Monday, June 17, 2013

Rand Paul: The Republican's presidential nominee in 2016

It's dangerously early to be offering political predictions for the 2016 presidential race, but I'm ready to make my first prediction: Barring some unforeseen major scandal, Rand Paul will be the Republican nominee.

He's making all the right moves.

One of the things that I like about Paul is that he doesn't play it safe: He's willing to go out on a limb for what he believes. And when was the last time you saw that in the herd of politicians who basically spend their lives telling people what they want to hear?

Rand Paul is one of a regretfully small handful of Republican candidates who goes beyond what is currently acceptable and is willing (and able) to not only argue on the basis of what people already believe, but to argue people into positions they do not already hold.

And he knows exactly how far he can go politically in doing this.

He's willing to push the envelope, make people mad, stir things up, and whatever other political cliche there is for doing what needs to be done.

I have long been uncomfortable with his libertarianism--which I maintain is not true conservatism--and yet he has so far stuck to conservative positions on cultural issues.

Another interesting thing about his is his ability to cross the usual political lines. As just one example, here is the New Republic (of all places) on Paul's meteoric political rise and his prospective run for president.

22 comments:

Singring said...

So he's going to be the next Newt Gingrich, then?

KyCobb said...

It is, of course, way too early to predict who will actually win the nomination of either party in 2016. Hillary is supposed to be a lock, but she was in 2008 as well. The GOP stable includes Christie, Ryan, Jeb Bush, Rubio and Cruz among others besides Rand. Rand does have the advantage of inheriting his father's cult, so raising money won't be a problem for him.

Lee said...

Would you apply the word 'cult' to Obama, too?

E.g., Evan Thomas: "He's like... God!"

E.g., Chanting at campaign rallies. Not shouting. Not singing. Chanting.

E.g., "We are the change we've been waiting for."

E.g., " this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal..."

David Charlton said...

Please, dear God, help us all.

KyCobb said...

Lee,

No, Obama proposes centrist solutions to real world problems. He would've been a comfortable fit in the GOP twenty years ago. Heck, most of what he's done was to implement Republican ideas.

Lee said...

> No, Obama proposes centrist solutions to real world problems.

As usual, you have your very own definitions of words. A man who has effectively grabbed control of a sixth of the U.S. economy, uses the IRS and the FBI to bash his political opponents, and is deficit-spending us to our doom at the rate of about $1.6 trillion a years, is a centrist.

God help us if a liberal is ever elected.

KyCobb said...

Lee,

You obviously haven't noticed that the deficit has been dropping at the fastest rate in decades. In fact most economists think we have been cutting the deficit too fast, though thankfully we haven't been caught in the deficit reduction mania of Europe, where they have triggered a Depression.

Lee said...

> You obviously haven't noticed that the deficit has been dropping at the fastest rate in decades.

Went to this site...

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/federal_deficit_chart.html

And this is pretty rich...

FY 2014*: $744 billion FY 2009†: $1,413 billion

This is, basically, blaming Obama on Bush. Remember the so-called "stimulus package" in 2009? This site is, er, crediting that to Mr. Bush.

> You obviously haven't noticed that the deficit has been dropping at the fastest rate in decades.

And so it has! And if it drops just $300 billion more, it will almost be as small as Bush's biggest deficit -- that is, the biggest *I'm* giving him credit for.

Not that Bush ought to get a lot of credit for that. The only way Republicans can ever look good is by comparison.

KyCobb said...

Lee,

FY 2009 would've began October 1, 2008 and ended September 30, 2009. When the economy crashed, Bush wisely signed TARP into law which added significantly to the deficit but prevented a global Depression. The Recession also caused a significant drop in US government revenue, as did the tax cuts in President Obama's stimulus plan. It would've been madness to make deep cuts in federal spending at the same time private demand had been severely cut, which would only have exacerbated the downturn.

Lee said...

Whether these decisions needed to be made the way they were is a matter of opinion.

However, it is a matter of fact that O has almost doubled the national debt.

KyCobb said...

Lee,

At a time when we faced the worse economic downturn since the Great Depression, it would've been irresponsible not to. Or we could've turned to austerity like Europe, where they are in recession, and unemployment is in the double digits and rising.

Singring said...

Thanks for reminding me, KyCobb.

Greece is on the verge of complete bankrupcy and it will take a long, long time to recover. Spain and Italy are on similarly trajectories. Meanwhile, budgets are being slashed, which is increasing poverty leaps and bounds, therefore reducing spending power, therefore damaging the economy.

Meanwhile, international banks and corporations are lining their pockets buying up state-owned property at bargain bin prices, because the austerity measures demand it. So when the economy recovers again at some stage down the road, guess who will be reaping the benefits - not the government, which would spend the money on th people and infrastructure, but the banks and corporations, who want to reap profits.

If there is a single, definitive text on the matter that you must read, it is the 'Shock Doctrine' by Naomi Klein.

I finished reading it just before the Greece collapse happened and what I was seeing in the news and reading in the papers literally could have made up the next chapter in the book.

It is a prophetic work and I have never read anything that so clearly dissects the economic cycles we are seeing in the world today and that we have seen in the past.

Lee said...

> At a time when we faced the worse economic downturn since the Great Depression, it would've been irresponsible not to.

