{"id":8198,"date":"2010-09-23T23:00:21","date_gmt":"2010-09-24T07:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=8198"},"modified":"2010-09-24T08:00:38","modified_gmt":"2010-09-24T16:00:38","slug":"spinning-the-rand-paul-disaster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2010\/09\/23\/spinning-the-rand-paul-disaster\/","title":{"rendered":"Spinning the Rand Paul Disaster"},"content":{"rendered":"

No sooner did my column on the shortcomings of Rand Paul <\/a>appear online then Brian Doherty<\/a> was out with a long blog post <\/a>on the Reason<\/em> magazine web site, which starts out:<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I’m already hearing whispers especially from the antiwar libertarian hardcore that a strangely respectful and nuanced profile of the GOP Senate candidate from Kentucky via <\/em>The New Republic<\/em>‘s Jason Zengerle in GQ is giving them all the more reason to dislike or fear him.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Respectful? The article is illustrated with a photo <\/a>of Rand sitting in what looks like a television studio dressed in a suit and tie from the waist up, and yellow madras Bermuda shorts<\/em>. He’s wearing dress shoes, and no socks. His face bears the expression of an errant schoolboy who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been kept after school, his cheeks puffed out like an exasperated blowfish. Zengerles\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 kindest description of the candidate, eagerly cited by Doherty, reads as follows:<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Unlike some of the prominent Tea Party leaders he’s routinely lumped in with, Paul is not an idiot.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/em><\/p>\n

Doherty\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s reaction \u00e2\u20ac\u201c he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s thrilled by such extravagant praise — must leave his libetarian readers baffled, who don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t understand what a high it is to be considered undiotic by an editor of The New Republic<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Truly a pathetic display, one that reveals the existence of yet a new libertarian faction: the libertarian masochists. The piece goes downhill from there, as Doherty tries to frame the growing intra-libertarian debate over the Rand Paul sellout as just a lot of noise made by a few noisome dissenters of the “hardcore” variety:<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Unpromising indeed for those who love Rand’s dad Ron’s political bravery and sense on matters of foreign intervention. And I understand why that is infuriating to the extent that Rand is seen as some sort of gold standard for what “libertarian” or even “libertarian-leaning” is going to mean in American politics. But if you are just looking at him as a potential Senate candidate for the Republican Party, well, that means that maybe he’ll be just as bad as every single other one of them on foreign policy. Disappointing, yes, but not infuriating.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/em><\/p>\n

Not unless you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re one of the thousands of libertarians who, prompted by the endorsement of Rand\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s father, either gave money or else were talked into actively campaigning for him \u00e2\u20ac\u201c in which case waking up to find that you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve elected someone \u00e2\u20ac\u0153just as bad as every single other one of them on foreign policy\u00e2\u20ac\u009d would indeed be infuriating.<\/p>\n

Doherty then rhapsodizes about all the really really<\/em> great things Senator Paul will be able to do: form a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Tea Party caucus\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in the Senate, alongside Sharon Angle and Jim DeMint \u00e2\u20ac\u201c a caucus, by the way, that is opposed<\/a> by the actual tea party movement, but never mind that. He cites Zengerle, who avers:<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153It’s one thing to oppose Obama; it’s another to oppose legislation and threaten relationships that have been central to how the GOP does business.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/em><\/p>\n

Oh, and what are these \u00e2\u20ac\u0153relationships\u00e2\u20ac\u009d that are \u00e2\u20ac\u0153central\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to the GOP establishment\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s machinations? \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Paul doesn’t support the military spending most of his fellow Republicans slobber over\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u201c- perhaps once, but if Kristol, Senor, and Donnelly didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t talk him out of that, then AIPAC surely did.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153He doesn’t support handing out big fat prescription-drug benefits to private insurance companies.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u201c well, maybe, but he sure opposes any reform of Medicare, meaning any cuts in the program, and no wonder: a great deal of his medical patients are Medicare clients.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153He doesn’t support the earmarks that Republican senators, especially McConnell, use to curry favor with voters back home\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u201c this is a phony issue. As Ron Paul has correctly pointed out<\/a>, earmarks merely mean that money goes to local projects instead of into a general nationalized fund to be disbursed by Washington bureaucrats. Opposition to earmarks is hardly \u00e2\u20ac\u0153libertarian.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Doherty enthuses: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153What sensible American doesn’t say hoo-damn-ray to that?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Nice try, Brian, but my own response is so the f\u00e2\u20ac\u201dk what? And just when you thought Doherty couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be more unconvincing if he tried, he outdoes himself by defending the likening of Obama to \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 Hitler. Or to the rise of Hitler: or something like that. Oh, and to top it off we are told Rand violates Godwin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Law<\/a> \u00e2\u20ac\u0153with nuance and intelligence,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d no less!<\/p>\n

Poor Doherty: faced with the Sisyphean task of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153spinning\u00e2\u20ac\u009d what Andrew Sullivan\u00c2\u00a0accurately calls <\/a>Zengerles\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 \u00e2\u20ac\u0153hit piece\u00e2\u20ac\u009d as evidence of a Strange New Respect for Rand Paul, he pulls out all the stops \u00e2\u20ac\u201c to no avail. In the end, he is reduced to this:<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153The [Zengerle] piece leaves me feeling about Rand Paul as I already did: not as good as his dad; likely better than every other Senator of his party. And it leaves me a little more sure that any success he has won’t be successfully used to shame or marginalize the domestic limited-government movement writ large (except to the extent that it distances it from anti-interventionism, which remains lamentable).\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/em><\/p>\n

Lamentable, but not essential \u00e2\u20ac\u201c because it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153hoo-damn ray\u00e2\u20ac\u009d for Rand Paul, who thinks Obama is a Nazi, and is \u00e2\u20ac\u0153solicitous\u00e2\u20ac\u009d of an organization plumbing for war with Iran on Israel\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s behalf. Only the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153antiwar hardcore\u00e2\u20ac\u009d libertarians care about such things: little matter that this is the majority of libertarians in the US.<\/p>\n

What I find troubling is that the same magazine that ran countless article smearing the elder Paul as a racist, an anti-Semite, and a embarrassment to the libertarian movement — written largely by a writer <\/a>who is today employed as a professional\u00c2\u00a0anti-libertarian smear-monger for Slate.com and MSNBC — \u00c2\u00a0is now extolling Paul the Lesser, who is <\/em>a genuine embarrassment and openly panders to racist anti-Muslim hysteria. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an agenda here, but what is it: moral inversion? Bizarro World \u00e2\u20ac\u0153logic\u00e2\u20ac\u009d? Or simply a desire to sell out for the lowest possible price?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No sooner did my column on the shortcomings of Rand Paul appear online then Brian Doherty was out with a long blog post on the Reason magazine web site, which starts out: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I’m already hearing whispers especially from the antiwar libertarian hardcore that a strangely respectful and nuanced profile of the GOP Senate candidate from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-8198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8198"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8198\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8214,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8198\/revisions\/8214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8198"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=8198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}