I’ve never pegged Rand Paul as a MAGA person. He has his own agenda, which is very damaging to the country, and much of that is aligned with what Trump and his toadies want. So he has been supportive of Trump for the most part, as it’s self-serving to do so. But I don’t think that Paul is completely in lockstep with Trump, and especially as Trump has gotten more authoritarian than his last presidency, it’s probably inevitable for some kind of conflict.
Like this. There was bound to be some kind of clash at some point.
I doubt it will matter, and I certainly don’t have any gratitude to Paul. Just because his evil schemes aren’t totally synchronized with Trump’s evil schemes, that doesn’t make him a good guy.
Though to me this is even more reprehensible than if he was a hat-wearing coolaid-drinking hardcore MAGAt. He is a perfectly intelligent well informed politician who is fully aware of who Trump is and the implications for the future of the US of him being elected. That he decided to facilitate Trumps rise to power because it helps his personal policial career, makes him an utterly reprehensible scumbag of the highest order.
Even more so because he purportedly believes in a political philosophy where protecting the liberties of Americans and the constitution is above all else, including party politics.
A half hearted criticism of Trump (without actually voting against him in the Senate) does nothing to change that assessment.
He’s far from unique in that. In fact for me, that’s the most breathtaking thing about the way this is all working- the entire GOP congressional delegation is so feckless and self-interested that they’re essentially letting the country’s democratic form of government and system of checks and balances get distorted and destroyed because they either see it as something they can personally benefit from, or they’re too gutless to do anything, believing it will hurt their own personal careers.
What makes me cautiously optimistic is that if Paul feels secure enough criticizing Trump, it’s a sign that maybe there’s a lot of dislike out there among the conservative rank and file for the more egregious elements of the current political shenanigans.
Yeah I’m with you here. I wasn’t expecting the GOP to take the moral high ground with mass resignations and resistance. But the degree to which the entire GOP almost to a man, clicked their heels, gave a smart “seig heil” and said “right away mein fuhrer!” was somewhat shocking
I’ll be optimistic when he actually uses his position as senator to do something to oppose Trump. Talk is cheap. The most I can see coming from this is other GOP politicians voicing moderately worded expressions of concern about trump while doing absolutely bugger all to stop him doing whatever he wants.
As I said IMO this about Rand Paul and his ilk attempting to separate themselves from Trump’s impending economic catastrophe in the eyes of their constituents.
I saw that in the first week of April the Senate voted to block the “emergency” leading to the Canadian tariffs and the vote was close 51-48. Is that the vote that Paul was talking about in his speech?
There is definitely “a lot of dislike out there among the conservative rank and file” for Trump and MAGA because of how disruptive it was to the existing order, but from a pragmatic standpoint the majority of Republicans either fell in line or dropped out because it was clear how much of the disaffected GOP base and typically non-voting went all in for MAGA. That appeal lost its luster somewhat in the 2018 mid-term elections as Trump-endorsed candidates tended to do worse overall despite being generally well-funded, but with Trump threatening to primary Republican incumbents who don’t fall in goose-step (and Elon Musk offering to back MAGA-embracing opponents to the tune of millions of dollars), as well as the examples played out on people like Paul Ryan, Liz Cheney, and even the bizarre censure of Cindy McCain–a woman with no apparent political ambitions of her own–for the sin of being the widow of a Trump-opposing conservative Republican, has led most Republicans in Congress to show themselves as supporting Trump’s ambitions even if they might grouse about it over highballs in private.
Rand Paul is something of an actual iconoclast among Republicans who appears to have something approximating real principles of his own, but that doesn’t make them good principles, nor has he really shown himself to be defiant of Trump or standing up for civil liberties or to prevent incipient insurrection when it counted. Before this he was most noteworthy for trying to eliminate regulation (especially environmental and labor controls), being a vocal COVID-19 denier, and creating his own ophthalmology board run by his wife and her father so that he didn’t have to pay licensing dues to the American Board of Ophthalmologists.
Rand Paul has never stopped gunning for Fauci, even though his irresponsible nonsense led to death threats against him.
The fact that Rand Paul is not a complete sycophantic Trump toady like Lindsey Graham, Mike Johnson and other Republicans doesn’t make him lovable. Leading an actual anti-Trump insurrection would make him less loathsome. A Rand Paul presidency would be bad, just not an off-the-cliff clown car disaster like we’re seeing now.
