The Predictable Treatment Of Rand Paul

20 May, 2010 by Melissa Clouthier

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It took one whole day for the left to go after Rand Paul. They see these numbers and they want to Terminate Him (politically of course).

I figured that Rand Paul would be attacked and that he would be an easier target than Trey Grayson. Dan Riehl says:

Mind you, this is only the opening act. The issue isn’t racism for Paul. Yes, that’s unfair. So?? This is politics and that hardly matters, because the media, the Democrat spin machine and Lefty blogs are going to be all about branding the guy as that, and more. It was obvious they could hardly wait to get started.

And spare me the whining over principles. The vast majority of voters don’t take the time to consider these issues that deeply. And nothing Paul supporters say or do is going to change that. The Constitutional battle was fifty years ago. It was lost. But Paul doesn’t have the good political sense to stop fighting it. And if he develops it, surprise, he’ll then be labeled a liar and a hypocrite.

I think Dan Riehl wonders, and this was something I wondered before, too, is whether the Republicans really want to have these fights?

Right now, the Democrats are gasping for breath. The people are against every single policy. How useful is it to bring the spotlight to our side for people arguing over nuance about the Civil Rights Act? Ace says:

All of that said, here’s the bottom line…when you’re running for office and someone asks you if you support the Civil Rights Act you say “yes”. Period. Full Stop. Next question. Why? Because answering anything else paints you as a crank who doesn’t need to be taken seriously on anything else.

Dave Weigel has a good discussion of the issue:

So is Rand Paul a racist? No, and it’s irritating to watch his out-of-context quotes — this and a comment about how golf was no longer for elitists because Tiger Woods plays golf — splashed on the Web to make that point. Paul believes, as many conservatives believe, that the government should ban bias in all of its institutions but cannot intervene in the policies of private businesses. Those businesses, as Paul argues, take a risk by maintaining, in this example, racist policies. Patrons can decide whether or not to give them their money, or whether or not to make a fuss about their policies. That, not government regulation and intervention, is how bias should be eliminated in private industry. And in this belief Paul is joined by some conservatives who resent that liberals seek government intervention for every unequal outcome.

So, Paul has managed to put Republicans on defense. He has answered poorly–the press is looking to tar him and the whole party as racist. And he’s changed the argument away from the Democrats screwing up everything, which they are, and we’re forced to defend him. Already. It’s freaking annoying.

And it is utterly, completely, mind-numbingly predictable. So, all you people lecturing me because I want McCain gone and what’s-his-name to replace him in Arizona, stuff it. This race was far more predictably volatile and could be a real mess for the party over the next few months.

We do not need to have the press lecturing Americans about their white-dominance racism for months, but that’s exactly what we’ll get.

Why? Because the press is filled with leftist hacks intent on bringing a multi-culti utopian dream to fruition here in America. And THEY KNOW that their only chance in November is to tap into the self-doubt Americans have and the desire to prove they aren’t racist. Hell, fear of perceived racism is partly what got Barack Obama elected. The left is hoping it will work the other way and destroy chances for any “Tea Party Republican.”

Tea Party equals racist.

Get it? Yes, it’s simpleton. But that’s politics.

Let’s talk about the press and left for a minute, because they are one and the same. Here’s Robert Stacy McCain’s most excellent piece [MUST READ]:

This is not new, and liberals were playing the same game with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, so that everyone who opposed the bill was accused of being an apologist for Jim Crow. And Rand Paul is now being excoriated for being honest enough to say that this was unfair, that whatever the benefits of abolishing Jim Crow, there were unintended consequences to the 1964 law – consequences that were to some extent foreseen by Buckley, Goldwater and Reagan — that still merit critical discussion.

Maddow’s badgering of Rand Paul amounts to an attempt to render off-limits the controversies of the past, to require that everyone endorse a progressive conception of history. As Clifton says, Paul is being forced into a Catch-22:

If Paul says he fully supports how the feds forced the private sector to end segregation he loses libertarian street cred, but by only supporting the results of the Civil Rights Act and not the actual legislation, Paul gives the left room to paint him as a racist.

What is at work here is a sort of intellectual terrorism, not just an effort to portray Rand Paul as a bigot, but to wield the accusation of racism as a weapon to intimidate anyone who dares challenge the progressive worldview.

Here is where wise men must perceive the totalitarian implications of political correctness, the Orwellian “memory hole,” the demand for conformity of thought, Trotsky airbrushed from the old Bolshevik photos. This argument is not really about racism, and it is not merely about Rand Paul or a single Republican campaign in Kentucky. Rather, it is about defending intellectual freedom from the bullies of the Left who arrogate to themselves the authority to decide what people can or cannot say in public discourse.

Conservatives must resolve to stand united against this kind of bullying treatment – to denounce it as an intellectually dishonest enterprise – or they shall eventually find that there is no remainder of the American tradition worth conserving.

“[T]ruth is great and will prevail if left to herself . . . she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate, errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them.”
— Thomas Jefferson, Virginia Act for Establishing Religious Freedom (1786)

Yes, it’s intellectual terrorism. It’s absurd and blatant and shameless.

It’s politics.

Politics is a bloodsport. It would be nice if the yahoos on our side woke up and could at least predict this nonsense and hedge against it, but no. Argue wisely, people. And Mr. Paul, the Civil Rights garbage isn’t the only argument against you. I hope you and your staffers are prepared to defend all your nuanced positions. You’re going to be doing a lot of it.