“Look, you can’t tell these kinds of lies without having cojones this big…”
It is no wonder, since Hilary Clinton trounces any of the top three Republican 2016 contenders -including Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) – that Rand Paul (and other Republicans) will do anything in their power to pre-empt any Clinton run in 2016.
Such fear has never before existed in Republican ranks. It is a fear difficult for thinking people to fully grasp; it is the stuff of pants-wetting nightmares. The prospect of two terms by our first black president followed by a term or two by our first woman president – all Democrats – is the stuff of apoplexy. I mean, think heads exploding. Not a cranky old white male in there anywhere.
Twelve to sixteen years of blacks and women? My God! It’s Sodom and Gomorrah inside the Beltway! There won’t be an America an angry white man could recognize. God won’t even have to waste a tantrum.
To get more stories like this, subscribe to our newsletter The Daily.
Unfortunately for Rand Paul in particular and the GOP as a whole, which has all along been its own worst enemy, that’s the future many are seeing.
So Rand Paul, who is a member of the Senate Foreign Relations and Homeland Security committees, took to the pages of the ever-GOP-friendly Washington Times yesterday to pen an op-ed piece extolling his own virtues and to condemn Clinton’s imagined malfeasance, writing,
When I took Hillary Rodham Clinton to task in January for the mishandling of security in Benghazi, Libya, I told her that if I had been president at the time, I would have relieved her of her post. Some politicians and pundits took offense at my line of questioning.
Yes, you’re such a hero Rand. Our loins tingle at the sight of you. The world trembles in awe at your approach.
The GOP problem – and this is Rand Paul’s problem too – is that the GOP cannot see what the problem is: that as long as they act like they have been acting, they are not going to win the presidency back. Period.
It’s not just that George W. Bush has left such a bad taste in our mouths – and he has – and it’s not just changing demographics, though that is also part of it. Neither of those reasons demand the Republican Party accept responsibility for its own sad state (hell, five years later they still haven’t figured out how to cope with the reality of George W. Bush), that the blame lies with their message.
And it is not even just their platform but the attitude with which they press it on the American people, as though we’re a bunch of uppity takers who insufficiently grateful that they are willing to take the time to even notice us. We rejected the Bush message and the Bush Doctrine and the Bush ideology in 2008 and again in 2012. Hell, we rejected it in 2000 but that’s another story.
There is nothing in the evidence to suggest that Americans will not even more strenuously object to any of the yokels the GOP can offer in 2016. So what’s an untalented, narcissistic hack like Rand Paul to do?
Clinton’s resume is beyond compare. So it only makes sense that Rand Paul would attack Hilary Clinton’s resume. Because the Republicans refused to fund embassy security – money that Obama administration Clinton is part of requested – Paul thinks Clinton is guilty of “dereliction of duty” and should be barred from holding high office ever again:
Too many questions remain unanswered. Now, there are too many new questions. The evidence we had in January already suggested that Mrs. Clinton ignored repeated requests for more security in Benghazi. The new evidence we have today — and that continues to mount — suggests that at the very least, Mrs. Clinton should never hold high office again.
Paul apparently doesn’t see it as a conflict that any injury done to Clinton only helps him, since it is no secret he is contemplating a 2016 run himself and is using his own office in his attempt to destroy her reputation. No conflict of interest there. And if withholding embassy security is sufficient cause to ban a person from ever holding high office again, then no Congressional Republican should ever hold high office again – including Rand Paul.
Paul writes, “Now there are new allegations, accusations that arguably bear more significance on how this tragedy unfolded. It is imperative that we continue to ask: Who was responsible?”
Since you ask, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) admitted in early October last year that Republicans had to “prioritize things”:
Look we have to make priorities and choices in this country. We have…15,000 contractors in Iraq. We have more than 6,000 contractors, a private army there, for President Obama, in Baghdad. And we’re talking about can we get two dozen or so people into Libya to help protect our forces. When you’re in tough economic times, you have to make difficult choices. You have to prioritize things.
Never mind that it’s not Obama’s private army and that it was Bush, not Obama, who unnecessarily invaded Iraq. The bottom line is this: the GOP and the GOP alone, for fiscal year 2011, cut embassy security funding by $128 million and followed that shameful deed up in fiscal year 2012 by cutting it by $331 million.
By all means, ask that question Paul, but you and your fellow hypocrites should look in the mirror when you do.
Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen’s Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.
