Once dismissed by the GOP establishment as a gadfly, Paul is starting to look a lot like the leader of his party — and his enemies are panicking. “There’s a big transition in the Republican Party,” the Kentucky senator says in a BuzzFeed interview.
McKay Coppins
BuzFeed
9/13/2013
John Gara
…Not long ago, the Washington grown-ups who run the Republican Party would have dismissed the junior senator from Kentucky making cracks about an establishment pillar like McCain as little more than the goading of a gadfly. But over the past two weeks, it has become clear that Paul’s brand of Republicanism has spread deeply within his party. He successfully rallied a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers against a military intervention in Syria; thoroughly embarrassed Republican leaders who supported the air strikes; and temporarily elevated himself to the role of de facto foreign policy spokesman for the GOP. When President Obama took his case for war to the American people in a primetime address this week, it was Paul who delivered the unofficial Republican counterargument in a series of interviews and a widely covered speech.
Paul, in short, is winning. The Syria debate marked the first time since House Republicans tried to keep America out of the Kosovo conflict in 1999 that a libertarian approach to foreign policy seriously challenged the GOP’s old-guard caucus of hawks. And this time, the libertarians came out on top. In this context, his McCain-mocking didn’t come off as mischievously trolling for a couple headlines — it seemed a little like punching down.
Don’t expect Paul to stop swinging. The plainly ambitious libertarian and prospective 2016 presidential candidate has big plans for his party and his country…
The complete article is at BuzzFeed.
Related: Sen. Paul Appears on Fox’s Hannity- September 12, 2013
Update: The folly of rushing to war . An op-ed by Senator Paul for The Washington Times.
…After Sept. 11, 2001, when we were attacked by terrorists, we launched a war against Afghanistan. I supported that war and still believe we were justified and made the correct decision to go. President Bush sought and received the consent of Congress and clearly had the support of the American people.
More recently, President Obama has sought to insert our armed forces into internal wars, with no clear security interest for the United States, and no clear sense of what victory would look like.
Opposing this is not isolationism. It is not withdrawing from the world. It is simply an attempt at a more intelligent, reasoned foreign policy than we have become accustomed to in recent years…
