When it comes to rebuilding the Republican brand, we’ve resisted the sneering at Rand Paul. Foreign policy excluded, we’ve admired his willingness to take the free-market argument where other Republicans fear to tread, e.g., the historically black Howard University. And we’re with him when he says America will benefit from an immigration bill that brings in talent and enterprise.
Alas, there’s always a big “but” with the senator from Kentucky. We had a display this week in Paul’s comments about Edward Snowden, the NSA contractor who leaked classified info about two anti-terror programs and fled to Hong Kong.
Paul says he’s “reserving judgment.” But his words suggest he considers Snowden a hero: “I mean, we live in a bad time where American citizens don’t even have rights and that they can be killed, but the gentleman is trying to tell the truth about what’s going on.”
A few months earlier, Paul said he wanted “to have influence in growing” the Republican Party. He went on to add that “a lot of people are fiscally conservative and think we should do a better job with freeing up markets and less regulation, but they may be turned off by other issues.”
Absolutely. And a major turnoff for people who might otherwise find the small government argument credible is watching a prominent GOP leader who can’t distinguish between an NSA that is lawfully gathering intel that helps us target terrorists and an IRS that illegally targets law-abiding citizens because of their politics.