Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky has become a celebrity, due to his 13 hour filibuster, postponing consideration of John Brennan, a twenty five year veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency, to become its head, The purpose of the filibuster was to gain a guarantee from the Obama Administration that drones would not be used on American soil against American non combatant citizens.
It has caused the American Civil Liberties Union to back Rand Paul, and some Democrats as well, including Oregon Senator Ron Wyden, as well as several progressive journals and web sites.
But the biggest manifestation has been the split developing in the Republican Party between the Tea Party Movement supporters (such as Mike Lee, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio) and the neocons (John McCain and Lindsey Graham, particularly), and this is great news for the Democratic Party!
Rand Paul is now being talked about more seriously as a potential Republican nominee for President, a thought that makes 2012 candidates for the nomination look as the beginning of a trend of continued disaster that will only become worse in 2016.
Bring on Rand Paul, and watch the GOP split asunder, and watch Rand Paul make Mitt Romney, John McCain, and Bob Dole, past GOP Presidential losers, appear brilliant by comparison! RIck Perry, Rick Santorum, Michele Bachmann, Ron Paul, Herman Cain were all embarrassing and disastrous, but Rand Paul would be the most disastrous nominee in history!
If Rand Paul is nominated, and even if he divides the Republican Party while losing the nomination, he will only insure a massive popular vote victory by any Democratic nominee for President, particularly Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, but including others, such as Martin O’Malley, Andrew Cuomo, Elizabeth Warren, or Mark Warner!
It’s been mentioned, many times (especially by NBC’s Chuck Todd), that all the prevailing Republican presidential tickets dating back to the 1950s have included a Nixon or Bush. That was applicable to the presidential/vice-presidential elections of 1952, 1956, 1968, and 1972 with Richard Nixon; 1980, 1984, 1988, 2000, and 2004 with George Bush Sr. (from the first three) and George Bush Jr. (from the last two).
This may be a coincidence, but I think not. Perhaps we should be crediting them for helping create two different types of realignments. Nixon worked the southern strategy (“the future of the Republican party”) and, with George Bush unseated in 1992, saw his strategy countered after the Republicans’ landslide honeymoons of the 1970s and 1980s with the north/northeast—formerly the base of the GOP before Nixon’s first election—having become realigned to vote for the Democratic party. (For example, Bill Clinton became the second Democrat, since the two parties first competed against each other in 1856, to carry all six states in New England. Particularly groundbreaking: Vermont, which voted Republican in every election from 1856 to 1988 except saying no to Barry Goldwater in 1964, and which historically tends to vote polar opposite of the deep-south duo Alabama and Mississippi.) And we do have Bush Jr., who saw Hispanics as the future of the Republican Party, get the country into two wars (harken back to Lyndon Johnson and Vietman, causing the realignment election of 1968), presiding over a party full of corruption and with attempts to anhilate the community of the LGBT. (And that was done with the aid of closeted congressmen and a likewise closeted RNC chairman to boot!) Now, the GOP is facing unfavorable demographic trends—and they’re also seeing that their party ideology is out of touch with the voting electorate.
So, if we’re to believe that only a Nixon or Bush can win for the GOP the presidency…we apparently should look to ex-Florida Gov. Jeb Bush or one of the absent-from-the-spotlight Nixon members. No. The next Republican presidential victory will finally break that pattern.
All of this is purposely avoiding Rand Paul. But I won’t really avoid that topic. The U.S. senator is about as anti-establishment (in terms of his role in his party) as one can get. The thing about the appeal of Rand and his ex-congressman father Ron, is that they are not as in love with getting into [profitable] wars as their other party members. The establishment of the Republican party does not like that. Ron was confined to a seat in congress (the 14th Congressional district in Texas, which includes Galveston). Ron’s presidential candidancies were, at the worst (for the GOP), colorful. Rand is the upstart who upset Kentucky colleague (and Senate minority leader) Mitch McConnell, in 2010, by defeating in the party’s primary McConnell’s preferred pick (what’s-his-name?).
The thing that doesn’t bother me about Sen. Rand Paul is that he was right to be bothered about the drones. I don’t trust the supposed use of them. The fact that Dick Cheney was on Charlie Rose’s PBS program a few weeks ago in support of them … that says plenty. I don’t support their use from a Republican or Democratic president. So, I actually think that Rand Paul was correct to be addressing this. But coming back to the topic: Rand Paul is not electable, for the presidency, because his party would either sabotage or root against him in his bid for the nomination. This was also the case in 2004 with the Democratic party with Howard Dean. (That year’s eventual nominee, John Kerry, did vote for going to war in Iraq.) The parties do not want nominees who come across, to them, as anti-establishment. They’re considered, in whatever way, a threat what makes many in Washington, D.C. feel most comfortable—maintaining the status quo.
