Hey liberals — Rand Paul isn’t the only anti-war, civil libertarian in government
by digby
I was irked last week at the way everyone was fawning over Rand Paul and his speech about Syria and I wrote about it in Salon today. I feel as if he is getting far more credit among liberals for being “principled” when in reality his position on the new war is exactly the same as Bernie Sanders’ who’s dismissed by the media and far too many liberals as an irrelevant crank. Anyway, I took a look at his much lauded speech and then talk a bit about the fact that his influence on his party is likely to be a tiny bit less than meets the eye:
The question is why everyone is so interested in what Paul says about this one way or the other. He’s running for president but so is half the Republican Party. He represents a small handful of reluctant GOP warriors even on his best day. True, there are likely to be a few more partisan Republicans who will take the opportunity to oppose anything a Democratic president wants to do but that will most often be because they believe he isn’t going far enough, not that he’s going too far. For instance, Florida GOP congressman Tom Rooney, who said of arming the Syrian rebels, “It’s clearly not enough. If ISIS is truly a national security threat that needs to be destroyed, then we need to destroy them. And anybody you talk to who knows what they’re talking about believes that arming the rebels is insufficient.” Some are even arguing for combat troops. Member of the House Republican leadership Pete Sessions of Texas said, “If we’re in this to win then boots on the ground not only will be necessary but that will be something that will save American lives ultimately in the long run.”
On the other hand there is a good-size faction in the Democratic Party that is consistent on all the issues over which Rand Paul makes headlines and nobody ever talks about them. Sure, it stands to reason that a Republican will gain some attention for being a (sometimes) war skeptic because they are so rare. But it’s unfair that Democrats with equal or better records on civil liberties and war are given such short shrift and ignored by the media as if they’re irrelevant…
Rand Paul is not the spokesman for the entire civil liberties community or the anti-war faction of this nation. In fact there are principled Democrats and Independents whom liberals should celebrate on these issues instead — after all, they aren’t going to vote against NSA spying with one breath while cutting Social Security and Medicare the next. They’re not going to demand that the government get out of our lives today and then vote to restrict a woman’s right to control her own reproduction tomorrow. They won’t rail about liberty even as they fight to ensure that gay people don’t have the freedom to marry. You can’t have it all, none of these people are perfect. But you can have everything Rand Paul is offering — and a whole lot more common human decency.
There are far too few Democrats who will stand up on this issue to be sure. But there are a hell of a lot more of them who have been consistently skeptical of all these wars and are stalwart defenders of civil liberties too. It would be nice if they weren’t treated like ciphers by those with similar values while Rand Paul is treated as their lone defender. The incentives are all wrong.
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