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View Full Version : Op-Ed: Paul's beautiful anti-drone filibuster shows how civil liberties can revive GOP




compromise
03-08-2013, 10:45 AM
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/timstanley/100205887/rand-pauls-beautiful-anti-drone-filibuster-shows-how-civil-liberties-can-unite-and-revive-the-republican-party/


http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=7IFxkt9rctg
It’s easy to be cynical about politics, but sometimes a pol does something so good that it revives your faith in the whole system. Step forward and take a bow Rand Paul, who yesterday led an extraordinary filibuster that delayed the nomination of Obama’s pick for CIA director, John O Brennan. It lasted 12 wonderful hours – a rare example of not wanting a politician to hurry up and get to the point.

Two things made his stand heroic. First, filibustering involves a battle between mind and body – poor Paul wasn’t allowed to leave the chamber to go to the loo. “I would go for another 12 hours to try to break Strom Thurmond’s record,” he said, “but I’ve discovered that there are some limits to filibustering and I’m going to have to go take care of one of those in a few minutes here.” In fact, Thurmond’s record was set with the help of some indecent stagecraft: he put a bucket outside the door and stood with one foot in the chamber and another foot in the next room and urinated into the receptacle. In this age of televised congressional debates, such a tactic would presumably be a career killer.

But the best thing about this particular filibuster was the beauty of the cause: Paul took to the floor to protest Obama’s brutal policy of using drone strikes to kill terrorists. They might be preferable to sending US soldiers into a war zone, but the idea that drones represent a more targeted or clean form of warfare is nonsense: 4,700 people have been killed by drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, of which 176 were children. Among that number was an American citizen – Anwar al-Awlaki, killed in Yemen in 2011. A memo leaked from the White House last month shows that the administration believes it has the legal authority to kill US citizens without trial if a) they are a senior al-Qaeda operative, b) their threat is imminent and c) they cannot be caught. Incredibly, Eric Holder has actually stated that this could even be done on US soil. That’s “more than frightening”, says Paul. It’s white-knuckle stuff, indeed.

How wonderful, then, to see the GOP united in a rare defence of civil liberties. There was a time when the Republicans (Mr Paul excluded) were the party of wiretaps and Patriot Acts, but opposition can do funny things to a politician, making him suddenly hate the things he once loved. Paul stuck solidly to the matter at hand, pointing out that if anti-American dissent is enough to warrant an extra-judicial killing then Jane Fonda might have been the target of a drone strike when she visited Hanoi during the Vietnam War (to think, we might never have had the movie Monster-in-Law). But he was joined by a veritable “filibuzzard” of Republicans who threw in quips and fancies to keep the event going. Ted Cruz read from Henry V and Marco Rubio quoted the rapper Jay-Z and bits of the script of The Godfather.

Aside from being a fun time had by all, Paul’s principled stand has reversed some of the logic of US politics, turning a Democratic president into an agent of authoritarianism and the Republicans into defenders of civil liberties. If the GOP could marry that small-state message on rights to a small-state message on economics, this could affect a paradigm shift that broadens the party's appeal (particularly to younger voters). This is no idle fantasy. As Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry points out, Rand Paul’s growing popularity shows that “libertarianism has a genuine power base and future in the Republican Party, while it’s DOA in the Democratic Party”. Its expansion is aided by Paul’s careful and clever choice of targets and language. While his father was known in Congress as a “Dr No”, Rand’s more cautious application of libertarian ideas makes him a “Dr Maybe”.

The takeaway is that this display of libertarian will power has put the Republicans on the side of the angels and given them one of their few bright moments since the election. They should try this sort of thing more often.

Aratus
03-08-2013, 06:23 PM
neat news story