May
24th 2010
Posted under Conservatism & Political Correctness & Political Philosophy & Race
The Atlantic Wire has a good round-up of “conservatives” who are rushing to criticize Rand Paul. With friends like these?
Here RINO RNC Chairman Steele criticizes him. Obviously, I can understand why Steele is glad the Civil Rights Act happened, but it is not his place as Chairman of the RNC to criticize a GOP Senate nominee who took a position that can easily be defended on conservative/constitutionalist/libertarian grounds. I thought Steele was in support of a Big Tent.
“Libertarians” Attack Rand Paul | Conservative Heritage Times on 24 May 2010 at 8:27 pm #
[...] what do ya know. After finding the article below outlining all the “conservatives” who have attacked Rand Paul, I stumbled upon this [...]
James on 25 May 2010 at 2:45 am #
That “Big Tent” only includes those to the left of Newt Gingrich and David Frum. It doesn’t have an opening on the right side at all.
Matt Weber on 25 May 2010 at 3:18 pm #
The American Conservative’s Daniel Larison compares Paul to “all the [Bush-era] people who helped wreck entire countries and provided the justification for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.”
Actually, Larison contrasted Paul with those people. Larison’s defense was still pretty wishy-washy. As far as I can tell, Larison agrees that Paul was wrong to question the CRA, but at least he didn’t bomb Iraq or something. Take this:
Put another other way, Paul has been subjected to particularly intense scrutiny because he has expressed confidence in markets and democracy in a way similar to, but less naive than, the ideologues who championed the inevitable triumph of democratic capitalism and promoted the ideas of Near Eastern regional transformation by force and the failed “freedom agenda.”
Well that’s certainly ‘another way’ to put it; namely one that entirely misses the point of all the abuse Paul is undergoing at the moment. It has nothing to do with his confidence in markets or democracy, and all about PC restrictions on race discussion. I also don’t know how anyone could describe that lousy Douthat column as “a reasonably fair and effective critique of “paleo” flaws”. One gets the impression that Larison either doesn’t care about PC, since he doesn’t plan on saying anything controversial anyway, or that he thinks the entire concept is just a bogus conservative invention.