American will say we should do that,” he said.
“But I had a vote in committee up here, where I introduced an amendment that read, ‘Any country that puts to death Christians by law or imprisons them for life for those things shouldn't get any of our money,' and it got only two votes.
“So really, what happens up here is not only disconnected from the rest of the country, it is completely the opposite of what would be common sense.”
BLACK AND YELLOW
Born in Pittsburgh in 1963, U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., says his first childhood memory was visiting his grandparents in Dormont and thinking that they lived in the Land of Oz “because of all of the yellow brick roads.”
“My other favorite thing was the giant swimming pool there ... 100 yards long, with the slide located in the middle of the pool,” he recalled.
The borough pool remains the largest outdoor pool in Western Pennsylvania.
Paul grew up a Pittsburgh sports fan in the 1970s era that produced legendary Steelers and Pirates. His memorabilia collection includes autographed photographs and baseball cards of Roberto Clemente, Willie Stargell and Al Oliver, obtained through “my granddad, (who) knew someone who worked at the Pirates.”
Being a Steelers fan did not make Paul popular in Texas, where the family moved in 1968. Hall of Fame quarterback Roger Staubach, who guided the Dallas Cowboys to two Super Bowl wins, could not do so against the Pittsburgh Steelers in Super Bowl X (1976) and Super Bowl XIII (1979).
Salena Zito is a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review editorial page columnist. E-mail her at [email protected]