Clarion Content

This is what makes Rand Paul an interesting politician...

Kentucky Senator Rand Paul is a different breed of politician because he calls out realities blithely ignored by the talking heads on both sides of the aisle.

Agree or disagree with him on his litany of policy positions, he is a check on the Nation's Constitutional conscience.

Two examples in the last month:

Last week Congress introduced and proposed to vote on a six hundred page bill within the same forty-eight hours. The Senate voted 72-22 to waive the rule requiring a 48-hour layover for legislation to be digested. As Senator Paul put it, "For goodness sakes, this is a 600-page bill. I got it this morning."

Paul then proceeded to put his proverbial senatorial caja where his mouth was, proposing legislation that would force the Senate to give its members one day to read bills for every 20 pages they contain.

A reality check.

A week or two earlier Paul had called out his own party's candidate for imperial overreach when Mitt Romney dictatorially declared that he could unilaterally take the country to war with Iran, without the prior consent of Congress.¹ Senator Paul slapped him down,

"I must oppose the most recent statements made by Mitt Romney in which he says he, as president, could take us to war unilaterally with Iran, without any approval from Congress...This is a misreading of the role of the President and Congress in declaring war.

Unfortunately, Senator Paul is running even more of a solitary course² in this, than he is in actually expecting Senators to read the legislation they pass.

Click here for a fascinating analysis from Doug Mataconis on Outside the Beltway.

How much does Mataconis think Paul's opinion will shift Romney's stance?

Hint: "during the GOP primary fight the only candidates who deviated from the neo-conservative aggressiveness that Romney is demonstrating now were Ron Paul, Jon Huntsman, and Gary Johnson, and we know how the voters treated them..."


Notes

¹Our own reality check forces us to recognize Presidents have been ignoring this rule since at least the Kennedy administration.
²A pessimist would say perhaps only Kucinich, the Maxine Waters faction in House of Representatives and Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont would hold with Senator Paul when the chips were down.

Labels: 2012 presidential election, Ethically questionable, Politics