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Rand Paul, future of the GOP?

Jamie Weinstein in The American Spectator : Rand Paul is many things: a doctor, a senator, a son and a father. But one thing he is unlikely to be is the 2016 Republican nominee. Not everyone agrees. There is a narrative that the Republican party is moving inexorably in Pauls libertarian direction. Opposition to National Security Agency surveillance, non-interventionism and drug policy reform will make 2016 Rand Pauls year or so we are told. This narrative isnt entirely false, but it is vastly overblown. Paul is an important voice in the Republican party, but for many reasons ideology, temprement, personality he is an unlikely GOP nominee.

One case study Pauls backers bring up is Syria. Many in the media were shocked when it became clear that few Republicans supported military action against the Assad regime when President Barack Obama took the issue to Congress last September.

Wasnt this the hawkish party that supported the Iraq war? Could it be that Paul had turned the GOP into a party of non-interventionists? The Syria debate marked the first time since House Republicans tried to keep America out of the Kosovo conflict in 1999 that a libertarian approach to foreign policy seriously challenged the GOPs old-guard caucus of hawks, Buzzfeeds McKay Coppins declared in a September article titled Rand Paul on a Warpath.

But this is a misreading of what actually occurred. While it is true some in the Republican leadership supported a military response, most Republicans, like most Americans, were skeptical of those on whose behalf the United States would have been intervening. Yes, the Assad regime is monstrous, but the opposition consists overwhelmingly of Islamists, the strongest elements of which are affiliated with al-Qaida. Even John Bolton, who no one has ever confused for a Rand Paul-style non-interventionist, opposed military intervention in Syria.

A true test of whether the GOP has become more Paulian in its foreign policy outlook is Iran and polling suggests it hasnt. A March 2013 Pew poll, for instance, revealed that 80 percent of Republicans would favor striking Iran militarily if it is necessary to stop the Islamic republic from obtaining nuclear weapons. This doesnt mean the GOP hasnt learned lessons from Iraq and Afghanistan. It just means that the narrative is far more complicated than it might first seem.

Steve Cohen in The New York Times : Tuition has risen almost 1,200 percent in the last 35 years, and the sticker price for many four-year private colleges and out-of-state public universities exceeds $250,000. Even at state universities, the average four-year cost for residents is more than $80,000 for tuition, room, board and expenses. But every college offers need-based financial aid, right? Well, sort of.

A college aid package can be made up of three elements: grants (sometimes called scholarships), loans and work-study programs.

The biggest single source of aid is the federal government but in the form of loans ($68 billion, 37 percent of all aid, in 2013). About 5 percent of aid comes from states and a large part from the colleges own resources.

Much of the colleges contribution comes in the form of a discount from the schools already inflated tuition, which, with a straight face, administrators call a grant.

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Other writers, on Rand Paul, the cost of college