Rand Paul Dodges Questions About Changes In His Foreign Policy Positions
Rand Paul has changed position on several foreign policy issues, but he doesn't seem to want to talk about it.
One day after announcing his candidacy for the White House, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul appeared on NBC’s Today show and got somewhat testy when he was asked about what appear to be changes in his position on several hot button foreign policy issues:
Sen. Rand Paul clashed with “Today” show host Savannah Guthrie over her line of questioning during an interview Wednesday morning, criticizing her for editorializing over perceived changes in his political views since his election to the Senate.
“You have had views on foreign policy in the past that were somewhat unorthodox, but you seem to have changed over the years,” Guthrie told the Kentucky Republican, who was appearing via satellite from Nashua, New Hampshire. “You once said Iran was not a threat, now you say it is. You once proposed ending foreign aid to Israel, now you support it, at least for the time being, and you once offered to drastically cut … defense spending.”
Paul attempted to speak as Guthrie continued.
“Why don’t we let me explain instead of talking over me, OK?” Paul interjected. “Before we go through a litany of things you say I’ve changed on, why don’t you ask me a question, ‘Have I changed my opinion?’ That would sort of a better way to approach an interview.”
“Is Iran still not a threat?” Guthrie asked in the cross-talk.
“No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Listen, you’ve editorialized,” Paul said. “Let me answer a question. You ask a question, and you say, ‘Have your views changed?’ instead of editorializing and saying my views have changed.”
Paul said he has come to the realization that limiting foreign aid to other countries “will have to be done gradually.”
“My opinion has always been that we shouldn’t borrow money from China to send it to any country — Pakistan, Israel, or any other country,” he said. “But I also realize that things will have to be done gradually, and if we are going to try to eliminate or reduce foreign aid, why don’t we start with the countries that hate us, that burn our flag. And the one thing that is true is that Israel doesn’t burn our flag, and so I haven’t proposed removing aid from Israel —”
“But you once did,” Guthrie said.
“But I still agree with my original precept, which is,” Paul continued. “Let me answer the question. I still agree with my original statement years ago that ultimately, all nations should be free of foreign aid because we shouldn’t borrow money to do it.”
Here’s the video of the relevant part of the interview:
There’s not any real question that Paul has changed, if not his position on the issues that Guthrie mentioned in the interview, at least the emphasis that he places on them when he addresses them publicly. This has become especially noticeable and apparent over the course of the past year as ISIS has become the focus of American foreign policy in the Middle East as well as being the latest source of terrorist threats against Americans. In the past, Paul’s non-interventionist foreign policy positions, which have been heavily criticized by a number of his fellow Republicans, seemed to be receiving a warm reception among some segments of the Republican coalition, likely due both to the general American war fatigue in the wake of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and what can only be called a reflexive opposition to the President. In any case, with the rise of ISIS and the crisis between Russia and Ukraine, along with the Israeli war with Hamas last summer and the ongoing debate over how to deal with Iran’s nuclear program, the foreign policy zeitgeist inside the Republican Party has changed significantly and it has become clear that Paul is much more vulnerable on foreign policy than he was a year ago.
It seems to be largely in response to those facts that Paul has noticeably changed both the substance and the emphasis of his foreign policy positions. As Guthrie notes, Paul no longer dismisses Iran as no real threat to the United States and now holds a position on the Iranian nuclear program that is largely indistinguishable from any other Republican’s position, This is exemplified most notably by the fact that he was among the 47 Senators who signed Tom Cotton’s “open letter” to the Iranian leadership, although he later tried to argue that he did so for the purpose of strengthening the President’s bargaining position. Paul has also notably toned down his rhetoric regarding foreign aid to Israel, and he was about as voiciferous in his support for Israel during last summer’s war as any other Republican. Denying that he has changed positions on these issues is to deny reality and, in this day and age, not really a very smart political strategy since everything a politicians says and writes is essentially available instantaneously.
