Rand Paul is perhaps the most intriguing potential 2016 presidential candidate. Rand is not his father — committed libertarian Ron Paul, who developed a passionate but ultimately small movement of devoted followers — and he seems to have largely escaped the lazy media narrative that he is “just like his dad”. Like his father, Paul brings unorthodox Republican policy positions onto the national stage. Unlike his father, he may have the mainstream appeal to pull off a Republican presidential primary victory, at the very least. According to a July poll, he leads all other potential Republican candidates in New Hampshire, and is tied for the lead in Iowa.
Rand Paul has the potential to change the Republican Party. Even if he does not win the Republican presidential primary, the ideas he brings to the table might inspire policy shifts among Republican voters and politicians. It is too early to tell whether Paul’s flirtation with alternative positions will pay off, so he might be tempted to temper his platform in order to appeal to the traditional Republican primary voter. But doing so would be a grave mistake for the future of the party, as it is crucial that Republicans have substantive dialogue over hot-button issues such as mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes and America’s role in the international community. (Whether or not Paul’s policy suggestions are actually good ones is up for debate. I find many of them to be dubious.)
Paul brings the most diverse platform to the 2016 Republican field. Like practically all of his Republican colleagues in the Senate, he is a budget hawk, supporting deep cuts in government spending. He is also a committed social conservative, supporting a definition of marriage as between one man and one woman, and opposing abortion in all cases, including rape or incest. This is par for the course among potential Republican candidates.
But his penchant for tackling issues not traditionally addressed by Republicans distinguishes him from his prospective primary peers. For instance, Paul has compared the War on Drugs to Jim Crow legislation in its effect on African-American men, pointing out that mandatory minimum sentencing laws do not lead to the arrests of drug kingpins, but rather, to the incarceration — and often, the disenfranchisement — of thousands of low-level drug dealers. What’s more, Paul has partnered with Democratic Senators Patrick Leahy and Chris Murphy to tackle this issue, a stroke of bipartisanship that few of his Republican colleagues have matched.
Paul most notably differs from his Republican colleagues on issues of the military and national defense. He has called for sweeping defense cuts, opposed the PATRIOT Act, and has proposed that the United States eliminate foreign aid. He has not gone as far as his father, who once declared the United States should eliminate all military bases on foreign soil, but he has stood up for “libertarian conservatives” who do not view the Iraq War as a quintessentially “conservative” approach to foreign policy. In an April editorial for National Review, Paul suggests neo-conservatism must be tempered with a dash of libertarianism, in recognition of government’s inability to remake the world in its precise preferred image. William Buckley himself, one of the intellectual godfathers of modern conservatism, decried the decision to invade Iraq. As Jeffrey Hart wrote in a 2008 column, Buckley “thought the conservative movement had committed intellectual suicide” by supporting the war with almost no dissent. If real foreign policy discourse among conservatives is dead, then perhaps Rand Paul can help revive it.
If nothing else, Rand Paul brings a breath of fresh air to a Republican Party that desperately needs it. My hope is that Paul will continue to speak out on issues not ordinarily broached by Republicans, in addition to advocating for a more limited view of foreign policy than the brand practiced under both the Bush and Obama Administrations. I say it is my “hope” because evidence has suggested, in recent days, that Paul may be reshaping his foreign policy stance to be more consistent with the Republican platform of the last ten years. As the Wall Street Journal pointed out, Paul has backed airstrikes against Islamic militants in Syria and Iraq, bringing him “more in line with the GOP mainstream.”
A shift to the center might make him more appealing to the average Republican voter, but Paul should be careful not to lose his distinctiveness in the process. What makes Paul intriguing is his willingness to buck party lines, to reach out to minorities through his condemnation of mandatory minimums, and to hold a foreign policy position several rungs to the left of Hillary Clinton and other prominent Democrats. He has the power to start a worthwhile dialogue within the Republican Party. It is my hope that he does not throw this away.
John Connolly is an Opinion Columnist for The Cavalier Daily. His columns run bi-weekly on Thursdays.
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