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Rand Paul Shows Off His Tea Party Book Learnin’ and Still Comes Off Better than Rubio
Poor Rand Paul. It was bad enough that he had a stellar act to follow in the President’s State of the Union Address. He had to speak for the Tea Party as their second choice. Oh no! Just a week after fantasizing about being president, live on C-SPAN, Rand faced the humiliation of being his beloved Tea Party’s number 2. Earlier today, The Daily Caller reported that the Tea Party’s preferred SOTU speaker was Mike Lee.
“He was asked to do it originally, and we deliberated on it,” Lee Communications Director Brian Phillips said, but Lee “ultimately passed on the opportunity.”
Tea Party Express chief strategist Sal Russo told The Daily Caller:”We discussed it with several individuals to ascertain interest and decided Rand would be the most appropriate to complement Rubio.”
He had the other disadvantage as the person intended to “complement” Marco Rubio’s big yawn of a performance. Hey, we’re talking about Rand Paul here, so my expectations were pretty low.
Then there was the disadvantage of his speech being streamed by the Tea Party Express in less than prime time quality.
Yet, with all these disadvantages Rand Paul did succeed in one thing. He made Rubio look even worse than Rubio achieved by himself. Maybe that’s what the Tea Party meant when anticipating that Rand would complement Rubio. Well, they had to say something to minimize the fact that Rand was their second choice.
He started late. But, he didn’t waste time launching into attacking Obama’s speech with the usual “government is the problem” rhetoric. He even name dropped Adam Smith to show off some of that book learning – Tea Party style.
“What America needs is not Robin Hood but Adam Smith. In the year we won our independence, Adam Smith described what creates the Wealth of Nations.”
So much for the complement Rubio idea. Rand was definitely trying to relive his “if I was the President” fantasy at Marco Rubio’s expense. He was suspiciously sort of pro-immigrant, even calling immigrants assets. Unlike Rubio, who looked like he was sweating under stress, Rand looked calm and collected.
That’s where Rand’s strong suit ended. Then he started talking about policy straight out of the ALEC/Tea Party manual and alas we saw the Rand we all know and laugh at.
Lots of cuts in spending. Lots of the false statements of Obama increasing taxes and squeezing more money from rich Americans. (In fact, rich Americans prospered even more with Obama’s policies and taxes went down) But true to form, Rand didn’t let facts get in the way of his narrative.
He repeated the family budget analogy used by the Tea Party since it’s inception and advocated sequester.
“Not only should the sequester stand, many pundits say the sequester really needs to be at least $4 trillion to avoid another downgrade of America’s credit rating. Both parties will have to agree to cut, or we will never fix our fiscal mess.”
Rand got excited talking about the perennial Balanced Budget Amendment, “school choice”, cuts in foreign aid to countries that burn our flag. He promised to do poor people a favor with a flat tax on income at a rate of 17%. – ala Romneyhood. And yes, he spoke of the poor down trodden rich
Once again, Rand talked about the Constitution and the Second Amendment in that special Tea Party way. Thus undoing his effort to show off book learning with the Adam Smith/Robin Hood comment.
We went down the rabbit hole of Executive Orders and Kings (notwithstanding the fact that every president has issued Executive Orders.)
Rand re-emerged from the rabbit hole with the “Obama gave away free phones to get votes” mythology. Rand sprinkled his fairy tales of balancing the budget in five years, with frightening stories about the need to protect corporations from hairy scary Democrats. He sprinkled pie in the sky hopes and dreams of balancing the budget with fairy dust using the same sort of Math that Mitt Romney used.
Still, he was a good comedy act to follow Rubio and his gulp.
Image: Urantian Sojourn
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3 Responses to Rand Paul Shows Off His Tea Party Book Learnin’ and Still Comes Off Better than Rubio
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Pam Miner
Feb. 13th, 2013 at 7:04 pm
I didn’t watch him. I would have just gotten mad about the lies he and Rubio both told. Their made up universe. If the GOP succeeds in rigging the next election in a far more devious way, we will have a one party regime that doesn’t care anything about American’ suffering.
That is their goal, to make it so the Democrats can’t CAN’T win and election even if they have a big majority of popular votes. It is the Most Important thing liberals and progressive can do is to STOP the RED-MAPping! Call attention to it!
Petition for paper ballots where there can be NO Computer “mistakes” This is serious as death. Places with 1 party regimes are Cuba, China and N. Korea. There they call it “the Party”!
Kock Brothers and their ALEC are pure evil!!
So are their minions, like Rand Paul, Eric Cantor, Rubio and the media goof, Limbaugh and faux news. Faux has 2 parts, entertainment and news. And their “news” is on the entertainment side.
SinghX
Feb. 14th, 2013 at 4:03 am
…”In the year we won our independence, Adam Smith described what creates the Wealth of Nations.”
Uhh…well, what I wanna know is why the teabaggers let Rand Paul on stage when they could have had one of their own (he’s a guvurnmint employee for gawd sake). They should have had this women:
“…Apostle/city council member Kimberly Daniels prays for President Obama: “Lord, expose the work of every witch, sorcerer, spiritualist or person from the dark side operating through his cabinet members or through anyone else closely associated with him. We block the power of the influence of the Yorùbá religion and all other groups of black people who worship their ancestors, in Jesus’ name. We put barriers around the United States that will bind and block the witchcraft coming from Kenya to influence our president in Jesus’ name. Let the power of every dedication of his past be broken, in Jesus’ name.” (Right Wing Watch.org 2/12/13 Leftovers)
That would have set the tone better than an Adam Smith reference, don’cha’knoow. (oops! she’s a guvurmint employee too)
Nik DeWitt
Feb. 15th, 2013 at 2:22 am
One fool is as good as another in the new republiCon party.