Paul has no chance of serious Presidential consideration in a party that’s sold its soul to Trump.
I have a feeling that the effects of all the tariffs are going to be the lever that forces many of them to change their tune. When they’re confronted with absolutely being voted out by their angry constituents versus possibly being primaried by some MAGA candidate, they’re going to choose that primary challenge every time. Right now, it hasn’t come to that for most of them, or if it has, they feel like they’ve got some breathing room before the midterms.
That is, assuming that all the economists and business types are actually right (I have no reason to believe they’re not, but economics is famously vague in some situations).
Yup. Rand Paul has been fairly consistent in (his interpretation of) his libertarian-conservative principles, AFAICT. I disagree with most of his positions, hence my continued lack of “love” for him, but I’m not surprised to see him to continue to refuse to sacrifice what appear to be sincere convictions just to toady to Trump.
I have the same hopes, but at that point we’ll be living in a massive economic downturn. So it’ll be too little, too late.
It’ll feel like turning to the driver of a car as you’re falling off a broken bridge and saying, “I told you so.”
Hopefully the nation will recover but it sucks after going through what was actually a good economy during the Biden administration, despite dealing with worldwide inflation.
And then there’s all the other problems to deal with. Rebuilding gutted government programs that people will suffer without, trying to restore civil liberties, desperately trying to find some way to restore the reputation of the country in the world (which I probably won’t see happen in my lifetime).
Yeah this my concern too. No one knows how this is going to turn out. But IMO all the possible outcomes that involve the GOP turning against Trump, even if the most token performative way, involve an economic collapse so bad that it’s likely to take more than four years of competent Democrat rule to get out of.
I’m sorry what?! The raccoon who steals rotting groceries from my trash cans has more claim to “sincerely held libertarian principles” than Rand Paul. Again he’s a goddamned senator and we are 9 years into the presidential career of the most anti-liberty constitution-disdaining president in history. In that time he has done absolutely bugger all to uphold his “sincerely held libertarian principles” and stand up for liberty and the constitution against Trump in the Senate (you know his actual job as part of the checks and balances In the constitution) In fact he has actively facilitated Trump’s rise to power.
Hell even the fact he’s chosen to mildly express disapproval over tarrifs of all things, is a demonstration of that. Unlike pretty much everything else trump has done and said, there is nothing unconstitutional, or anti-liberty, about tarrifs. Its a catastrophically bad idea (and clearly a tax) but the president controls tarrifs that’s a well established legal precedent. He clearly stated what he was going to do with tarrifs and America voted for him. Rand Paul is only speaking out now because it’s gonna crash the economy and maybe lose him his job. Nothing to do with sincerely held libertarian principles.
I also feel like we’re living in a severe leadership drought from the opposition. There is literally no one who’s taken a national leadership role in opposing this stuff.
I really did think it would be “Trump does X” and then a loud howling and screaming from the Democrat side, and eventually someone would end up being the loudest and/or most coherent voice from their side who’d take a leadership role. Or at worst, a set of people who’d be vying for leadership and primary contention in 2028.
But so far, just crickets. And meanwhile we get idiots like David Hogg who are still pushing gun control as an agenda in spite of its clear unpopularity in the populace at large. I mean, I see why he’d do that, but personal emotion is not a good way to do things when you’re in that position. And AOC saying the same fairly extreme left stuff.
I have a feeling that by 2026, people aren’t going to want progressive change, they’re going to want normal. LIke unexciting days, not full of change or unknown, etc… Weeks on end where they won’t hear about the President or Congress. The government generally only being benignly neglectful and indifferent, not actively malevolent. And progressive policies aren’t that- they may well be seen as more of the same, just in a different direction come 2026 and 2028.
But that was over a month ago and seems like it was quickly forgotten.
I agree that nobody has taken a leadership role on the other side. I don’t think it’s for lack of trying, but they haven’t been successful yet.
And this isn’t an “oh well we tried” situation. They have to succeed. The alternative is a further slide to national destruction. We can’t count on Republicans destroying each other. Mild criticism from Rand Paul is such an unusual thing that it prompted this thread for crying out loud.