Rand Paul

Rand Paul is a grandstanding obstructionist whose chief joy seems to be blocking the few bills on which there is wide agreement.

What does the kooky libertarian see in the authoritarian Putin regime?

Kentucky senator had expressed reservations about the judge's record on surveillance and data collection.

Hosted by Jim Swift.

The Kentucky senator is staying mum about any concerns he may have regarding Kavanaugh’s views on spying powers.

Enough with the Randstanding already.

The retired general was passed over for Trump's national security adviser twice.

Kentucky senator reversed his opposition to Trump’s secretary of state pick and helped move him out of committee.

The opening shots in the battle over Gina Haspel's nomination to lead the CIA badly missed their target Thursday, when ProPublica corrected a report that featured a number of false allegations about Haspel's involvement in the CIA's enhanced interrogation program. Senator Rand Paul, who repeatedly…

California senator Dianne Feinstein is calling on the CIA to release documents detailing the involvement of Trump’s pick for CIA director, Gina Haspel, in the agency’s detention and interrogation program.

Kentucky senator Rand Paul said he would oppose the president’s picks for secretary of state and CIA director, criticizing one over what he described as support for regime change and both for their links to torture.

Senator Rand Paul was not happy. A 652-page budget and appropriations deal, worked out by congressional leadership, was unveiled at midnight Wednesday, a mere 24 hours before the shutdown deadline.

In one part of the room, lawmakers and public health experts debated whether an increase in opioid abuse among Medicaid expansion states could be a direct result of Obamacare policy. In the other part by himself—a shock, I tell you—was Rand Paul.

Senate leadership won just enough votes Tuesday night to advance the renewal of a controversial surveillance authority due to expire by the end of the week, the latest bump in the authority’s turbulent road to passage. Lawmakers will likely cast a final vote on the bill this week, paving the way to…

A stark divide has emerged between the White House and Senate Republicans on Roy Moore’s ongoing candidacy for the Alabama Senate. President Donald Trump has not formally endorsed Moore, who’s been accused of sexual assault and pursuing inappropriate relationships with teenage girls while in his…

President Trump was understandably thrilled by the House’s passage of its tax-cut bill Thursday. On Twitter he called the vote a “a big step toward fulfilling our promise to deliver historic TAX CUTS for the American people by the end of the year.” Trump did not celebrate in the Rose Garden with…

Since there's a lot to cover today, like why Roy Moore shouldn't ever be a member of the U.S. Senate, please accept my condensed afternoon links.

Senators Lamar Alexander and Patty Murray reached a bipartisan deal on Tuesday to reinstate subsidies paid to insurers for lowering costs on certain low-income insurance enrollees. This “cost-sharing” process is a one-two step: One, a carrier reduces the amount of health expenses a particular…

If there’s a legislative fix on the way for the scrapped cost-sharing payments to insurance companies under Obamacare, President Trump seems to be behind it. Trump last week announced he would end reimbursements to insurers selling discounted policies to low-income customers, which the…

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday aimed at expanding Americans’ access to health insurance choices, the first official step of his pledge to tackle health-care reform solo after repeated congressional failures to pass legislation repealing Obamacare.

The stock market rockets ever-upward, as well it should, what with the president’s tax package destined to make corporate America great again. Sure thing.

The Graham-Cassidy bill to block-grant Obamacare's spending and provide waivers from Obamacare's regulations to the states seemed to be on death's door Friday afternoon.

The squeeze is on Paul Manafort, the former chairman of Donald Trump’s campaign who has become a major target of special counsel Robert Mueller’s aggressive investigation. The latest details from the Washington Post describe email evidence that Manafort offered “private briefings” about the Trump…

At the end of July, Kentucky senator Rand Paul advocated and voted for the so-called "skinny repeal" bill of Obamacare. "Skinny repeal is better than no repeal," Paul said on Fox News. "The reason I will advocate and vote for skinny repeal is that it's the best I can get."