Rather than acknowledging the fact that he’s changed positions, though, Paul used the opportunity to turn the interview into what can only be described as an attack on the media. Ed Kilgore, who is admittedly no fan of Paul’s, suggests that this may have been his intention all along:
You have to figure this was planned, since Guthrie’s question was eminently predictable (though I guess he didn’t anticipate she’d string three “flip-flops” together in one question). So is he simply trying to dictate the “narrative” about his candidacy? Or is he trying to counter the conservative taunt that he’s a liberal media darling by baiting an interviewer into some unpleasantness?
If it’s the latter, you have to wonder if it was the best idea to do this on Today, a show whose audience isn’t quite the same as the people who stomped and cheered every time Newt Gingrich chewed out a debate panelist in 2012.
The best response to Kilgore, of course, is that if this was pre-planned then the intended audience wasn’t the people watching Today this morning but Republican base voters who would see this exchange once the video went viral, as it has. This kind of combativeness with the media may not play well with the people watching Today while drinking the morning coffee, but it will no doubt be cheered by Republican base voters who already view the media as the enemy to begin with. So if it was deliberate, then it was done not to handle the inevitable flip-flopping charge but to throw red meat to Republican base voters, and it probably worked in that respect.
All that being said, though, the fact remains that Paul will likely be forced to deal with the charges that he has changed his position on these and other issues at some point. Friendly media figures like Sean Hannity will never bring it up, of course, but you can be sure that at least some of his opponents will as will the various outside groups that have already started to band together to attack Paul because of his views on foreign policy. At some point, he’ll have to deal with the charge that he’s changed his position, and he’ll have to deal with the things he’s said on these issues in the past, and he’ll have to deal with charges that he has changed his position on these issues due to political expediency. Telling a news anchor to shut up may work for now, but it isn’t going to work on the debate stage.
http://america.aljazeera.com/blogs/scrutineer/2015/4/7/sandal-scandal-rand-paul-flip-flops-on-what-to-call-flip-flops.html
he’s washed.
The question I have is whether Doug will, after watching Rand Paul, finally have his Santa Claus moment.
You know the Santa Claus moment. You’re a little kid, but you’ve started noticing some holes in the whole Santa Claus story. How does a fat man come down a tiny chimney? Why does Santa look one way at Macy’s and another way at Nordstrom? How can he possibly get to all those places in a single night?
The questions mount up until the bright child suddenly realizes: there is no Santa Claus! It was all a con game!
Now we’re seeing a True Libertarian Stalwart, son of the most famous of Libertarian Stalwart’s having to fudge and hedge and weasel his way around his True Libertarian “principles.”
Mr. Paul, welcome to Reality. Reality is an amazing world where absolutely none of your True Libertarian principles works. Reality is a place where True Libertarians slowly realize that the only people who support them are fvckin’ nuts. Reality is a place where your facile, simple-minded True Libertarian positions run into complicated questions that reveal your True Libertarian principles to be nonsense.
Mr. Paul is thin, but not thin enough to get down a chimney. Mr. Paul looks different depending on which mall he’s in. Mr. Paul can’t possibly mean what he’s saying.
And now young Doug, true believer, has questions. Will he figure out the answer? Will he have his Santa Claus moment? Or will he sullenly retreat into a No True Scotsman fantasy?
The most disturbing thing about this is the way he talks down to Guthrie, and that he did the same thing to CNBC’s Kelly Evans just a couple months ago.
I guess he just doesn’t like them uppity women journalists.
No matter – being condescending to women is always a sure-fire winner.
““No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Listen, you’ve editorialized,” Paul said. “Let me answer a question. You ask a question, and you say, ‘Have your views changed?’ instead of editorializing and saying my views have changed.””
In addition to being an opthamologist and a politician, he is now a reporter. What a renaissance man!
@C. Clavin:
“I guess he just doesn’t like them uppity women journalists.”
He does it with male reporters as well.
“Paul “grew testy” during the exchange, according to Elliot, saying at one point: “I gave you about a five-minute answer. Put in my five-minute answer.””
Maybe it’s just that he doesn’t expect to actually have to explain his contradictions.
The takeaway from this is that the Republican Party is deeply fractured, and trying to appeal to all of them while angering none of them is more difficult than herding cats. Paul doesn’t have either the temperament or the political skills to pull it off. I’m not sure that any candidate on their bench does.
