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  1. #1
    Senior Member JohnDoe2's Avatar
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    Rand Paul is pitching libertarian ideas to social conservatives. And they're listenin

    Rand Paul is pitching libertarian ideas to social conservatives. And they're listening.

    Common ground between warring cousins.

    By Chris Moody, Yahoo News 6 hours agoYahoo News

    In this Nov. 6, 2013 file photo, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky. speaks on Capitol Hill in Washington. Paul said Sunday, …

    For many, the word that comes to mind when they hear the name Rand Paul is likely “libertarian.” While he gladly embraces the label, Paul brands himself as more a pragmatist than purist, and he’s seeking a way to bring libertarians and social conservatives—long warring cousins on the right—together.
    If successful, Paul’s effort could be the start of a fresh form of fusionism on the right that could be a significant asset if he seeks the White House in 2016.

    Instead of adopting a hard line on issues like drug legalization and non-interventionism like his father, former Texas Rep. Ron Paul, the younger Paul speaks about these topics in a way he hopes will spark collaboration instead of squabbling. And it seems to be working.


    Paul’s efforts were on display Wednesday night at a gala for the American Principles Project, a conservative group that opposes abortion and same-sex marriage and aims to promote religious liberty. The group's board includes Maggie Gallagher, one of the foremost advocates against same-sex marriage and Robert P. George, the chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. APP is led by Francis P. Cannon, a conservative activist who authored a rebuttal report last year to calls within the Republican Party to de-emphasize social issues.


    Speaking to a few hundred APP supporters at Washington, D.C.'s Mayflower hotel, Paul, knowing his audience, began by conceding that “libertarian,” is still “a bad word” to some. A few in the audience nodded.


    “But libertarian, or liberty, doesn’t mean libertine,” Paul said. “To many of us, libertarian means freedom and liberty. But we also see freedom needs tradition.”


    Such appeals are part and parcel of what for Paul has become an ongoing campaign to reach social conservatives. Last June, Paul spoke at the Faith and Freedom Summit, a conference organized by former Christian Coalition Executive Director Ralph Reed, where he accused the Obama Administration of funding a “war on Christianity” abroad. In October, Paul addressed students of Liberty University, a school founded by the late televangelist Jerry Falwell.


    Paul’s tone was softer Wednesday, when he argued that conservatives should support libertarian-backed initiatives like prison sentencing reform for non-violent drug users, and to take a stronger stand on defending the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unlawful searches.


    To illustrate his point, he highlighted a law in his home state of Kentucky that prohibits anyone convicted of a felony from voting.


    “A felony could be growing marijuana plants in college,” he said. “I think there are things we can and should talk about as Christians. We believe in forgiveness. I think the criminal justice system should have some element of forgiveness.”


    A few years ago, Paul’s rhetoric may have gotten him accused of being soft on crime within Republican circles. But today, as the party is desperately seeking fresh inroads with black and Hispanic voters—two groups that are disproportionally targeted by law enforcement, compared to whites—Paul’s message is starting to resonate. There’s evidence to suggest that these ideas are gaining support within the Republican Party. Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee is currently working with Illinois Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin on a bill that would reduce or eliminate mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent drug offenders. Meanwhile, Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn is making a push to provide increased rehabilitation for some incarcerated offenders.


    “I think these are things we can look at,” Paul said. “And I’m not talking about legalization. What I’m talking about is making the criminal justice system fair and giving people a second chance when they serve their time.”


    The audience greeted his suggestions with a standing ovation at the end of the speech.


    “Libertarians have been great promoters of free markets and economic freedom,” Cannon, the group’s president, told Yahoo News after the speech.

    “But within the movement, the question is how to marry that with both an expression that talks to workers rather than businesses, and I thought Paul was looking for a way to revive that fusionism now. I thought he did a great job.”


    It's a message Paul delivers often, from colleagues on the Senate floor and evangelical pastors in Des Moines to African American students and immigration reform activists, and could be his ticket to the presidential campaign trail in 2016. The Republican candidate who can effectively capture the imagination of conservative voters in Iowa and unite them with center-right Republicans in New Hampshire--the first two electoral contests on the presidential nomination calendar--will be in a strong position heading into the primary season. It's far too early to tell, of course, whether Paul can pull it off.


    Looking to 2016, he arguably has an advantage over his father, who made three unsuccessful White House bids during his political career. The younger Paul's "fusionist" approach—wedding libertarian economics, traditional values and novel policy ideas— could appeal to a broader set of Republican voters. And it might also, critically, alienate fewer of them.


