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Title: Rand Paul’s Cuba Meltdown ... he's no conservative --- he’ a quack.
Source:
nationalreview.com/
URL Source: http://www.nationalreview.com/artic ... uls-cuba-meltdown-quin-hillyer
Published: Dec 22, 2014
Author: Quin Hillyer
Post Date: 2014-12-22 11:46:12 by BorisY
Keywords: rob rape pillage hijack burn, rob rape pillage hijack burn, rob rape pillage hijack burn
Views: 543
Comments: 2
Rand Paul’s Cuba Meltdown His mockery of Marco Rubio as “isolationist” reveals Paul as a joke in the foreign-policy arena. By Quin Hillyer December 22, 2014 With his enthusiastic support for Barack Obama’s normalization of relations with Cuba, Senator Rand Paul (R., Ky.) again shows that his foreign-policy views are wrongheaded. With his bizarre mislabeling of his views and of those who disagree, Paul shows himself (yet again) to be truly ignorant about foreign affairs. And with his juvenile, nasty, strangely personal attacks on fellow Republican senator Marco Rubio of Florida, Paul shows himself temperamentally unsuited for the presidency. Rand Paul is no conservative; he’ a quack. s a quack.First, as for Obama’s policy change, the in-depth arguments against normalizing relations right now have been superbly laid out by the Washington Post, Andrew McCarthy, Rich Lowry, the National Review Online editors, Elliott Abrams, and Mark Krikorian, among others. This column won’t rehash all the arguments. Suffice it to say that while there might be some good arguments for asking Congress to modify the economic sanctions against Cuba, establishing “normal” diplomatic relations sends the horrendous message that human rights and liberty are irrelevant — and that we will ignore (or even reward) a half-century of active hostility 90 miles from our shores even though Cuba has never made amends. In short, one can argue that some forms of economic liberalization might work in Cuba the same way that perestroika did in Russia — to undermine the regime rather than prop it up. But a greater and rightful world power shouldn’t dignify an evil and far lesser power by offering it diplomatic imprimatur free of charge. Everybody is entitled to be wrong occasionally, of course. If Paul’s error were only that he conflated the embargo with fully normalized relations, while making a free-market argument for lifting the former, it would be one thing. It’s entirely another thing, and bizarre, to completely up-end the meaning of the word “isolationist” and use it as a cudgel against Senator Rubio, who is far less conventionally isolationist than he. This continues a long pattern of Paul demonstrating a real ignorance of basic concepts of defense and foreign policy. In October, Paul made a speech at the Center for the National Interest in which he outlined what he called a new “conservative realism.” He was clearly trying to shed the label of “isolationist” that has hobbled his stature among large swaths of the Republican electorate. It was a strange performance. His version of “realism,” despite some tough-talking verbiage, amounted to asserting that “the best outcome” America could have achieved in Iraq was “stalemate”; that “our interventions in foreign countries may well exacerbate . . . hatred”; that the world “does not have an Islam problem” but instead a “dignity problem”; that you “can’t solve a dignity problem with military force”; that “we need a foreign policy that recognizes our limits”; that “in the end, only the people of the region can destroy ISIS,” which will happen when “civilized Islam steps up to defeat this barbaric aberration”; that in the Black Sea region we must “achieve a diplomatic settlement that takes into account Russia’s long-standing ties with Ukraine”; and that “though we will not abide injustice, we will not instigate war.” (Will we never “instigate war” to stop injustice? Would Paul have opposed the rescue of Grenada? The ouster of Noriega from Panama? The moral cause of evicting the Communist North from South Korea?) Taken individually, most (but not all) of those pronouncements might be defensible. Together, they paint a portrait of a man as uncomfortable with American military and diplomatic robustness, and as naïve about the real nature of our enemies, as any senator this side of George McGovern or Barack Obama. Remember, this is a man who wants to put an end to all foreign aid. Never mind the vast diplomatic advantages that the aid buys us, or the humanitarian problems that at least some aid helps solve. Yet he has the gall to call others “isolationist.” This is a man who repeatedly has blamed American actions, not jihadist ideology, for having “created the chaos” in the Middle East and for making us “less safe in Iraq.” Really, Senator? Maybe no safer — though many of