Rand Paul Underscores the Tea Party's Connection to Race 20MAI10

More on that neo-nazi fascist racist pig, that drippings tea bagger Rand Paul. I know I shouldn't say things like that, but I can't stand deliberate ignorance and arrogance  like Rand Paul's, especially when he is so very wrong. By the by, if you haven't seen the Rachel Maddow video clips you owe it to yourself to watch them.....they are available on this blog.....as is the interview with NPR.

I'll take Rand Paul at his word. He's opposed to racial discrimination.
However, he obviously supports allowing businesses to engage in racial discrimination with impunity. Evidently, if the government says it's against the law to run a whites-only business, this is a bridge too far for Rand Paul.
Congratulations, Republicans. The man you chose to run for the vacant U.S. Senate seat from Kentucky and the man who delivered the highest profile political victory for the tea party movement has turned out to have some very twisted ideas about civil rights and race.
On the Rachel Maddow Show last night, Paul suffered an epic meltdown -- more or less admitting that he doesn't support the Americans with Disabilities Act and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which "prohibits discrimination by covered employers on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin." In other words, Paul implied that the First Amendment allows any business to be "white-only" if it chooses and the government isn't allowed to interfere.
But he's against racial discrimination. He said so.
Rand Paul's extremist position on the Civil Right Act underscores a major flaw in libertarian ideology, and it further cements the connection between the tea party movement and race.
Libertarianism, which both Ron and Rand Paul famously embrace, suggests the free market is a significant and vital component of liberty. Private businesses are capable of accomplishing everything, and government can't interfere or regulate those businesses in any way. The free market will police itself. Just leave it be.
Private industry can pave roads, educate children, put out fires and protect our streets from drunk drivers. It can shuttle our kids to corporate schools and back, it can provide clean water to our homes and they can guarantee our meat and vegetables aren't contaminated with diseases. And by the way, in a nation that's 70 percent white, private businesses can choose to do all of these things for white people only. Private businesses can provide everything we need, but only offer those services to white people.
And these businesses, according to libertarian ideology, can form monopolies if they want to. As we're all painfully aware from the health care debate, monopolies occur even in our current government-regulated system. Imagine what would happen in a totally unregulated free market.
So, in Rand Paul's utopia, not only can Woolworth's prevent black people from sitting at its soda stand if it wants to, but a private, free market police corporation can set up shop in a community, buy up any competing police corporations and announce that it no longer serves black people or Jewish people or Hispanic people or gay people -- any minority segment of the population.
Or, when public schools are eliminated, a free market education franchise can form a monopoly and ostensibly can choose turn away non-white students, potentially excluding minorities from receiving an education. And all of these businesses are allowed to consolidate with each other, forming larger monopolies, and the ability of the people to effectively fight back simultaneously decreases as unregulated corporation's financial and market power increases.
Of course these free market mega-corporations might not admit that they're engaging in discriminatory practices. Bad PR. They could lie and say that all are welcome, but then create unseen rules that prevent minorities from enrolling. No wheelchair ramps, or prohibitively expensive tuition for poorer students and so forth.
Who would hold them accountable for their lies? Who would have the financial and organizational wherewithal to take on too big to fail corporate franchises like, say, the Halliburton Police Department? Or the Bechtel Water Corporation? Or the News Corp School System?
Most libertarians claim to oppose racial discrimination, but they ultimately support a system that utterly ignores it as a business practice. Put another way, it's like being opposed to cancer, but in favor of asbestos. Rand Paul, to say nothing of a long list of other Republicans, subscribes to this free market libertarian philosophy. And he's also become a champion of the tea party movement.
A gaffe, they say, is when a politician tells the truth out loud. Rand Paul revealed that there is, in fact, a strong racial component of the tea party movement. I don't know if he realizes it or not, but Paul actually helped to vindicate anyone who has pointed out the tea party's connection with race.
Where there's racial smoke, there's racial fire. And the preponderance of evidence points to a large and serious racial aspect of the tea party. Rand Paul just happened to conveniently let it slip out, as did tea party leaders Dale Robertson and Mark Williams, who recently said that Muslims worship a "monkey god."
I can understand a movement based around smaller government and lower taxes, as long as that movement is honest and consistent (this one hasn't been, as evidenced by its eight years of virtual silence). But the positions on race held by Rand Paul and others lead me to believe that smaller government and lower taxes are merely cosmetic -- disguising uglier positions and serving as code language designed to rally certain crowds who hear these concepts and think "welfare queens" and "lazy free loaders."
Small government, in the parlance of tea party leaders, now includes allowing businesses to discriminate against minorities. Lower taxes, meanwhile, only means lower taxes for upper middle class and wealthy Americans. (When the allegedly anti-tax movement learned that 47 percent of Americans didn't pay federal income taxes in 2009 due to tax cuts, they were outraged.)
The Republican Party, for its part, continues to engage in Southern Strategy politics. This isn't a matter of opinion. It's empirical fact. The Republican Southern Strategy is real and it inextricably binds the party to the exploitation of anti-minority bigotry for political advantage. Arizona's anti-Hispanic law is the most recent example in a long history including the "Harold! Call me!" commercial, Lee Atwater, Jesse Helms, Pat Buchanan and the Nixon White House. Therefore the Republican Party has a considerably large racial -- even racist -- component that's in operation today. Right now. If it exploits white racial prejudices a wedge for political gain, how can there not be a bond between the two? How can it not be a component?
Likewise, it's become crystal clear throughout the past year or so, going as far back as Sarah Palin's "community organizer" dog whistle during the campaign, to the wide variety of racially insensitive protest signs and all the rest of it, that the tea party isn't just about smaller government and lower taxes. It's also about race. And with a candidate for Senate like Rand Paul straddling three racially unfriendly political worlds -- the GOP, the tea party and libertarianism -- hopefully this ugliness will be taken seriously now by mainstream Americans and help to discredit large chunks of the tea party movement.