Kentucky GOP senator Rand Paul met with reporters Monday in his Capitol Hill offices to discuss his opposition to Graham-Cassidy, the last-ditch effort to repeal and replace Obamacare that would turn most of Obamacare's funding into block grants and provide waivers from Obamacare's regulations to…

The latest version of the Senate GOP's bill to partially repeal and replace Obamacare died Monday night when GOP senators Mike Lee of Utah and Jerry Moran of Kansas announced their opposition to legislation. The bill could lose only two GOP votes and still pass, and Lee and Moran brought the grand…

Leave sausage out of this. The ever-evolving Republican health care bills demonstrate how rancid legislative livermush gets made: a pudding of policy innards blended and baked with haste because the ingredients were up against their expiration date, or in this case the August recess. The concoction…

The legislation faces opposition from both conservatives for not doing enough and from moderates for cutting too much.

Senate Republicans unveiled a 142-page bill to partially repeal and replace Obamacare on Thursday. The bill can only lose two GOP votes and still pass the Senate, but several Republicans expressed opposition or concerns about the bill in its current form. In a joint statement, conservative senators…

Rand Paul's going to be teaching a course on "dystopian visions" at George Washington University next fall. Because of course he is.

The Republican chairmen of foreign relations panels in the House and Senate on Thursday advised the Trump administration to work with Congress on its Syria strategy going forward, after the administration launched a military strike on a Syrian airfield.

In what is apparently a first, the Dallas police department used a bomb-toting kamikaze drone robot to kill Micah Xavier Johnson, the suspect in the killing of five police officers working parade detail during a Black Lives Matter protest.

NBC's Chuck Todd had to ask Republican presidential candidate Rand Paul whether he's actually still running. The question came in an interview yesterday:

A new poll this morning released by CNN finds that Jeb Bush is at 3 percent of the vote. Donald Trump, by contrast, leads the field with 39 percent.

Ted Cruz is not Rand Paul.

In the Obama era, incremental conservative progress that gets signed into law is a rare thing.

Never in American history has one party presented 15 serious candidates for a presidential nomination. The Republican party is not doing so today. 

Republicans debated on the eve of Constitution Day, and did our founding document more justice than usual. The Republican debate on CNN was full of impressive performances by nearly all the candidates—and most who addressed the Constitution did so in a less clichéd way than they typically do. 

A new Monmouth poll of registered or leaning Republican primary voters nationally finds New York businessman Donald Trump continuing to lead in the crowded GOP field. Trump's support is at 30 percent, 4 points higher than he was in Monmouth's August poll and 17 points higher than in its July poll.

A new poll of "usual" Republican primary voters in New Hampshire gives Donald Trump his biggest lead yet in the Granite State. The Public Policy Polling survey found Trump with 35 percent support, a good 26-point advantage over the next closest GOP candidate, Ohio governor John Kasich at 11…

If this was meant to be entertainment, all 10 Flying Wallendas refused to walk the high wire, none of the clowns got out of the tiny car, and the elephants just stood around relieving themselves.

Last night’s debate in Cleveland won’t change the course of the Republican presidential race. But it’s likely to affect individual candidates and how they’re viewed. Some gained, some faltered, some were unaffected.

Tonight's debate was full of fireworks. And somewhat surprisingly, Donald Trump was arguably not the most confrontational candidate on stage. Senator Rand Paul provided some of the more memorable moments of the night by challenging the other candidates on stage. Here is a transcript of Paul's…

Best debate ever, right?

On Thursday, Sergio Gor, the communications director for presidential candidate Rand Paul, tweeted a picture of what appears to be another presidential candidate's closing statements that he says were left in the hotel printer:

Goffstown, N.H.

Louisville

As the news of the nuclear deal reached between the United States, its Western allies, and the Islamic Republican of Iran broke Tuesday morning, Republican presidential candidates were nearly unanimous in condemning the agreement.

It’s no accident that Texas senator Ted Cruz sounds like a minister on the stump. His father, Rafael, is an evangelical pastor, after all. And as the Republican presidential candidate displayed before the faith-focused crowd at the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s Road to Majority conference in…

Kentucky senator Rand Paul has introduced a tax reform proposal that promises to "blow up the tax code" and replace it with a flat tax on individual and business income. Here's Paul introducing his proposal in the Wall Street Journal:

Both Florida Republicans running for president are tied for first among registered voters in their party, according to a new poll of the Sunshine State from Quinnipiac.