    It’s worth noting that the senior Paul made respectable inroads within the social conservative community in Iowa in 2012. But with the right tone and message, his son is hoping to takes things even further.


    http://news.yahoo.com/rand-paul-is-p...233556575.html
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    Senior Member JohnDoe2's Avatar
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    Senior Member JohnDoe2's Avatar
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    February 7th, 2014
    09:55 PM ET
    2 hours ago

    In Texas, Rand Paul meets a Cruz and a Bush


    Posted by

    CNN National Political Reporter Peter Hamby

    Dallas, Texas (CNN)
    – Texas is a vast and diverse state with sprawling urban centers and wide open pastures, but sometimes the political universe here can feel pretty small.


    Rand Paul, the Kentucky Senator and Republican presidential aspirant, was reminded of this on Friday.


    Arriving in Dallas at the outset of a multi-day visit to the state, Paul spent Friday meeting with a handful of financial supporters and assorted Republican politicians. On leaving the office of one of the city’s GOP donors, Paul bumped into a familiar face: Ted Cruz, his fellow Senator from Texas and another ambitious Republican who is courting grassroots conservatives in advance of a possible presidential bid.

    Cruz was walking in to meet with the very same donor. The two Senators, who have something of a chilly relationship, exchanged hellos before Paul went on to his next stop.


    Though Paul crossed paths with one of his rivals, his visit to Texas was hardly a risky mission behind enemy lines. Paul grew up outside of Houston, attended Baylor University and pays frequent visits to his mother and father, the former congressman and libertarian icon Ron Paul.


    As he put it on Friday, “I speak fluent Texan.”


    Paul’s first public appearance here was on friendly political turf: He headlined a rally in Dallas for a Republican candidate named Don Huffines, a family friend and real estate developer who is mounting a primary challenge against an entrenched state Senate incumbent with appeals to the tea party, libertarians and evangelicals. They were joined at the event by author and radio host Glenn Beck, a Dallas resident who spent the afternoon with Paul.


    Trying to stir a polite crowd of several hundred supporters inside the Frontiers of Flight Museum at Love Field, the mild-mannered Huffines delivered a cascade of tea party bromides aimed squarely at the fiery conservative base that has come to dominate Republican politics in Texas.


    “I will not compromise my faith in God,” Huffines said. “I will not compromise my Constitutional convictions. I will not compromise my core beliefs in liberty.”


    Paul, in slacks and a blazer, spoke briefly, riffing in his low-key style about the dangers of government overreach and the inability of politicians in both parties to make tough decisions about spending. He criticized the federal budget deal put together by Rep. Paul Ryan and Sen. Patty Murray late last year, saying that “spending is now going up again” in Washington.


    But Paul’s Texas tour was not all tea party fire and brimstone.

    In an interview with CNN before the event, Paul revealed that he met with George P. Bush, a candidate for Texas Land Commissioner. Bush also happens to be the 37-year old son of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, whose name continues to surface in discussions about the 2016 Republican presidential race.

    The younger Bush and Paul hail from starkly different wings of their party: Bush is considered the political heir apparent in a family that helped construct the very Republican establishment that Paul and his father have been sniping at from the party’s fringes for decades.


    Paul said he had no plans to endorse Bush in the Land Commissioner race, but he said they agreed on the need to expand the Republican Party’s appeal to Hispanic voters and working class Americans. Bush’s mother is originally from Mexico, and he speaks effortless Spanish.


    “I think the fact that he is a fluent Spanish speaker and spoken to the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, it’s good for our party,” Paul said of George P. Bush. “I think having people who are trying to make the party bigger is good. The party has to be bigger across the country, not only appealing to people of various ethnic background but various economic backgrounds.”


    The private huddle with a scion of the Bush dynasty was the latest indicator that Paul is keen on making nice with establishment Republicans as he sketches out a possible presidential bid that can reach voters outside of his grassroots, small-government base.


    But despite his courtship with the party’s civil country club set, he remained pugnacious when asked about his recent spate of comments about Bill and Hillary Clinton. Paul has invoked the former president’s affair with Monica Lewinsky as evidence of the Democratic Party’s hypocrisy on the issue of women’s' rights, going so far as to call Bill Clinton a “sexual predator.”


    He echoed those remarks on Friday. He predicted that Hillary Clinton will have to answer questions her husband’s affair if she decides to run for president in 2016.


    “It isn’t her fault the way her husband’s behaved,” Paul told CNN. “But at the same time, I think that they are a fundraising team. He does a lot of fundraising for candidates. I think if they want to beat up on Republicans and say Republicans don’t like women, I think that one of the big things that we advanced in the last several decades is that women are protected in the workplace.”


    “I’m sure Don would tell you he would fire anybody that took advantage of a 20 years old girl,” Paul said, referring to Hoffines. “If one of his managers had the same kind of problems that Bill Clinton had with a 20-year old girl, he wouldn’t work for him anymore. It’s not acceptable behavior, and yet they are out there saying they are the great crusaders for women’s rights. I think that’s some hypocrisy that they will have to explain.”


    http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com...ush/?hpt=hp_t2

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