Doesn’t bode well for their electoral viability. Given how the GOP is currently (dysfunctionally) positioned, I’ll count that as a positive.
Didn’t I say that Paul was going to pull a Mitt Romney?
The Paul fanbois will totally ignore all his contradictions, of course. They’ll excuse it as “playing to the base”.
But considering how many libertarians have been able to reconcile their belief system with the lack of libertarianism ever having worked in history* are we really surprised?
* Dude, if the only example you can come up with is 9th-century Icelandic town hall meetings, you’ve got a problem.
OT, but Dzokhar Tsarnaev has been found guilty on all counts. Not surprising.
Another two-letter word repeated: Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha HA!
Dude, you’re running for president. There’s gonna be some “editorializing.” Rand needs to go to the store and pick himself up an alligator suit. Get him some tougher skin.
@HarvardLaw92:
“The takeaway from this is that the Republican Party is deeply fractured, and trying to appeal to all of them while angering none of them is more difficult than herding cats. Paul doesn’t have either the temperament or the political skills to pull it off. I’m not sure that any candidate on their bench does.”
I think Walker comes closest, as he is broadly acceptable to all factions, which is why I’ve thought he had the best chance in the primary for months now. Whether that’s enough to win is an open question.
How does stating the fact that his positions have changed become editorializing?
It’s like Republicans live in this world of denial. If I change my positions but say I haven’t changed my positions, then my positions haven’t changed. Cheney…if I torture but say it’s not torture then it’s not torture. Ryan…If I dismantle Medicare…but call a voucher system, which is completely different in nature, Medicare…then I haven’ dismantled Medicare.
It’s like Orwell on acid. The sad thing is that nearly half the people, and apparently all the pundits, are duped by this rigmarole.
@Moosebreath: Walker presided over the downward spiral of Wisconsin’s economy. He’s not prepared to answer difficult questions about what that portends for either Republican economic orthodoxy or why he should be given a chance to do it nationwide.
He also has the charisma of a sofa and comes across as smarmy & condescending when he’s off the reservation of staged interviews, which is coming his way. He doesn’t perform well when he can’t control the optics. I don’t expect Walker to survive through Super Tuesday.
The only candidate on the Republican bench who gives me any moments of pause re: Clinton being elected in a walk is Jeb Bush, and that’s honestly not saying much.
@HarvardLaw92:
I’ve seen much more charismatic sofa’s.
As others have mentioned, Paul can sound reasonable for only about five minutes and then the crazy leaks out.
@C. Clavin: It’s like Republicans live in this world of denial.
Just blame it on the MSM. It’s the answer that never fails.
There is an episode of the Simpsons where there is a scene at a comic book convention. They have Lucy Lawless, who played Zena (sadly I knew this w/o watching the episode) in a Q&A session. She is being questioned by some fanatical, nerdy fans who try to pick apart inconsistences in the episodes of the show, but whenever they ask a question she just says, “oh, that was magic”. Eventually they just start a question, and she cuts them off before finishing and says “magic”.
That is pretty much the Republican position on every issue, its the fault of the MSM. And it works! (secondary response is that both sides do it, third is to just make stuff up – they all seem to work equally well the base).
Folks, PLEASE IGNORE James P. He’s been banned by Joyner, and since this guy is too rude to take the hint, Joyner has been deleting his comments.
Responding to him in any way is likely to leave you looking like you’re talking to air.
God help us all if the Republicans find a politically-savvy candidate who can unite those cats into a thundering stampede. Someone that skilled would be capable of anything.
@Tillman:
Yes look what Reagan did to the country. And almost 50 years later we’re still seeing the residual affects.
Dearie, if your argument is that you’re obnoxious to both sides equally…..
@Loviatar: Reminds me of “Young Zaphod Plays It Safe”, which is a short story in the Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series if you’ve never heard of it.
It’s a tough life Randy, I feel for ya’!
That’s all your getting from me.
@Tillman:
Nice, I’ll have to chase it down.
—–
More reichtwing whining is in the process of ruining another of my loves.