Rand Paul On Civil Rights Controversy: I Shouldn't Have Talked To Rachel Maddow [UPDATED]

Rand Paul is a neo-nazi racist fascist pig, and the video's below from the Rachel Maddow show show him proving it in his own words. He doesn't believe the government has the right to mandate private business not discriminate, but that they should have the right to decide who can and can't not eat at their lunch counters, shop in their stores, swim in their pools, play tennis or gulf or work out at their clubs. He is pathetic and disgusting. This post includes the entire interview on Rachel Maddow from 19MAI10, the article from Huffington Post from 20MAI10 and the NPR All Things Considered interview with link to listen to it from 19MAI10.





See new updates below.

The morning after he declined to endorse the totality of the Civil Rights Act in his much-discussed appearance on the Rachel Maddow Show, Dr. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) copped to feeling regret -- not over his comments, but rather his decision to be interviewed by Maddow in the first place.

"It was a poor political decision and probably won't be happening anytime in the near future," the Tea Party endorsed Senate candidate said on the Laura Ingraham show on Thursday morning. "Because, yeah, they can play things and want to say, 'Oh you believed in beating up people that were trying to sit in restaurants in the 1960s.' And that is such a ridiculous notion and something that no rational person is in favor of. [But] she went on and on about that."

Blaming the messenger is a tactic often used by politicians when the message itself is to blame. And Paul's appearance on the Maddow show on Wednesday night was anything but bland. For 15 minutes, he and the host went back and forth in debating where there should be limits to government efforts to desegregate private institutions (Paul was skeptical that the government should play any role at all). But the notion that the MSNBC host was somehow unloading liberal hostilities on him doesn't jibe with the fact that Paul got the same type of treatment during an NPR interview earlier that morning -- or, for that matter, that a conservative voice on MSNBC, Joe Scarborough, seemed aghast at his answers. "He needs to come up with an answer today, or Kentucky will be Arizona: a battleground for ugly, racial politics," Scarborough said. "He has 24 hours."

(Paul, in fact, chose Maddow's show to initially launch his Senate candidacy a year prior to last night's appearance.)