While campaigning against the Patriot Act in South Carolina last weekend, Rand Paul—a committed and supposedly knowledgeable civil libertarian—made a rather surprising claim. The Kentucky senator said that American law enforcement officials had "probable cause" to obtain a warrant for the arrest…

Jeb Bush, a probable Republican presidential candidate, got feisty in an interview with Fox News's Neil Cavuto earlier today in Florida:

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with senior writer John McCormack on the expiration of provisions of the PATRIOT Act, the role of the NSA in Rand Paul's campaign, and the fate of the USA Freedom Act.

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders railed against the NSA and corporate privacy concerns this morning in an apeparance on NBC's Meet the Press.

Kentucky senator Rand Paul says the "hawks" in the Republican party helped create and grow the Islamic State terrorist group. Paul, who is running for president, appeared Wednesday morning on MSNBC, where host Joe Scarborough asked him about fellow senator Lindsey Graham's own likely White House…

Former Texas governor Rick Perry has a message for three of the current Republican White House hopefuls: Run for governor before you run for president. Speaking about Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and Rand Paul, all three U.S. senators, Perry said in an interview last week with THE WEEKLY STANDARD that…

Oklahoma City

Republican senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas said President Obama is "not providing the resources" to defeat the Islamic State in and that United States ought to send "a few thousand more" troops into Iraq to combat the terrorist group in that country.

On Wednesday afternoon Kentucky senator Rand Paul, a Republican presidential candidate, began what he's calling a filibuster of the Senate's renewal of the PATRIOT Act. Here's a tweet from Paul announcing the speech:

On Monday, Senator Rand Paul told CBS radio host Dom Giordano that if he were the Republican nominee for president he would attack Hillary Clinton on crime. “I’ll ask Hillary Clinton, what have you done for criminal justice? Your husband passed all the laws that put a generation of black men in…

Senator Rand Paul has entered the presidential sweepstakes as a Tea Party favorite and limited-government constitutionalist—i.e., one who believes Congress should not pass legislation unless it has the constitutional authority to do so.

If you went only by the media, you'd think that Rand Paul was a legitimate contender to win the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. Time magazine put him on its cover, calling him "The Most Interesting Man in Politics." Politico magazine said --literally--the same thing. Top Obama aides agree.…

A new poll of likely Iowa Republican presidential caucus goers finds a wide-open field with three candidates vying for the top spot and a plurality undecided. Scott Walker, the governor of neighboring Wisconsin, leads the latest poll from Loras College, earning 12.6 percent support. Florida senator…

Every true conservative, or at least every Republican conservative, knows that our freedoms are under continuing threat from the Obama administration, which has already seized control of the health care and energy sectors, and is circling the education sector with the threat of a core curriculum.…

Nashua, N.H.

It appears to be a three-way tie in the Mike Lee presidential primary. At a breakfast sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor in Washington Friday morning, the Republican and first-term senator from Utah spoke glowingly about his “three best friends” in the Senate who are or are preparing to run…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with staff writer Michael Warren on Rand Paul's 2016 presidential campaign rollout, and Lincoln Chafee's unexpected entrance on the Democratic side.

Rand Paul announced his candidacy for president this week, and the libertarian Republican was immediately greeted by a chorus of doomsayers. NBC News went with the headline, "Why Rand Paul Probably Can't Win Republican Nomination." Dick Morris says, "Rand Paul can’t win." The New York Times's Nate…

Rand Paul told CNN that he's "short-tempered" with not just female reporters, but also with male reporters.

Rand Paul argued for immigration reform in an interview tonigth with Fox News's Sean Hannity:

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with senior writer Stephen F. Hayes on Rand Paul's presidential announcement, and the Obama/Iran nuclear deal.

Kentucky senator Rand Paul launched his presidential campaign Tuesday, promising to be a "different kind of Republican" who can extend the party's reach to minorities and young people. Paul's campaign website even offers a handy slate of social-media profile pictures for different members of these…

Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz welcomes his "good friend" into the presidential race.