D, you make an interesting point about Rand Paul and Howard Dean, that the major parties have never nominated a candidate that is noticeably anti war, although Obama was a critic of the Iraq War while not being truly anti war, as he made clear about Afghanistan during the campaign.
You left out that Nixon was on the ballot in 1960 and Bush Senior in 1992, so Nixon was on the ballot a total of FIVE times, not four times, and Bush father and son were on a total of SIX times, not five times. Were Jeb Bush to run, the Bush trend would continue.
Party realignment has certainly gone on, with New England and California having become reliably Democratic in the past twenty years, and Texas reliably Republican, but of course, Texas could be turning “blue” soon, another sign of GOP problems with the electorate, including Hispanics, gays, and women.
Thanks again for your contribution!
Ronald writes: “D, you make an interesting point about Rand Paul and Howard Dean, that the major parties have never nominated a candidate that is noticeably anti war, although Obama was a critic of the Iraq War while not being truly anti war, as he made clear about Afghanistan during the campaign.”
I’ve never really gone into the issue of President Obama and Iraq because he couldn’t vote for or against. He won the Illinois U.S. senate seat in 2004 as a Democratic pickup. James Carville, who was among numerous political pundits who put out a post-Election 2008 book, basically stated that [then-New York U.S. Sen.] Hillary Clinton did not win her party’s presidential nomination in part because she voted in support of going into war in Iraq. That’s speculative. And it is also the case with President Obama because he may have indeed voted for the war in Iraq. Then again, maybe not. I live in Michigan. My home state’s two U.S. senators, Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow, did not vote to go to war in Iraq. Years later, they both voted to extend that atrocious Patriot Act wanted by President Obama and his administration. So, I can’t get caught up now in thinking that the 44th president might have been consistent…had he the opportunity to cast a Senate vote saying “yes” or “no” to war in Iraq.
“You left out that Nixon was on the ballot in 1960 and Bush Senior in 1992, so Nixon was on the ballot a total of FIVE times, not four times, and Bush father and son were on a total of SIX times, not five times. Were Jeb Bush to run, the Bush trend would continue.”
Well, I did write “prevailing Republican presidential tickets” so that I wouldn’t need to mention other election cycles for which a Nixon or Bush was on the presidential/vice-presidential ballot.
“Party realignment has certainly gone on, with New England and California having become reliably Democratic in the past twenty years, and Texas reliably Republican, but of course, Texas could be turning ‘blue’ soon, another sign of GOP problems with the electorate, including Hispanics, gays, and women.”
I touch on this is another of your threads. (Can I call it a thread? It’s certainly a different “topic.”)
It has to do with realigning presidential election periods (1860-1892: Republican; 1896-1928: Republican; 1932-1964: Democratic; 1968-2004: Republican. Possibly 2008-20xx: Democratic). It addresses today’s Top 10 states’ past performances from those periods and their voting records.
We have two parties right now that have changed campaign strategy (just go to the states which are deemed “competitive”).
If this is a realigning period for the Democrats, it’s tough for the No. 2 state to avoid all national tides in every presidential elections won by Democrats. This is also true with the No. 8 state, Georgia, and the No. 15 state, Arizona, because it’s not the “swing states” alone which determine presidential election outcomes. But one does have to “show up” in order to have some choice. To campaign.
I think Democrats should be moving the bar. The trajectory in 2012 was that President Obama wasn’t going to match his 2008 numbers (usually the opposite happens with re-elected incumbents; they gain).
Rather than settle…the Democrats should experience a grand landslide of a 400-plus-vote victory in the Electoral College. Over the last 100 years’ worth of election cycles (1912 to 2012), there were 11 winning candidacies where the victor carried 80 percent or more of the available states. Texas was in the column, every time, for Woodrow Wilson (1912, 1916), Herbert Hoover (1928), Franklin Roosevelt (1932, 1936), Dwight Eisenhower (1952, 1956), native son Lyndon Johnson (1964), Richard Nixon (1972), Ronald Reagan (1980, 1984), and native son George Bush (1988).
Yes, I too would like to see Texas turn blue!
“Thanks again for your contribution!”
Glad to do it.
I wrote, “Texas was in the column, every time, for Woodrow Wilson (1912, 1916), . . .”
Strike 1916. Woodrow Wilson won 40/48 states in 1912. In 1916, he was reduced to 30/48. (All other cited election years apply.)