Monday, May 12, 2014

Rand Paul and Voter ID

Rand Paul Is NOT Out Of His Mind

There was a recent article here asking if Rand Paul is out of his mind.  I read it and the basis was an article in a tabloid-type website called The Wire (thewire.com).  The tabloid article was brief, claiming that Paul had joined the anti-voter ID crowd, which they based on a couple of out-of-context comments Paul apparently made and they quoted.  It doesn’t seem to have been reported anywhere else, strangely.

This seemed out of character for any conservative, so I called Rand Paul’s Washington, DC office.  I told them about the article and asked for clarification.  The staffer told me that Paul does not oppose voter ID, but that he believes that it is an issue for the individual states, not the federal government.

Think about that for a minute:  isn’t smaller government and reining in the power of the federal government what we conservatives are all about??  Paul is saying that he believes that the people of the individual states should make those decisions, showing that he is a strong proponent of federalism, that is, supporting the rights of the states and their populations to make their own laws, instead of everything coming from the DC center of federal power.  That’s why we have state legislatures.  Isn’t cutting the power and control of Washington over our lives at the heart of the conservative argument?  When we move those prerogatives to our localities, we enhance our own power and diminish that of the federal government.

His staffer explained further that Paul believes that voter ID should not be a defining issue for the Republican Party.

This is the sort of thing which I have written about in the past: disinformation campaigns directed against conservative front-runners.  It’s what the Democrats and their GOP Establishment allies have done in the past and I have no reason to believe that anything is going to change in that regard.   They’ll take them one –by-one.  Should Paul cease to be a front-runner, they’ll give the next person – Cruz,Palin, Perry…whoever… the same treatment.  So, any time that we see or hear reports of a conservative front-runner which seems to be out of character for that person and the image we have, we should be very careful to verify the information.

To call Senator Paul’s office yourself, here’s the number: 202-224-4343.

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