As Kentucky senator Rand Paul gears up to launch a presidential campaign, the libertarian leaning Republican may have some problems getting social conservatives on board. Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council, suggested in an interview that Paul’s brand of Republicanism doesn’t…

Senator Rand Paul, who is expected to announce a presidential run on April 7, made the case on Fox News tonight that the eventual Republican nominee needs to "go after" the "corruption" of Bill and Hillary Clinton:

Did Rand Paul just declare his presidential candidacy? In a recent tweet he calls himself a "candidate."

Bowie, Md.

A new poll from the Wall Street Journal and NBC News shows Florida senator Marco Rubio and Wisconsin governor Scott Walker have the most goodwill among Republican primary voters ahead of both men's possible bids for the presidency.

Kentucky senator Rand Paul strolled onto the stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference outside Washington Friday as a committed crowd of supporters cheered. Wearing a light blue Brooks Brothers shirt (sleeves rolled up), a red tie, and blue jeans, Paul made a case for his…

It’s still two years before the next president takes the oath of office, but the contest that will determine who raises his right hand that day started in earnest last month for Republicans, with a grassroots gathering in Iowa and a meeting of high-dollar donors in California.

Rand Paul chided Rudy Giuliani for comments the former New York City mayor made about Barack Obama's love for his country. In a television interview with local Louisville station WAVE, Paul said, “it's one thing to disagree on policy” but “it’s a mistake to question people’s motives.”

It was more than 20 years in the past that a Bush and a Clinton faced off against each other in a presidential election. Back in 1992, that was incumbent GOP president George Bush and his successful Democratic challenger Bill Clinton. Twenty-three years later, Bush's son Jeb and Clinton's wife…

Boy, that didn’t take long. Over the span of a few short days in late January and early February, three members of the top tier of Republican presidential candidates demonstrated why they’ll never be president. They didn’t do anything to disqualify themselves directly, just revealed the traits that…

Rancho Mirage, California

An institute named for the father of possible presidential candidate Rand Paul has published a piece saying the Charlie Hebdo massacre, like 9/11, was a false flag operation. The claim comes in piece titled, "Charlie Hebdo Shootings: False Flag?," put online today at the Ron Paul Institute.

Senator Rand Paul has an op-ed in Time magazine making the case for normalizing diplomatic relations with Cuba as Barack Obama has proposed. It’s a reasonable objective for U.S. policy and there’s a good case to be made that the embargo on Cuba is anachronistic.

Bill Kristol, with Cokie Roberts, Donna Brazile, and Jelani Cobb, this morning on ABC's This Week:

Did Rand Paul just become a supporter of George W. Bush’s freedom agenda? “The world does not have an Islam problem,” Paul explained a few days ago. “The world has a dignity problem, with millions of men and women across the Middle East being treated as chattel by their own governments.” Such words…

Manchester, N.H.

“They should know we will follow them to the gates of hell.”

Just before the start of the Labor Day holiday weekend, the reelection campaign for Mitch McConnell of Kentucky announced its campaign manager, Jesse Benton, was resigning. Benton was leaving the campaign, Politico reports, "citing potential distractions over renewed attention to a scandal from the…

Rand Paul is a man of conviction. His reputation for acting on principle is the foundation on which he has begun to build the infrastructure of a presidential campaign. It is very difficult, however, for a man of conviction to adjust his image without compromising his reputation for integrity. 

Last week, Texas governor Rick Perry made that mistake. Sen. Paul responded by mocking Gov. Perry’s new hipster glasses and saying that if the governor remains so stubbornly ignorant, “I’ll make it my personal policy to ignore Rick Perry’s opinions.”

It's still a year and a half before the first presidential primaries of 2016, but Gallup has a new survey out asking Republicans and Democrats about the potential GOP candidates. Analyzing those candidates' familiarity and favorability among Republicans, Gallup has discovered the best known and…

Ted Cruz is not in a fighting mood. The Texas senator is sitting in a booth at the Capital Grille, an upscale restaurant on Pennsylvania Avenue, about halfway between the Capitol, where Cruz works, and the White House, where many suspect he’d like to end up. His jacket is off, his light blue tie is…

Rand Paul is the winner of the CPAC straw poll. As Stephen Dinan and Seth McLaughlin report:

