Libertarians. Always willing to make a point and lose a battle. So it is with Senator Rand Paul’s decision to vote against the president on the national emergency declaration.
It is more useless still because he knows that the president will merely veto the congressional measure when it gets to his desk. This will stop that bill dead in its tracks, as the numbers aren’t there to override. So, point taken on the constitution and the precedent, Senator Paul. I said the same things in this column when the matter was theoretical, as I too have libertarian tendencies on some issues. But we are past the theoretical now.
Or maybe the uselessness is why Paul is doing it, realizing he’s safe from override and, as it follows, from actually having his expressed judgment turned into action. Whatever it is, it speaks to a larger issue with the libertarians. An issue that did not start recently.
I worked with the Libertarian Party (LP) as a political consultant in three states in the 1990s. Though having long grown out of my youthful flirtation with Ayn Rand, etc., they were so operationally clueless they needed the help and I had a business to run. However, I found that no matter what I proposed it was secondary to adherence to an unrealistic doctrine of dogma over result, of ideological narcissism over having an actual opportunity to improve the state of national affairs. When LP members bled over into the GOP they brought their lack of political expertise with them.
While Paul is Republican himself, he votes off the reservation and aligned with LP views too much for comfort. This is particularly true when it comes to anything outside of civil liberties and economics. I will mercifully spare you the endless debate over small “l” versus large “L” libertarians.
Illegal immigration costs the nation a fortune many times over in federal funds. The work ethic of the Ellis Island immigrant generation of a century ago has been replaced by the rapacious hunger for government largesse of many modern sojourners to our shores, hence the expenditure.
The cultural disconnect between what have up to recently been successful American values and mores and the illegal onrush makes the situation worse. The parvenu left who drive the Dems, especially in California, doesn’t care about that. They just want to make sure their McMansions are properly staffed and that they can pretend to be enlightened at their next radical chic Chardonnay-guzzling party.
Kentucky, the state the senator represents, is far away from L.A. As such, you’d think practically siding with the likes of Hollywood Bolshies would give him pause. But the key word there is “practical.”
Not a concept libertarians are familiar with.
