Last updated on September 25th, 2023 at 01:40 pm
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) dropped the hammer on Rand Paul by exposing why the 2016 presidential candidate is no different from his fellow Republicans.
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Sen. Sanders was speaking about Rand Paul on Comedy Central’s The Nightly Show when he said:
He’s a legitimate candidate, certainly. Basically, after you get through the nuances of a Rand Paul, or a Ted Cruz, or a Jeb Bush, kind of their views are pretty much the same. That is tax breaks for millionaires, more spending for the military, cuts in Social Security/Medicare, and Medicaid, taking as much money as you can from billionaires. It’s kind of their agenda.
Host Larry Wilmore asked if Paul was legitimate by being different from that. Sanders answered, “No. His difference that is the Republican DNA. It’s to make the rich richer while everyone else becomes poorer…His nuances are civil liberties, where he has taken some good positions, and I agree with him on that.”
After other panelists suggested that Paul should reach out to women and gays in the same way that he has reached out to African-Americans, Sanders explained why that will never happen, “The problem he has is that it is hard to reach out to women when you are anti-choice. It’s hard to reach out to the gay community when you don’t support gay marriage.”
Wilmore asked how Paul can be a Libertarian and anti-choice, when Roe vs. Wade was decided based on the privacy issue.
Bernie Sanders exposed Sen. Paul as being the same old kind of Republican. Beneath Paul’s rhetoric about liberty and freedom is a candidate who is a pro-billionaire corporatist who believes that the wealthy are entitled to more freedom, and that the same freedoms that he talks about with such reverence don’t apply to women and gays.
Sen. Sanders hit on all of the major contradictions that make Rand Paul an unelectable fraud. Paul may hold a few good positions, but the core of his ideology is solidly Republican, and not any different from his fellow GOP candidates.
Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