UPDATE: Coburn's spokesman called to say that his boss was joking. Says the spokesman, “Dr. Coburn was poking fun at himself and the focus on presidential politics and rivalries three years ahead of the next election.  The exchange characterized below was a joke – it didn’t happen in real life …”…

In an interview with Buzzfeed's McKay Coppins, Kentucky senator Rand Paul criticized "some" Christians who support Israel and the Jews and those Christians' "overeagerness" to go to war. Adding to sentiments he expressed in a speech earlier this year, Paul told Buzzfeed:

Earlier this week on Sean Hannity's Fox News Channel program, Kentucky senator Rand Paul talked about how Republicans in Congress should move forward on Obamacare. The Republican senator seemed to endorse the strategy of defunding the health care law in the upcoming budget battle but indicated that…

The chairman of Ron Paul’s 2012 presidential campaign is refusing to answer questions about allegations the campaign paid for endorsements before the Iowa caucuses last year. Jesse Benton, a longtime Paul aide who is now campaign manager for Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, has not replied…

A man alleged to be the campaign manager for senator Mitch McConnell said earlier this year that he was "sort of holding [his] nose" to work for the Kentucky Republican for the next two years.

The 2016 presidential primary season doesn't begin for another two and half years, and a new poll from Rasmussen shows there's no consensus among Republican primary voters about the preferred candidate. Chris Christie, the governor of New Jersey, leads the poll of 1000 likely primary voters with 21…

New Jersey governor Chris Christie, asked on Tuesday to respond to an ongoing back and forth between himself and fellow Republican Rand Paul of Kentucky, said he was "asked a question" about national security and answered it.

Ted Cruz went to Iowa, where he sat down with ABC's Jonathan Karl:

Jack Hunter, a top aide to Kentucky senator Rand Paul who is known by the moniker "Southern Avenger," asked a former editor to delete "dozens" of his columns, according to a blog post by that editor.

Iraq war veteran and former congressman Allen West spoke out Wednesday against an amendment that would create a new independent system of military prosecutors to handle the prosecution of many serious crimes. "I think think this is reprehensible. I think it's a slap in the face to those who have…

The Obama administration has worked diligently to shrink, underfund, and demoralize the military. Now, Politico reports, two Republican senators, Rand Paul and Ted Cruz, are joining an effort led by New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand that goes beyond where even the Obama administration is willing…

Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky defended NSA leaker Edward Snowden this morning on CNN:

Alana Goodman of the Washington Free Beacon reports:

At a high-dollar fundraiser last night in Washington, D.C., Vice President Joe Biden warned his fellow Democrats about the Republicans.

Standing in the wings of the auditorium at Howard University’s business school were three or four young volunteers who didn’t look like students. Each wore a small red sticker on his chest, which read, “Stand with Rand.” As Howard students filed into the room, the volunteers would gently push…

"The GOP of old has grown stale and moss-covered,” Kentucky senator Rand Paul said Thursday to the Conservative Political Action Conference. “I don’t think we need to name any names here, do we?” he added coyly.

Democratic House member Luis Gutierrez of Illinois reiterated his support for a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants while acknowledging that in order to receive Republican support, that path may not be "clean, clear and quick." He also stated that illegal immigrants who want to become…

Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus reiterated that he believes Rand Paul’s 13-hour filibuster over the Obama administration’s drone policy was a “unifying moment” for the GOP and that the party is "totally on board" with the libertarian senator.

What to make of Rand Paul’s 12 hours and 52 minutes of fame? Was his filibuster on the floor of the Senate last Wednesday, as Charles Krauthammer said on Fox’s Special Report, though substantively misguided, “a stroke of political genius”? Was it, as Seth Lipsky suggested in a column in the New…

Rand Paul, the junior senator from Kentucky, has won this year's CPAC straw poll. Marco Rubio, the junior senator from Florida, came in second.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with Michael Warren, live from CPAC. Will conservatives find a new way forward? Hosted by Michael Graham.