The Great Hugo Controversy of 2014
Correia told his fans to vote not for the best novel, but for the most ideological novel. Next time somebody says both side do it, after you slap them on both sides of their face point them to this controversy. Just like their now in the process of doing with the country they would rather ruin Science Fiction and Fantasy than allow someone not of their mindset to win.
Conservatives can’t help it everything they touch turns to shit.
Please reset the edit function from 5 minutes (it doesn’t even work that long) to:
“the rest of the day”.
Everybody knows that the Republicans will nominate a mainstream guy who has paid his dues inside the party. Someone like Sen. Dole or McCain or a reliable scion of party faithful like any Bush except Reggie. The rest of the noise is from people filling out their brackets with underdogs and media people trying to turn a predictable quadrennial event into a horse race to generate some excitement. As a reward for playing a part in all this, “candidates” like Cruz and Paul get to raise a bunch of money and get on TV and magazine covers. The publicity alone attracts the Trumps, Carsons, and others.
Well it certainly is to many of the people he’s appealing to and whose votes he will need…
Well, to be fair, most libertarians probably can’t…
@C. Clavin:
Now, there, you’ve gone and used “the F word”. To a Republican, asserting facts is editorializing, because they have their own facts that they prefer to yours. If you ask them a nice leading question, they can respond with their facts. If you state your facts and ask them to react to them, you’ve pre-empted their response, which was going to be based on different, incompatible facts.
@Tillman:
Thundercats HO!
@Loviatar: I’ve heard about this Hugo controversy. I’m not up on the latest sci-fi novels to know anything about the nominees.
The vote-stuffing I get. But what’s so offensive ideologically about these right-wing authors? Just wondering.
The article mentions this:
Having never heard of Vox Day until this day, I don’t know if I can trust that. All kinds of things are supposedly offensive to women, etc. but are…well, rather benign.
@Loviatar:
Correia fell off the right-hand end of the spectrum a long time ago, and is still falling. He’s not the only Baen Books author of whom that is true (though it is certainly not true of all Baen authors).
@michael reynolds:
Sometimes I think you go over the top with the hyperbole, but man, that was fantastic.
Paul is a charlatan and a huckster. I take solace in the fact that he’s DOA on the national scene.
@James Pearce:
Most of them write a combination of war porn and Ay Rand fantasies, so you can imagine the kind of crap that is disseminated from those fantasies. Its not very good and you read one story about a rock jawed loner defeating a corrupt overbearing government/alien race you’ve read them all. Particularly since their is usually no character development other than describing his steely eyed glare (its almost always a man). They write crap and now they want to be celebrated and awarded for it so they’ve gamed the system. Very much like reality, hmmm there may be a story in here somewhere.
—–
@DrDaveT:
Yeah, Baen Books went down hill rapidly when Jim Baen died. Jim wasn’t the most progressive person but he kept the war porn nutcases in check, since his passing I haven’t purchased a book from them that has been produced by the new editorial staff.
@James Pearce:
A sampling of his wares.
A black female fantasist calls for Reconciliation
The rape myth
—–
Just a sampling of whats on that side of the fence. Thats why I come here to get my reichwing news, James and Doug are good for one thing, they filter out the really obnoxious stuff.
Back to Rand Paul, here’s my nickel analysis. The Paul’s see themselves as reasonable and charming because they keep company with the most racist far right loony toons out there – and in that company they are reasonable and charming. But when they come up against the other 98% they get angry and frustrated that ‘those people’ can’t see their genius.
@Loviatar:
Thanks for the info. None of this makes me want to read their books. It just that sometimes when the Puritans flail, that’s where the interesting stuff is happening. Doesn’t seem to be the case here.
Sci-fi sounds kinda boring these days.
@MarkedMan:
Whatdyamean? Rand Paul is science fiction.
This is crazy on all kinds of levels. Rand knows that many of his ideas are outside of the mainstream, but he still needed to crazy them up a bit more to not finish dead last when primary season starts. His condescension was appalling, but he probably did not expect to have to answer for his flip flops less than 24 hours after declaring for the presidential race and had not prepared. I am not a mind reader but from his behavior it seems he never expected Ms Guthrie to be able to figure out that he had changed his mind on many issues.
@James Pearce: “Having never heard of Vox Day until this day, I don’t know if I can trust that.”