And we're back now to matters of opinion.

Lee said...

Ky, I should add that the two easiest arguments in the world to make is defending the status quo, and attacking the status quo.

"Things would have been much worse if we hadn't done X" is a defense of the status quo. It's impervious to evidence. If things actually did get better after X, then X gets all the credit. If things actually got worse after X, then, phew, then we're relieved because it would have been so much worse without X. Either way, cause and effect are however you want to spin it.

And the same sort of thing holds true of attacking the status quo. "Y is a grave injustice that must be abolished!" In fact, it may not be an injustice at all (though its results may give that impression), but a condition that simply has to be endured.

As a conservative, I spend most of my time defending the status quo, and you spend most of your time indicting it. On the TARP issue, we are in unusual positions relative to one another.

My perspective on TARP can be summed up by one Felix Salmon, of Reuters...

"We're still a long way from being able to render a final verdict on TARP. But the best that can be said for it at this point is that it helped to arrest the sickening downward spiral that the global financial system was falling into, and that it came in handy for bailing out the automakers. Against that, it failed to get banks lending again; it failed to do anything about the foreclosure crisis; it failed to make any kind of a dent in the unemployment crisis; it failed to hold bankers accountable for their actions; and it succeeded in generating a broad-based mistrust of institutions: the government and the financial-services industry certainly, and the judicial system possibly as well."

It's that last part that concerns me the most: the untrustworthiness of our institutions. They changed the rules, and you can't change the rules without changing the game.

In essence, the old rules were that good economic decisions were rewarded and bad economic decisions were punished. The new rules are that those who made good economic decisions now have to prop up those with political clout who made bad economic decisions.

Once you start going down that road, there is no endgame, no way to restore what was, no graceful exit. If football were to become a game where the referees themselves decided who was going to win, people would quit playing and audiences would quit cheering. Why bother? The game is rigged.

Even so.

KyCobb said...

Lee,

The rules can be changed again to prevent the same occurrence. That is what Dodd-Frank was about, though I would've liked it to go further in preventing fraud and reckless speculation. And some financiers should've been sent to prison. However, allowing another catastrophe like the Great Depression, inflicting massive amounts of misery on possibly hundreds of millions of innocents due to the irresponsible actions of a few elites was not a rational option.

Besides, it isn't really just my opinion, its basic economic laws. If you jump off a hundred foot high cliff, its not just my opinion you will fall to your death; its dictated by gravity. If private demand for goods and services plummets, then you also slash hundreds of billions of dollars of government demand for goods and services, the laws of supply and demand absolutely dictate that the lack of demand will increase job losses. And its not like we can't observe the abject failure of austerity measures in Europe, which remains in recession and unemployment remains in double digits. Virtually any article on economic forecasts you read will say that sequestration is expected to shave a point or so off of economic growth in the US this year. Reduction in demand for goods and services causes job losses; its so basic, its amazing anyone can believe otherwise.

Lee said...

> However, allowing another catastrophe like the Great Depression, inflicting massive amounts of misery on possibly hundreds of millions of innocents due to the irresponsible actions of a few elites was not a rational option.

See my discussion earlier on the easiest arguments in the world to make...

Your statement is simply impervious to evidence. As a matter of fact, this has been the longest economic downturn, the longest economic stagnation, the highest unemployment, and the slowest "recovery" since the Great Depression.

How do I know the policies you prefer didn't help cause all that, rather than prevent it from becoming worse?

Well, I have your word for it. And President Obama's.

I feel better now.

> Besides, it isn't really just my opinion, its basic economic laws. If you jump off a hundred foot high cliff, its not just my opinion you will fall to your death; its dictated by gravity.

Somebody who doesn't believe individual psychology plays a part in economic matters should be listening to lectures on economics, not giving them.

Lee said...

> Somebody who doesn't believe individual psychology plays a part in economic matters should be listening to lectures on economics, not giving them.

Sorry, Ky, I apologize. Please forgive that petty little snark.

The substantive point, however, stands: people's thoughts and feelings and calculations mean as much as anything else does in economics.

Surely at some level you agree. We do agree, don't we, that a "bank panic" can hurt the economy, right? Well, what could cause a bank panic better than, you know, panic? Fear that your money won't be there tomorrow, or will be worth much less?

Faith in the future is part of that equation. Without it, small businesses won't start up.

And so forth.

KyCobb said...

Lee,

And what does make small businesses have faith in the future? Sufficient demand for goods and services that they have faith that if they open their doors for business, customers will come in and spend their money. Collapsing demand tells you to hang on to your money and wait.

Lee said...

Cause and effect? Or effect and cause? Why do people lose faith?

Due to lack of demand?

Or does demand suffer because people lose faith?

Correlation is easier to prove than causation.

But at least you now admit that psychology plays a role in economics.

KyCobb said...

Lee,

no matter how much faith you have, consumers can't spend money they don't have. Businesses don't price their goods and services in units of faith.

Lee said...

> no matter how much faith you have, consumers can't spend money they don't have. Businesses don't price their goods and services in units of faith.

And nobody is going to borrow money against a future that's even more uncertain than in normal times.

KyCobb said...

Lee,

Here is a good short article explaining the waste caused by too little government spending during the recession:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/06/27/recession_underspending_pain_will_last_for_years.html