August 18, 2014--This Guy Is Getting Interesting

Senator Ted Cruz--the physical and ideological image of demagogic Senator Joseph McCarthy--is a candidate for the 2016 Republican nomination for president, but he's going nowhere. Actually, he is setting himself up for a lucrative future on the lecture, book, and Fox News circuit. So we do not have to take any shifting in his positions seriously. He is merely building his brand.

Senator Rand Paul, on the other hand, the current frontrunner for that nomination, is doing some interesting things to adjust or, to be kind, flesh out his views and image. He clearly doesn't want to be this generation's Barry Goldwater and get trounced two years from now by Hillary Clinton.

Indeed, I am beginning to get the feeling that not only is his likely to be nominated but he may have a good chance to become president. Hillary has probably already peaked and is feeling like yesterday's news, a part of the problem in Washington who, playing it safe, thus far has nothing new to say or credibly promise. She's got the gender thing going and has a talented and widely beloved husband, but there may be enough Clinton fatigue to override even that. Barbara Bush may be right--enough already with the Bushes and Clinton. We're not talking Adamses or Roosevelts.

Rand Paul is the only national Republican figure with the guts and inclination to speak at the recent NAACP convention; is comfortable with young people, gays, and people of color; is calling for sentencing reform; and last week had some fascinating things to say about the racial confrontation in Ferguson, MO.

Since 9/11 the Department of Homeland Security has been paying for the arming of the nation's local police forces, making armored vehicles, helicopters, high-capacity weapons, sniper rifles, grenade launchers, and body armor readily available. And so, when there is a confrontation between police and alleged perpetrators (the Boston bombing suspects, for example) or between police and demonstrating and rioting citizens (Ferguson, for example), the cops show up armed to the teeth in full military regalia.

Observing this, Rand Paul late last week in an op-ed piece on Time.com first made a connection between himself and the demonstrators--

If I had been told to get out of the street as a teenager, there would have been a distinct possibility that I might have smarted off. But I wouldn't have expected to be shot.

Then, in regard to the military-style arming of the police and the expansion of their powers he said--

When you couple this militarization of law enforcement with the erosion of civil liberties and due process that allows the police to become judge and jury--national security letters, no-knock searches, broad general warrants, preconviction forfeiture--we begin to have a serious problem on our hands.

Interesting, no?