This you can trust. Vox Day is basically what our late troll James P patterns himself after.
Except Ted Beale (aka Vox Day) apparently really believes the angry, racist, sexist, homophobic hate screeds he publishes.
He’s a douchebag of the highest order who holds the dubious honor of being the only person ever kicked out of the SFWA in the entire history of the organization. He’s a birther, an Austrian School crank, a gold bug, a white supremacist, a racist, an MRA, a creationist and a conspiracy theorist.
He thinks Conservapedia is a good source of information, homosexuality is a “birth defect” that can be cured, and the “infestation” of non-whites that is destroying the USA is a good reason for secession
He thinks that more permissive attitudes towards men raping women would be better for society than permissive attitudes about allowing women to enter the workforce. He views blacks as uncivilized half-savages and thinks that “genetic science presently suggests that we are not equally homo sapiens sapiens” . He thinks the Taliban has the right idea in disallowing higher education to women. He opines that if a woman claims she was raped by a white man, she’s probably lying, because everyone knows that it’s the blacks and hispanics who do the raping.
Ted Beale is one of the most vile, despicable, cretinous, voices on the internet today.
Pierce whacks the ball out of sight once again.
I especially like his postulate that whenever you hear one of the Pauls (pere ou fils) start talking, you have exactly five minutes of sense before something comes out of their mouths that shows they are completely batsh*t crazy.
@wr: The first time I heard of Vox Day was years ago, when he was mentioned on some of the Jewish blogs I read after he made some anti-Semitic remarks. (It was something along the lines of “Jews should stop complaining all the time, that’s what got them kicked out of so many countries,” and no, I don’t remember the context nor do I care to look it up now.) To me, the episode was a stunning example of the “Someone is wrong on the Internet” principle. I mean, I get it when someone on Fox News says something offensive, and everyone gets mad. Those people have actual power and influence, even when they sound like some anonymous Youtube commenter. But when you have some 40-year-old posting something anti-Jewish or whatever from his mom’s basement, I’m tempted to fall back on the old “Well it’s a free country and who the **** cares what he says?” Yet in the years since that episode, I keep seeing Vox Day’s name pop up, and it’s always some controversy over some dumb, obnoxious, usually bigoted thing he wrote. What’s weird and surreal is that it feels like it’s all he’s known for. It’s one thing when you have some aging rocker like Ted Nugent; there’s at least some ostensible reason why people are paying attention, but with Vox Day…. well, maybe we should coin a new phrase for this phenomenon, like “Infamous for being infamous.”
@James Pearce:
I couldn’t disagree more — but it’s harder to find the good stuff than it used to be, because the filtering mechanisms have changed radically. Publishers do not provide the same set of services that they used to, and unfiltered channels now exist. This is both good and bad — it means that more things that should never have escaped the slush pile get published, but it also means that the great writers with niche markets are actually sometimes getting to reach them.
As a case in point (and on the plus side for Baen), take the Liaden Universe books from Sharon Lee and Steve Miller. I was a big fan back in the day when they got 3 novels through Ace, then got dropped, then got a few more through Meisha Merlin (with terrible production values) which went out of business and left them stiffed and without the rights to their own books. They self-published a couple through internet subscriptions by their loyal fans…
…and then got picked up by Baen, where they are now reasonably secure and profitable. For their fans, it’s a fantastic outcome to what looked like impending doom. I’m willing to forgive Baen a few Tom Kratmans for continuing to publish Lee and Miller.
The pre-emptive Conservative whining has begun.
On drive-time radio I caught Sean Hannity complaining that the media (that is of course the liberal, Main Stream Media) has already started to go after Rand Paul. And there was the obligatory, ‘Democratic Party candidates get a free pass’ stuff too. Never mind that the conservative media is going after Rand on his apparently conflicting statements concerning Iran and just about everything else.
So, yeah, get some popcorn, maybe a cold IPA, and enjoy the spinouts and crashes into the wall.
@al-Ameda:
To be fair, we don’t know how the non-echo-chamber media would react to a Democratic candidate saying something that whacko. We have no data to work from.
@al-Ameda:
Don’t you mean democrat party?