Skip to main content

To Rand Paul: Get Serious or Get Out



Important Public Service Announcement: Missing: One Senator from Kentucky, answering to the name of Rand Paul. Hair type: curly. Political beliefs: Right of Center. Last seen: over a month ago. Will the finder please wake the gentleman up and remind him he is running for president?

Just a couple of months ago, Rand Paul was on the senate floor, filibustering while the nation watched, he shouted out “are we just supposed to sit back and take it? Well I’m not going to take it anymore!” For days Paul, who was named last the year by Time“The Most interesting man in Politics” was in the headlines, raising money off the momentum from his speeches, driving the national conversation, and as an added bonus, stopping the government’s collection of bulk data…for a couple of days before it was basically reinstituted under another name.
But now he’s gone. Last week in Cleveland, for a few brief moments, he shined, attacking Trump, taking on Christie, (who, it was later discovered, was lying about the date he was made prosecutor) and yelling “get a warrant!” when the governor of New Jersey said Paul was threatening national security.
The son of Ron Paul, the man who took and the establishment and called for fiscal responsibility in this nation, Rand’s pedigree is sound. He was a part of the “crazy” conservative spring to bring down big government, and end massive government spending. His slogan is “defeat the Washington Machine.”
But now, one is left wondering what he is doing.
Paul's super PAC has raised less money than any other serious candidate, (we are not talking about Pataki or Gilmore here) and some insiders have said that Paul has purposely avoided some fundraising events, canceling an important one earlier this year to go on vacation. 
In recent days, Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, two members of the club known as “The Worst Politics has to Offer” have dominated cable news, the radio, and even the late night comedy shows. Real conservatives, such as Paul, are too much in the background.
This was supposed to be Paul’s year, he was the man who could grow the Republican Party, bring in the minority voters and the young people. But he is floundering. His numbers are down, and the main stories about him these days are about how his campaign isn’t working very well, how he isn’t raising money, etc.
It remains true, however, that in the City of Washington DC, where charity is taking one man’s money and giving it to another, and a city that believes that people do not have right to their privacy without the government coming in and reading everything all the time, Rand Paul has been a refreshing blast of cold water.
In a party with the likes of Trump, who has made remarks disparaging about women and Latinos, in a GOP that is seen by many as “white, rich, and old” Paul had support from across the spectrum.
Of course, we still have about six months to go. Anything could happen. But Rand needs to start working on making things happen. If he can’t or if it becomes clear that the Republican Party has said “no, not this time” to his getting the nomination, Paul really ought to drop out and go back to the senate, where he can continue to give voice to the millions of Americans who still care about liberty.

Andrew C. Abbott

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular Posts

Create Your Own Social Networking Site

Create Your Own Social Networking Site JCOW: Ethical Hacking Top 10 reasons to choose Jcow:- 1. Handle more traffic - Clean codes and Dynamic caching can lower the CPU load and  speed up your website. 2 Make your site more interactive - Well designed Jcow applications help you members to connect and communicate with others more effectively. 3 Add questions to the Registration Form - You can add new member fields, which will be displayed to the registration form, profile form, and the member browsing form. 4 Easily share stuff - Within the AJAX sharing Box, your members can publish status,  photos, videos, and blogs. 5 Customize and Extend your Jcow Network - A Jcow network consists of core apps(like "Friends" and "Messages") and optional apps(like "Blogs" and ""Videos"). You can enable/disable optional apps. You can also develop your own apps. 6 Every profile could be Unique - Members can customize their own profile theme and  add music play...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Problem of Abstraction in Definitions of Data Objects

I think there is a major problem in not being able to understand and work with different levels of abstraction.  By "abstraction" in this sense I mean one concept system that somehow describes or defines (not merely relates to) another concept system.  I think this is a big problem for definitions in data models. Let us take an example in a retail business such as mortgage banking: Customer Name.  Customer Name exists in the business.  They use it all the time.  Maybe it is sometimes called Borrower Name, but the concept is the same.  This is the Level 1 abstraction. Now let us think of data values in a column in a table that holds Customer Name.  These data values are stored as a code of 1's and 0's.  Of course these bits are rendered into something we can read.  However, this is not the same as the Customer Name in the business.  I worked for a place where they prefixed the name of anyone who had recently left with "ZZZ"....
Post a Comment
Read more

The Humpty-Dumpty Principle in Definitions

In dealing with empty concepts, we came across the issue that if somebody uses a term that potentially has an unintelligible definition, they are likely to defend themselves by quickly making up some kind of definition.   I strongly suspect that in such cases, the usage of the term will be inconsistent with the definition.  Which brings us to Humpty-Dumpty. Lewis Carroll (Rev. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) is best known for his children's' books Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass .  It is in the latter that Humpty Dumpty - an argumentative egg perched on a wall has the following exchange with Alice: 'And only one for birthday presents, you know. There's glory for you!' `I don't know what you mean by "glory",' Alice said. Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. `Of course you don't -- till I tell you. I meant "there's a nice knock-down argument for you!"' `But "glory" doesn't mean "...
Post a Comment
Read more