WASHINGTON Rand Paul is the most intriguing and for Democrats, perhaps the most frightening figure in todays Republican Party. The Kentucky senator, who is more than flirting with a 2016 presidential run, is making a smart play for the millennial generation that was key to President Obamas twin victories and that his own party has convincingly repelled.
Pauls unlikely pilgrimage to the progressive precincts of the University of California, Berkeley offered the most convincing evidence so far that he is serious about carving out this (sorry, President Clinton) third way space and a demonstration of his potential appeal to this lost demographic, more attuned to personality than party.
Watch the video of Paul at Berkeley the other day, and you think: This guy doesnt even look like a Republican, with his jeans and cowboy boots, his tie-but-no-jacket look, his mop-in-need-of-cutting coiffure. Mitt Romney tried to rock those jeans, but no 20-something no 30-something, actually looked at his Brylcreemed hair and thought: I want to hang out with this guy.
More important, listen to the substance, and it is difficult to detect much Republican in Pauls remarks. Indeed, his cross-brand pitch was explicit, and exquisitely attuned to the youre-not-the-boss-of-me ethos of the younger generation. Now you may be a Republican or a Democrat or a Libertarian, Paul began his speech. Im not here to tell you what to be.
With the laconic delivery and soft bluegrass accent that lent a certain stoner quality to his speech, Paul bonded with the Berkeley audience with pretty much the identical message he delivered to the Conservative Political Action Conference the week before, where he won the straw poll.
If you own a cellphone, youre under surveillance, Paul warned. I believe what you do on your cellphone is none of their damn business, waving his and winning applause.
But Paul did not stop there. He compared Edward Snowden to Henry David Thoreau and Martin Luther King Jr., and found Snowdens desire to escape draconian punishment for his civil disobedience reasonable; he compared Snowden to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, and found the latter wanting.
Clapper lied in the name of security, Snowden told the truth in the name of privacy, Paul said, adding that the intelligence director should be tried for perjury.
Most important, Pauls theory of broadening his partys appeal beyond its old white-guy base is not limited to issues of privacy. Remember, Dominos finally admitted they had bad crust? he asked. Republican Party, admit it: OK, bad crust. We need a different kind of party.
One example: expressing fear about indefinite detention of U.S citizens in ways that resonate beyond a libertarian audience. If youre African-American, Japanese-American, Jewish American, Hispanic, have there ever been times when the government didnt treat you fairly? said Paul, who has proposed lower mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes and restoring voting rights for nonviolent felons. Have there ever been times when you said, You know what? The war on drugs has had a racial outcome, three out of four people in prison are brown or black so somethings gone wrong?
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Rand Paul's youth movement