us would disagree — but less safe? Even more ignorantly, spectacularly so, were his assertions that “there were no WMDs, that Hussein, Qaddafi, and Assad were no threat to us.” No threat at all? Worse, as I outlined earlier this year, Paul has repeatedly slandered Dick Cheney and even Ronald Reagan with outlandishly absurd lies masquerading as history. Anybody who still thinks Reagan armed Osama bin Laden is so monumentally ignorant and prone to conspiracy theories as to be dangerous. One could write much more about the perilous loopiness of Paul’s antipathy to American arms and diplomatic robustness, but let’s concentrate on his meltdown concerning Cuba. Alone among potential Republican presidential candidates, Paul wholeheartedly embraced Obama’s prostration to the Castro brothers. Rubio, whose father emigrated from Cuba, quite naturally bristled when asked about Paul’s comments by Fox News’s Megyn Kelly: “Like many people who have been opining, he has no idea what he’s talking about.” Rubio then explained at length what he meant, without mentioning Paul again. It was neither a premeditated attack on Paul nor a deliberately personal one; he was taking aim at the “many people” he thinks are wrong on the issue. Paul then had a hissy fit. First he took to Facebook with a two-paragraph, full-scale assault on Rubio’s position, including this strange passage: “Seems to me, Senator Rubio is acting like an isolationist who wants to retreat to our borders and perhaps build a moat. I reject this isolationism.” How, pray tell, is it “isolationist” to take an active stance to penalize another country? Existing sanctions against Cuba don’t isolate the United States; they isolate Cuba in ways that, as the Washington Post has pointed out, have actually worked to keep Cuba’s harms in check. To call American policy “isolationist” means that the United States is retreating behind its own borders, not that we are insisting (with significant, if tacit, support from other nations) that an evil regime remains within its own. Paul didn’t stop there. Continuing his highly personal attack on Rubio, Paul emitted a series of at least four Tweets, each mentioning Rubio by name, mocking the Floridian and again accusing him of wanting to “build a moat.” This is the kind of name-calling that middle-school debate-club members resort to, putting down others with snark to hide their own adolescent insecurities. Paul’s tweets were not so much reasoned debate as a variation of “yeah, and so’s your mother!” Not only is this sort of foolishness unpresidential, it’s unsenatorial. And in an age when Harry Reid has dramatically downgraded the very notion of what it means to “senatorial,” one must work mighty hard to fall short of even the new, lowered standards. Let’s not forget that Rubio is a Senate colleague of Paul’s, of the same party. And he’s somebody whose background — his life experience, family history, and political views — are profoundly rooted in a Cuban-American milieu that should earn him at least a little respect, even if Paul disagrees with him on points of policy. But this is part of a pattern with Paul. He seems utterly unable to disagree on any matter involving arms or diplomacy without insulting his adversaries or questioning their conclusions, intelligence, or motives — or all three. Thus, in Paul’s world, John McCain met with the Islamic State! Cheney started a war to enrich Halliburton! The “war caucus” in the Reagan years, including Reagan’s State Department, supported “radical jihad”! At least he hasn’t yet called Dwight Eisenhower “a conscious, deliberate, and dedicated agent of the Soviet conspiracy.” (Although Paul did employ a long-time racial provocateur — to put it kindly — who once averred that “John Wilkes Booth’s heart was in the right place” when he assassinated Lincoln.) Still, enough is enough. Nobody should ever again take seriously any Paulite pronouncements outside of domestic affairs. Months ago I thought he was a menace; now he’s just a joke. — Quin Hillyer is a contributing editor for National Review Online. Follow him on Twitter: @QuinHillyer. Comments 95
Poster Comment: Isolation boogeyman attack - backfire ! Reminds me of obomba ... blaming govt - economic excesses on privatization --- giveaway hyper inflated govt - Ponzi housing finance - bank - stock market mortgage collapse !
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#1. To: All (#0)
Reminds me of obomba - libertarians ... blaming republicans for --- perpetual stupidity - slavery - failure - self generated hate - insanity ! Only ... God - serious Christianity - Divine intervention --- can get you out of that mess !
If you ... don't use exclamation points --- you should't be typeing ! Commas - semicolons - question marks are for girlie boys !