Paul did seem to draw back (or tighten) his discussion of the Civil Rights Act during his interview with Ingraham.

"These are settled issues in the Civil Rights Act," he said. "I have no intention of bringing up anything related to the Civil Rights Act... I think [segregation] is sort of a stain and blight on our history -- so, no, I have never really favored any change in the Civil Rights Act or any of that. But they have seemed to unleash the loony left on me."
Story continues below

UPDATE I: Rand Paul's campaign has now issued a lengthy statement about his views on the Civil Rights Act. The key quote: "I unequivocally state that I will not support any efforts to repeal the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

"I believe we should work to end all racism in American society and staunchly defend the inherent rights of every person. I have clearly stated in prior interviews that I abhor racial discrimination and would have worked to end segregation. Even though this matter was settled when I was 2, and no serious people are seeking to revisit it except to score cheap political points, I unequivocally state that I will not support any efforts to repeal the Civil Rights Act of 1964."


"Let me be clear: I support the Civil Rights Act because I overwhelmingly agree with the intent of the legislation, which was to stop discrimination in the public sphere and halt the abhorrent practice of segregation and Jim Crow laws."

"As I have said in previous statements, sections of the Civil Rights Act were debated on Constitutional grounds when the legislation was passed. Those issues have been settled by federal courts in the intervening years."

"My opponent's statement on MSNBC Wednesday that I favor repeal of the Civil Rights Act was irresponsible and knowingly false. I hope he will correct the record and retract his claims."

"The issue of civil rights is one with a tortured history in this country. We have made great strides, but there is still work to be done to ensure the great promise of Liberty is granted to all Americans."

"This much is clear: The federal government has far overreached in its power grabs. Just look at the recent national healthcare schemes, which my opponent supports. The federal government, for the first time ever, is mandating that individuals purchase a product. The federal government is out of control, and those who love liberty and value individual and state's rights must stand up to it."

"These attacks prove one thing for certain: the liberal establishment is desperate to keep leaders like me out of office, and we are sure to hear more wild, dishonest smears during this campaign."

UPDATE II: TPM highlights another potentially problematic view of Paul's that came up during the same NPR interview during which Paul discussed the Civil Rights Act.

Rand Paul's interview with NPR's All Things Considered last night was the first sign the the freshly-minted Kentucky Republican Senate nominee might have some explaining to do today. The blogosphere is already alight with Paul's interview with Rachel Maddow, but his interview on NPR shows that his libertarian views go deeper than just his take on the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Speaking with NPR's Robert Siegel, Paul made the case for less federal involvement in workplace and environmental regulation, including his opposition to some components of the Americans With Disabilities Act. [...]


Here's the interview in a nutshell, from Paul's response to a question about whether or not he thinks the ADA is an example of federal "overreach":

"I think a lot of things could be handled locally," Paul told Siegel. "For example, I think that we should try to do everything we can to allow for people with disabilities and handicaps...I think if you have a two-story office and you hire someone who's handicapped, it might be reasonable to let him have an office on the first floor rather than the government saying you have to have a $100,000 elevator. And I think when you get to solutions like that, the more local the better, and the more common sense the decisions are, rather than having a federal government make those decisions."




Rand Paul Says He Has A Tea Party 'Mandate'
May 19, 2010

Rand Paul, the winner in Tuesday night's Senate primary race in Kentucky, tells Robert Siegel that he has a Tea Party mandate -- a mandate that calls for good government, term limits, and a balanced budget amendment, among other things. He talks about his belief that more issues should be dealt with on a local level rather than on a federal level.

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ROBERT SIEGEL, host:

One of the Republican winners last night, Rand Paul of Kentucky, can credit his success in part to a third-party movement, the Tea Party.

Dr. RAND PAUL (Republican Senatorial Candidate, Kentucky): I have a message, a message from the Tea Party, a message that is loud and clear and does not mince words. We've come to take our government back.

(Soundbite of cheering)

SIEGEL: That was Rand Paul last night. And he joins us now. Welcome to the program.