Mitch McConnell, the leader of the GOP minority in the Senate, struck an upbeat tone in his Friday morning address to the conservative activists gathered at CPAC. “Friends, this is a moment of renewal. I truly believe it,” he said. In this era of new beginning, McConnell is seeking his sixth Senate…

Before Rand Paul even arrived at the Gaylord National Harbor convention center in Maryland for his Thursday afternoon CPAC address, the stage was set for his raucous reception. Outside the convention hall, a team of eager young volunteers began passing out t-shirts, stickers, and posters emblazoned…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with Bill Kristol, hosted by Michael Graham. 

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast, hosted by Michael Graham, with Stephen Hayes:

Eric Holder responds to Rand Paul's filibuster with this letter:

Senator Ted Cruz, joining Rand Paul's filibuster on the floor of the Senate:

Senator Ted Cruz, joining in support of Rand Paul's filibuster, said today was the first day he had the chance to speak on the Senate floor. "It don't get no better than this," Cruz said, quoting a beer commercial:

The White House will not comment on Rand Paul's ongoing filibuster on the Senate floor of President Obama's nominee to be the next CIA director. A Huffington Post reporter remarks on Twitter: 

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast, hosted by Michael Graham, with Jim Swift on Senator Rand Paul's filibuster of John Brennan's nomination to be director of the CIA..

Senator Ted Cruz praised Senator Rand Paul on the Senate floor today for his filibuster. "Your standing here today like a modern Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," said Cruz, referencing the famous film, "must surely be making Jimmy Stewart smile."

Rand Paul, who is currently on the Senate floor filibustering President Obama's pick to be the next CIA director, invoked Hitler: 

Senator Rand Paul is pledging to "hold" John Brennan's nomination for CIA director, a statement from his Senate office reports.

There wasn’t much in the way of substance to distinguish Marco Rubio’s official Republican response to the State of the Union Address from the Tea Party response by Rubio’s Senate colleague, Rand Paul. Both were delivered by potential 2016 presidential nominees who entered the Senate on a wave of…

Two contributing editors to THE WEEKLY STANDARD analyzed Kentucky senator Ron Paul's foreign policy address earlier this week. First, Robert Kagan writes in the Washington Post:

During questioning by Senator Rand Paul at today's Benghazi hearing, Hillary Clinton seemed to blame her underlings for the 9/11 terror attack that killed four Americans in Libya:

Virginia senator Tim Kaine, a Democrat, told CNN's Soledad O'Brien Thursday morning that a fellow senator's recently announced effort to "nullify" Barack Obama's executive actions on gun control is a "code word."

Washington Times: "Issa calls for second prosecutor to testify about ‘Fast and Furious’"

Jonah Goldberg: "Most Boring Guy Wins Most Boring Debate?"

Ankeny, Iowa

Des Moines

As the country teeters on the edge of recession, two competing visions of government’s role in the economy are being offered in Washington. President Obama again proposes big government programs and Keynesian stimulus. House Republicans have a different idea.

I was interviewing Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky on February 17, in his temporary office in the Russell building on Capitol Hill, when his chief of staff Doug Stafford entered the room.

So much for the budget deal: "But the picture already emerging is of legislation financed with a lot of one-time savings and cuts that officially 'score' as savings to pay for spending elsewhere, but that often have little to no actual impact on the deficit."

Maybe Time magazine should run a cover story accusing Afghanis of being freedom-phobic.

Dictator from Neptune says capitalism killed life on Mars.

Well, uglier: 

The liberal host of MSNBC's "Hardball" eviscerates Kentucky Democratic Senate candidate Jack Conway on national television:

In the Kentucky Senate debate last night, Rand Paul hit back at Jack Conway's ad that painted Paul as anti-Christian: 

It's come to this. In Kentucky, where Republican Senate candidate Rand Paul is leading Democrat Jack Conway 47% to 41.7% in the RCP average of polls, the Conway campaign has decided to release an ad painting Rand Paul as anti-Christian:

Less than a month before the midterm elections, candidates of both parties seem to have found something on which they can agree: There’s no sense in trying to defend Obamacare as it was passed by Congress and signed into law by the president. Instead, the debate over the federal health care…

Yesterday, Ron Paul issued a statement saying that opposition to the Ground Zero mosque "is all about hate and Islamaphobia," and is driven by "the neo-conservatives who demand continual war in the Middle East and Central Asia and are compelled to constantly justify it."