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Calgary) When it comes to immigration reform, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz has made it abundantly clear what he opposes: giving citizenship to people who broke the law to come here. What has not been as evident is what he supports: legal status for millions of people here already, while making it easier for immigrants to come here through the front door. “I have said many times that I want to see common-sense immigration reform pass,” he said. “I think most Americans want to see the problem fixed.” But for Cruz, a Tea Party favorite who represents a state with rapidly changing demographics, finding common ground will not be easy. Many of the bedrock Tea Party supporters who helped elect him are immigration hard-liners who object to even the slightest nod toward amnesty, a loaded word that generally means providing an avenue for legal residency to people who entered the United States illegally. Such conservatives tend to favor mass deportation, or “self-deportation,” for the millions of undocumented immigrants. On the other hand, Hispanics in Texas are projected to eclipse the white population sometime in the next decade, and Cruz cannot afford to alienate large numbers of Latino voters with a strident anti-immigrant tone and a hard-line legislative approach. Major business interests also are supporting a path to citizenship. What Cruz has tried to articulate in both word and deed is a middle ground. It got no support from Democrats in Washington, but it goes further than many on the far right want to go by offering leniency to undocumented immigrants here already: A path to legal status, but not to citizenship. A green card with no right to naturalization. Immigration-reform legislation from the Senate’s so-called Gang of Eight passed that chamber in June and includes a 13-year path to citizenship. Cruz pushed unsuccessfully for amendments that would have, among other things, eliminated the citizenship component. Asked about what to do with the people here illegally, however, he stressed that he had never tried to undo the goal of allowing them to stay. “The amendment that I introduced removed the path to citizenship, but it did not change the underlying work permit from the Gang of Eight,” he said during a recent visit to El Paso. Cruz also noted that he had not called for deportation or, as Mitt Romney famously advocated, self-deportation. Cruz said recent polling indicated that people outside Washington support some reform, including legal status without citizenship. He said he was against naturalization because it rewarded lawbreakers and was unfair to legal immigrants. It also perpetuates illegal crossings, he added. Besides barring citizenship while instituting some level of legalization for those here already, Cruz has proposed increasing the number of green cards awarded annually, to 1.35 million from 675,000. He also wants to eliminate the per-country limit that he said left applicants from countries like Mexico, China and India hamstrung when they tried to gain legal entry to this country. Cruz said the Obama administration and partisan Democrats would not yield on the citizenship requirement, which they know would kill the entire effort because of a lack of support in the House. The result, he said, will be a future campaign tool by which Democrats can blame Republicans for failing to overhaul immigration. “If your objective is actually to pass a bill insisting on a path to citizenship, it is in both intent and effect a poison pill,” he said, adding that he thinks many of the immigration groups working on the issue are “being taken advantage of.” Democrats say that Cruz is not in line with what most Americans favor. “The majority of Americans support a path to earned citizenship for people who have long been part of our communities — pass a background check, pay a fee and pledge allegiance to our flag,” said U.S. Rep. Pete Gallego, D-Alpine. “With so many people and groups in favor of immigration reform, common sense would dictate that those blocking reform are the ones out of the mainstream.” Cruz has said the stalemate is denying help to farmers and ranchers who “have a real need for labor resources.” On that score, he finds himself out of step with hard-liners who do not believe immigrant laborers are needed. Ira Mehlman, a national spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which advocates increased border security and limited immigration, opposes expanding the pool of legal workers the way Cruz proposes. And citizenship or not, he added, legal status still means immigrants take resources from citizens already here. "We’re also opposed to the expansion of guest-worker programs,” he said. “There is no evidence of a worker shortage." Instead the group wants tougher internal enforcement so illegal immigrants adhere to what he calls "voluntary compliance," or self-deportation. Likewise, the Texas Tea Party activist JoAnn Fleming said she opposed allowing illegal immigrants to get “in line ahead of people who have tried to do it the right way.” Cruz routinely cites his own history as inspiration for his views on immigration. His father, Rafael Cruz, a North Texas pastor and Tea Party favorite in his own right, fled Cuba and worked as a dishwasher before attending the University of Texas at Austin on a student visa, and he is now “living the American dream,” Ted Cruz says. But critics of Cruz argue that Cubans are awarded what some today would call amnesty. Federal law allows Cubans to adjust their legal status a year after arriving. Cruz said American refugee law had always been sympathetic to those in his father’s situation, even before Fidel Castro took hold of the island. “U.S. immigration law, for many decades, has included asylum and refugee status for those who have credible fears of persecution and oppression,” he said. He added that Fidel Castro “established a repressive Communist regime that has tortured and murdered countless dissidents.” Cuba poses a different scenario from other countries, he said, because U.S. immigration law has recognized for decades that there is a qualitative difference between fleeing political persecution and fleeing poverty. Mexico, he said, is a great country, although its drug violence and poverty are horrific, and Mexicans with a credible fear of persecution should apply for asylum. But the problem is not as widespread there, he said. “It is not the case that throughout the country of Mexico, everyone there has a credible fear of persecution,” he said. “Our laws allow that to be made on a case-by-case basis.”
#2. To: BorisY (#1)
On Immigration, Cruz Aims for Middle Ground (Amnesty, without using the word)
Senator Ted Cruz held a press conference at the Anzalduas International Bridge in Mission surrounded by a group of local ranchers who told the senator they have been impacted by poor border security Enlarge photo by: Doug YoungThe D&R terrorists hate us because we're free, to vote second party
"We (government) need to do a lot less, a lot sooner" ~Ron Paul
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