Rand Paul filibuster brings GOP rats out into the light for us all to see

By David McElroy · March 7, 2013

Rand Paul has a better chance of being elected president than his father ever had. That’s partly because he’s more willing to play the pragmatic party political game, but it’s also partly because he’s not the doctrinaire libertarian that his father generally was.

Paul’s filibuster in the U.S. Senate Wednesday was nothing but political theater, but it ended up achieving something unexpected. It flushed out some of the highest-ranking Republicans and forced them to show the disdain they feel whenever individual liberties are concerned.

Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham not only didn’t support Paul, but they spent Thursday actively attacking him. McCain took to the Senate floor to attack Paul’s concern that the Obama administration would ever use drone strikes on Americans inside the borders of the country. Graham not only attacked Paul, but praised Obama’s use of drone strikes to kill people on the other side of the world.

After starting his filibuster alone Wednesday, Paul was eventually joined by a few Republican senators and one Democratic senator. While they talked about constitutional rights and lambasted the Obama administration for its refusal to say that it didn’t have legal authority to unilaterally kill Americans in this country, where were McCain and Graham?

They were with the Republican establishment having dinner with Obama.

If you’re one of the many conservatives who believe that the Republican Party is your savior when it comes to battling big government, think again. There’s a small core of GOP politicians who are somewhat more likely to be on the side of individual freedom than the statist old guard is, but those who believe in freedom are a minority in their own party.

All Republicans talk loudly about individual freedom and smaller government, but few of them mean it. Even fewer are willing to take concrete steps to implement their ideas. And a few of them — including McCain and Graham — are downright hostile to those who take constitutional freedoms seriously.

You might tell yourself that the GOP is going to change. After all, the senators who supported Paul Wednesday were generally younger ones who were elected in the last few years. It’s a good theory, but look at how this pattern really works.

Remember back in 1994 when Newt Gingrich led a group of “radical” conservative Republicans to take over the U.S. House? Their Contract with America was going to change everything. These young congressmen were going to be the ones who restored freedom and reduced the size of government. That’s been almost 20 years. How’s that working out? Is government smaller today?

People who go to Washington and become part of the system are going to tend to become quite happy with government. They’re going to say and do whatever they need in order to keep their constituents from revolting at election time, but most of them aren’t going to do much beyond that — partly because they can’t. The worst of them are going to become so friendly with government that they’re actually happy to trust politicians with the unchecked power to kill, just as McCain and Graham are today.

Paul’s filibuster isn’t going to change anything. The nomination of Obama’s choice for CIA director was easily passed Thursday. Obama is going to keep using drones to kill whoever he wants to kill. And if it ever becomes convenient and politically expedient, he’ll kill whoever he wants to kill here in this country. That’s not because Obama is especially evil compared to the rest. It’s simply because he’s a U.S. president who enjoys power and believes he’s entitled to use it.

On Thursday, the Obama administration finally responded to Paul’s question about killing Americans with a curt letter admitting that the president doesn’t have the power to kill Americans “not engaged in combat on American soil.” It’s amazing that an administration could fight so hard to avoid saying something so obviously true — and it’s also amazing that anyone could believe their statement carries any weight if they change their minds later.

Long-term, I see two things noteworthy about the filibuster.

First, it’s raised Paul’s profile greatly in the Republican Party. He showed the kind of political savvy that it takes to ignite a party’s base and win a presidential nomination. Can you think of any other recent president who’s been elected with no political experience other than a single term in the Senate? Yep. Barack Obama.

Second, Paul’s filibuster got some establishment Republicans to show which side they’re really on. For the most part, it’s not Red vs. Blue in Washington. It’s Establishment vs. Outsiders. In this case, the Establishment rats showed themselves for what they are. I hope the real Outsiders across the country were taking notes.

The filibuster itself didn’t change anything. It’s not going to change anything. But it was emotionally satisfying to hear someone get so much media attention for telling the truth about individual rights for a change. I’m not under the illusion that anything will change.

But it did feel good.

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If you have problems with high blood pressure, I’d like to encourage you to consider making serious changes to your diet. There might be some people who don’t have any choice but to start taking prescription medications for high blood pressure, but I’d like to tell you that I have completely eliminated my issue by eliminating all sugar and almost all carbohydrates. (A couple of months ago, my blood pressure hit 185/144, which was dangerously high — considered stage 3 hypertension.) By completely changing my eating habits, I’m down 22 pounds and my blood pressure is now in the “ideal” range — without taking any medication. In addition, I sleep better and I have more energy. Getting away from the sugar-laden mess that we generally refer to as “highly processed food” has been a life-changer for me. Now my challenge is to avoid slipping back into old habits — by eating in the dangerous ways that almost everyone in our society has come to see as normal.

When I first heard about this, I thought it must be satire. When I discovered it was real, I was appalled, but I still thought it must be a one-time thing from some nutty activist. But it turns out it’s the latest bit of pandering to a bunch of far-left activists who believe that a man can become a woman if he decides to claim he’s a woman. As everybody knows, men have prostate glands. Women do not. Period. End of story. Men can get prostate cancer. Women cannot. But political activists are so eager to pretend that a man claiming to be a “trans woman” is really a woman that they are insisting that “women” be included in public health messages about the issue. This is nothing but political virtue-signaling. If you’re a man, you know which parts you have. You know that you ought to be screened. Nobody is made any safer by dragging far-left gender ideology into simple medical reality.

Every time someone tries to tighten requirements around the use of absentee ballots, I hear screams from Democrats and others on the political left that such efforts are nothing but “suppression of black voters.” These protests have never made sense to me, especially because it’s never been a secret that absentee ballot fraud goes on all the time in certain areas. (Everybody knew it when I worked in politics.) The people who engage in such fraud are rarely caught — often because the local political establishment approves of the crime — but a Democrat who won a primary election in Clay County, Alabama, last year has pleaded guilty to this sort of cheating. Terry Andrew Heflin was running for a place on the Clay County Commission. He was caught ordering seven absentee ballots in the names of various voters and sending them to his post office box — after which he used the ballots to vote absentee for himself seven time. Did he have other people cast additional fraudulent ballots? We’ll never know. But in a primary in which he was able to win with only 141 votes, it wouldn’t take many fraudulent votes to change the election. The next time you hear “civil rights activists” claim that it’s just “voter suppression” to hurt blacks which is at the root of efforts to stop this fraud, remember Terry Heflin. If you care about fair and honest elections, ballot security and voter identity should matter to you.

A state legislator in Maine has been stripped of the ability to speak in the state Legislature — and her votes are not being counted on legislative issues — all because she made a truthful social media post. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn, Maine) opposes allowing boys to compete against girls’ teams in school athletics and she’s become known for making an issue of it. On Feb. 17, she posted on Facebook about a recent example that she found outrageous. She posted side-by-side photos of a boy named John who competed last year in a state track event and won fifth place against other boys two years ago — and a photo of the same boy (now called Katie) who won first place in the same event this year against girls. Whether you find this outrageous or not, Libby is clearly being honest and truthful about the objective facts of an issue of public importance. But the state Legislature censured her. Democrats decreed that she could not speak in the House and that her votes would not count on legislation — until she apologized for the outrage of telling the truth. She refused and her constituents have been unrepresented in the state House since then. The people who promote this ideology are out of touch with reality and won’t rest until they force the rest of us to join them in this delusion. But even if you agree with “trans” ideology, you should be appalled at this heavy-handed attack on political speech.

The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

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