He dug himself into a hole and exposed himself to be naive. Our redoubtable Capt. Fogg of The Swamp Zone does a smashing job of exposing Paul for the confused and misdirected candidate that he is:
Capt. Fogg writes:
"Rand Paul is not Ron Paul and I'm not flattering him by saying it. There is a difference between principle and bull-headed intransigence and Paul the younger seems as unclear about that as he is not quite up to the task of successfully debating Rachel Maddow about his distaste for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Asked whether he thought a restaurant had the right to refuse service to black customers, Paul commenced a rather evasive dance around the subject by trying to describe regulation as ownership.
"What about freedom of speech?" asked the less than candid Candidate. "Well what it gets into then is if you decide that restaurants are publicly owned and not privately owned, then do you say that you should have the right to bring your gun into a restaurant even though the owner of the restaurant says 'well no, we don't want to have guns in here' the bar says 'we don't want to have guns in here because people might drink and start fighting and shoot each-other?'" Paul replied. "Does the owner of the restaurant own his restaurant? Or does the government own his restaurant? These are important philosophical debates but not a very practical discussion."Unfortunately, more than just being grammatically confused, he's wrong. He's equivocating and the debate is, of course, entirely about practical matters. Can we agree, for instance, that being black in a restaurant is fundamentally different than carrying a gun in a bar and if so, his analogy is defective and a fallacy of distraction? Certainly a speed limit is not Government ownership of my car, health regulations imposed on food producers aren't the equivalent of owning the family farm nor is forcing Woolworth to stop creating two Americas with their policies isn't Marxism."
The rest of tCapt. Fogg's excellent post as well as another incisive one by bloggingdino is here.
And this:
Questions For Rand Paul
Ezra Klein has a few:
UPDATE:
"Amidst the hullaballoo over Republican Rand Paul's upset victory in the Kentucky GOP primary for US Senate, one of the few journalists to raise the issue of Paul's somewhat uncomfortable proximity to Christian Reconstructionism has been Alternet's Adele Stan, who observes that Rand Paul's father Ron Paul is personal friends with one of the bigger names in the Christian Reconstructionist movement, Howard Phillips, founder of the US Taxpayers Party -- now re-branded as The Constitution Party. But there's much more direct evidence tying Ran Paul to the Constitution Party, whose national platform declares,
Can the federal government set the private sector's minimum wage? Can it tell private businesses not to hire illegal immigrants? Can it tell oil companies what safety systems to build into an offshore drilling platform? Can it tell toy companies to test for lead? Can it tell liquor stores not to sell to minors? These are the sort of questions that Paul needs to be asked now, because the issue is not "area politician believes kooky but harmless thing." It's "area politician espouses extremist philosophy on issue he will be voting on constantly."
UPDATE:
"Amidst the hullaballoo over Republican Rand Paul's upset victory in the Kentucky GOP primary for US Senate, one of the few journalists to raise the issue of Paul's somewhat uncomfortable proximity to Christian Reconstructionism has been Alternet's Adele Stan, who observes that Rand Paul's father Ron Paul is personal friends with one of the bigger names in the Christian Reconstructionist movement, Howard Phillips, founder of the US Taxpayers Party -- now re-branded as The Constitution Party. But there's much more direct evidence tying Ran Paul to the Constitution Party, whose national platform declares,
"The goal of the Constitution Party is to restore American jurisprudence to its Biblical foundations... The U.S. Constitution established a Republic rooted in Biblical law"
[SKIP]
As it's said, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. In a May 21, 2009 appearance on the Alex Jones Show, Rand Paul affirmed that his political beliefs were extremely close to those of his father Ron:
Alex Jones: "You're basically what I would call a chip off the old block. Your policies are basically identical to your father, correct?"
Rand Paul: "I'd say we'd be very very similar. We might present the message sometimes differently.. I think in some ways the message has to be broadened and made more appealing to the entire Republican electorate because you have to win a primary." [Rand Paul on Alex Jones, 5/21/09]So it isn't altogether surprising that Rand Paul could be found, in April 2009, at a rally held by a political party that's been heavily influenced by a movement whose founder, Rousas Rushdoony, advocated executing homosexuals by stoning, wanted to reimpose the institution of slavery, and maintained that the Sun rotated around the Earth."
