Rand Paul stops kowtowing to Trump in welcome return to sanity on war powers
Ah, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul. Our own Elf King of the Contrarians, lover of liberty, self-licensed eye doctor, knower of so many things, so sure he is correct about them all.
Once the boy wonder of the Tea Party libertarians, U.S. Sen. Paul used to excite both the left and right with eloquent jeremiads on debt, foreign intervention and warrantless wire-tapping. When he ran for president in 2016, he boldly and accurately called Donald Trump a “delusional narcissist and an orange-faced windbag.”
It was disappointing, therefore, when the delusional narcissist became president and Paul quickly kowtowed, ignoring the expanding debt from Trump’s tax cuts, even going so far as to try to out the whistleblower who sparked presidential impeachment proceedings. Never mind that Paul once pushed a plan to expand the federal whistleblower act to contractors as well as employees. Never mind he once told undocumented immigrants: “We will find a place for you.”
So it was nice to see our less predictable Lord Aqua Buddha return last week when Paul said he would side with a Democratic measure to uphold the War Powers Act, which confines the ability to start wars to the legislative branch. A similar measure already passed the House on Thursday, with two other Kentucky Congressmen, Northern Kentucky’s Rep. Thomas Massie and Louisville Rep. John Yarmuth, voted in favor on the measure, which now moves over to the Senate. Massie was one of only three Republicans to vote for it.
Paul was also praised by no less than the National Review, which said on Friday that Paul was more patriotic than Number 1 Kowtower Lindsay Graham: “There is, after all, a reason why the Founders gave Congress the sole power to declare war in the first place. They were explicitly rejecting the English model, the one that they fought to be freed from, where the entire country could find itself at war based on than the whims of the king.”
Exactly. And now that we have a king, now that we measure patriotism only by blind devotion to that monarch, it’s become quite clear that Trump’s order to kill Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani was based on some very hazy information underlined by a clear need to distract our attention away from impeachment, what the New York Times called “shifting justifications.”
Paul’s position is patriotic and pragmatic. Surely, Republicans know there might some day be a Democrat in the White House? Surely you don’t want to set too many precedents on executive power and war?
On Sunday, author James Mann opined in the Times that the last time these powers were debated, it was between different factions in the administration of George W. Bush. Now, he said, “the Republican Party has no guiding principles; it has only Mr. Trump, who demands loyalty to himself as its leader.”
Now is the time we need our leaders to stick to high principles and common sense for the good of our nation instead of propping up this morally bankrupt administration. It’s nice, and all too rare, to see some of it coming from Kentucky.
This story was originally published January 13, 2020 at 11:33 AM.
