There are loose cannons. Then there is Sen. Rand Paul.
By most measures, the Bowling Green Republican would seem to be your normal, everyday, pre-Trump conservative lawmaker – balanced budgets (check), low taxes (check), limited government (check), suspicion of foreign entanglements (check).
But unlike his standard-issue get-along-by-going-along colleagues who dominate the party in DC, Paul has proven willing to rattle the cage every now and then. Under President-cum-Dictator Donald J. Trump, the entire concept of conservatism has been turned on its head, especially in regard to establishing a willingness to spend more than the government takes in. Paul doesn’t fit snugly in that MAGA world and he continues to address his priorities like Godzilla on steroids.
Paul has, even more frequently than in the past, separated himself from contemporary GOP orthodoxy on a wide range of issues, particularly as they relate to the federal budget and the war in Iran.
“If not me, who will do it?’’ he asked during an appearance on CNBC’s Squawk Box this week. “People say, ‘Be on the team.’ There’s enough people on the team. There needs to be somebody not on the team on occasion who says, ‘You know what? We have to vote on the initiation of war.’ That’s our obligation. And that’s what our founders put in there because they didn’t want all the power in one person.’’
His willingness to disrupt the GOP order hasn’t been met with the sort of Trumpian frothing fury that has greeted a fellow libertarian and ally, Rep. Thomas Massie, R-SomewhereorotherLewisCounty, who the Lord of Mar-a-Lago is actively trying to oust by backing a primary opponent in his re-election effort. Trump has characterized him as a “nasty, liddle guy’’ and chastised him as “Automatic No.’’ But on occasion he has acknowledged that he rather likes Paul, although he’s at a loss to explain why.
Paul’s propensity to break from his associates doesn’t mean he has abandoned some of the crazy principles that have defined the modern Republican Party. Rand Paul is as big a gun nut as you can find this side of Massie, embracing the Second Amendment to the Constitution while ignoring the fact that even the late Justice Antonin Scalia, himself a Second Amendment proponent, believed the right to gun possession was not absolute, allowing for reasonable restrictions. He remains anti-abortion and anti-Obamacare.
Some of his solutions could ultimately prove worse than the disease. There is, for instance, his “six pennies’’ plan to balance the federal budget over the span of five years by cutting projected federal spending by six percent over each of those years.
Now you can argue, accurately and understandably, that a $39 trillion national debt is dangerous, unsustainable, and requires immediate attention. But the debt has built up over decades and it will require a similar amount of time to resolve. A six percent cut year after year will impose a real hardship on millions of American families. Addressing the deficit will indeed require spending cuts. It will also require something Paul will absolutely never go for – tax hikes. And the process will take more than five years.
Still, his assessment of the situation is on target. Changes need to start now. For those keeping score at home, the deficit for FY 2025, which ended on Sept. 30, reached $1.8 trillion, the third highest total on record. This while Republicans, like Paul, control the White House and both congressional chambers. To his credit, Paul opposed virtually all spending increases.
“Our threat is not from foreign countries invading the U.S.,’’ Paul said on CNBC this week. “Our threat is from the destruction of our dollar. Our threat is from the debt.”
But where he’s really leaving his mark these days is his reluctance, like George Washington in his farewell address, to engage in foreign entanglements. While most congressional Republicans remain gung-ho over the war with Iran, which to date has cost $35 billion with 10,000 new troops slated to join the more than 50,000 on the ground in the Middle East, Paul is willing to stand his ground and yell “Halt.’’
Paul’s immediate objections are budgetary. The Trump administration is seeking an additional $700 billion for the Pentagon, much of which is destined for Iran.
“So, my first question will be where does the money come from?’’ Paul told WHAS-TV this week during a tour of Elizabethtown. “It’s gonna have to be borrowed. So even though I’m for a strong national defense, I think borrowing more money makes us weaker, and it impacts our national security in a negative way.”
There’s more. Trump, in obvious contravention of the Constitution and the War Powers Act which grants Congress the authority to declare war, has moved forward without explicit congressional consent. Paul isn’t buying in. On Wednesday he voted in support of a resolution to end the Middle East conflict, the lone Senate Republican to do so.
“The War Powers Act only says there’s three instances when a president can go to war – a declaration by Congress, and a(n) …authorization of force by Congress and an imminent threat,’’ Paul said on CNBC. “So really the debate now should be, is a 47-year-old conflict an imminent threat? Were there changes in their nuclear program that made this an imminent threat? And I don’t think the evidence is there that there was an imminent threat.’’
Appearing on Newsmax Wednesday to explain his vote, Paul maintained, “Well, you know, the Constitution is pretty clear. The Founding Fathers said that they didn’t want the power to declare or initiate war to be with the president. They wanted it to be with Congress.’’
Paul also figures in one of the biggest issues confronting the Trump administration in his second term – immigration. As chair of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, he remains an advocate for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, which has been embroiled in a controversy over procedures employed in apprehending undocumented individuals, particularly in Minneapolis. Two people who publicly objected to ICE’s heavy-handed tactics were shot and killed by immigration agents, leading to massive protests against the agency and a Democratic filibuster in the Senate blocking funding for ICE and parts of Customs and Border Protection.
The Senate Republican majority is plotting to push through funding under a parliamentary procedure that won’t require Democratic support. But Paul is advocating for a compromise with the administration acknowledging that mistakes were made in Minneapolis and elsewhere and that reforms are being implemented, a course he maintains should gain some Democratic support.
Paul is promoting one particular reform – that law enforcement obtain judicial instead of administrative search warrants before entering a domicile, saying on CNBC’s Squawk Box, “obeying the Fourth Amendment or the Constitution shouldn’t be too difficult.’’
Warrants signed by a judge should be required, Paul said, “for invading homes, for going into the home to get someone. We’ve always had judicial warrants. They’re administered and issued by local judges.
“It is something we fought the revolution over,’’ he said. “It was a big deal.’’
One thing blocking ICE funding, Paul said, is “this unwillingness to sort of admit, we made mistakes, we’re doing better.’’
“But, really to get Democrats on board, you need to tell them, these are the reforms that we’ve been instituted, have been instituted, and these are disciplinary actions that are going to occur for the people that were involved in the shootings and the killings,’’ Paul said. “And so I think we should see that, and it shouldn’t be that hard.’’
Last May, I wrote a column speculating that Paul may be looking to run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2028, having failed in his first effort in 2016. He has since acknowledged he is considering it.
What will make it interesting is if a candidate like Paul can emerge from under the MAGA cloud that has covered the Republican Party for 10 years now and send it in a new direction without a Trumpian blessing.
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Written by Bill Straub, a member of the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame. Cross-posted from the NKY Tribune.
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