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Inkblots
06-11-2015, 09:21 PM
For a bit of a change of pace from what we've been seeing lately, how about a friendly piece in a major national magazine?

How Rand Paul Has Already Changed the 2016 Race
By: Joe Klein
The candidate has proven chatty and thoughtful

Rand Paul has been a bad, bad boy. Just ask him. “I’m not very popular in Washington right now” was his opening line at a series of town-hall meetings in New Hampshire, two weeks after he had filibustered and, temporarily, crashed the bulk collection of phone data by the federal government. “I messed up their Memorial Day plans.” The line drew laughter and applause in the great state of New Hampshire, a flinty and skeptical province. Anything that gums up the federal machine is a good thing, it seems, even if it involves national security. “One of my colleagues asked, ‘What do we do if the authority to collect data lapses?'” he continued. “I told him, ‘Well, we could rely on the Constitution for a few hours.'”

[...]

By the time his 15-minute stump speech is over, he has delivered a tutorial about the First, Second, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Ninth and 10th amendments to the Constitution. “We Republicans won’t be successful as a party,” he says, “until we support the entire Bill of Rights as enthusiastically as we support the Second Amendment”–that is, the right to bear arms.

[...]

The current conventional wisdom is that Paul doesn’t have much of a chance to win the nomination–even though, according to a recent poll, he runs stronger against Hillary Clinton than any other Republican does. But his message is fresh and consequential. It throws a klieg light on the deficiencies of the two major parties: the mindless Republican war-silliness and the utter failure of the Democratic welfare state to alleviate intergenerational poverty. “I was on the South Side of Chicago a few weeks ago,” he said. “And the people there know the current system isn’t working. They’re about ready to try something new.”
http://time.com/3917723/chatty-and-thoughtful-rand-paul-has-already-changed-the-2016-race/

And, as a bonus, I now know what a klieg light is :)