Dr. PAUL: Glad to be with you.

SIEGEL: You've run largely on an anti-Washington platform. You spoke of the Tea Party. How faithful a member of the Republican Party do you expect to be if you're elected to the Senate in November?

Dr. PAUL: Well, it's kind of interesting. You know, I went to my first national convention in 1976, when my family supported Reagan over Ford, so we've always been Republicans, but we've always wanted the Republican Party to be the party of fiscally conservative, limited-government types. And I think, sometimes, we haven't done that as well. You know, when Republicans were in charge, we doubled the debt. But, now, our concern is the Democrats are in charge and they're tripling the debt. So, really, our concern is that we want smaller government. We want to avoid some kind of debt crisis, like what's happening in Greece currently.

SIEGEL: You've said that business should have the right to refuse service to anyone, and that the Americans with Disabilities Act, the ADA, was an overreach by the federal government. Would you say the same by extension of the 1964 Civil Rights Act?

Dr. PAUL: What I've always said is that I'm opposed to institutional racism, and I would've, had I've been alive at the time, I think, had the courage to march with Martin Luther King to overturn institutional racism, and I see no place in our society for institutional racism.

SIEGEL: But are you saying that had you been around at the time, you would have - hoped that you would have marched with Martin Luther King but voted with Barry Goldwater against the 1964 Civil Rights Act?

Dr. PAUL: Well, actually, I think it's confusing on a lot of cases with what actually was in the civil rights case because, see, a lot of the things that actually were in the bill, I'm in favor of. I'm in favor of everything with regards to ending institutional racism. So I think there's a lot to be desired in the civil rights. And to tell you the truth, I haven't really read all through it because it was passed 40 years ago and hadn't been a real pressing issue in the campaign, on whether we're going for the Civil Rights Act.

SIEGEL: But it's been one of the major developments in American history in the course of your life. I mean, do you think the '64 Civil Rights Act or the ADA for that matter were just overreaches and that business shouldn't be bothered by people with the basis in law to sue them for redress?

Dr. PAUL: Right. I think a lot of things could be handled locally. For example, I think that we should try to do everything we can to allow for people with disabilities and handicaps. You know, we do it in our office with wheelchair ramps and things like that. I think if you have a two-story office and you hire someone who's handicapped, it might be reasonable to let him have an office on the first floor rather than the government saying you have to have a $100,000 elevator. And I think when you get to the solutions like that, the more local the better, and the more common sense the decisions are, rather than having a federal government make those decisions.

SIEGEL: How do you feel about the degree of federal involvement in oversight of the mining and oil drilling industries?

Dr. PAUL: I think that most manufacturing and mining should be under the purview of state authorities. It's kind of interesting that, you know, when the EPA was originally instituted, it wasn't even passed by Congress. It was passed as an executive order by Nixon. And I think there is some overreach in the sense that the EPA now says: You know what, if Congress doesn't pass greenhouse emissions regulations or testing, we'll simply do it on our own. I think that's an arrogance of a regulatory body ran amok.

SIEGEL: Well, Rand Paul, just looking ahead to the campaign, now as you look forward to November, what, in a nutshell, do you assume your election campaign is going to be about as you run for the Senate from Kentucky?

Dr. PAUL: Well, I think we have a Tea Party mandate, and that Tea Party mandate is for good-government type of things, things like term limits, things like a balanced budget amendment, things like read the bills for goodness sakes, things like that maybe Congress should only pass legislation that they apply to themselves as well. Also, that each piece of legislation they pass should point to where in the Constitution they get the authority for it.

I think you'll find that these are measures that have great bipartisan support, and so I expect, not only did we do well in the primary, I think we'll win by a wide margin in the fall because we're going to get a lot of independents and conservative Democrats coming to us.

SIEGEL: Well, Rand Paul, thank you very much for talking with us today.

Dr. PAUL: Thank you.

SIEGEL: Rand Paul, who won yesterday's Republican primary in the state of Kentucky. He'll be the candidate to succeed retiring Republican Senator Jim Bunning.