With
bravado and big ideas, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul on Tuesday announced
that he is running for the Republican candidacy in the upcoming 2016
presidential elections.
"I have a message, a message that is loud and clear and does not mince words. We have come to take our country back," Paul
declared
before a crowd in a Louisville hotel ball room. "We have come to take
our country back from the special interests that use Washington as their
personal piggy bank, the special interests that are more concerned with
their personal welfare than the general welfare."
In a speech that lambasted Washington bureaucracy, foreign
intervention, government surveillance, radical Islam, corporate taxes,
public education, liberals and conservatives alike, the Tea Party
favorite announced his candidacy as a political outsider who has come to
bring salvation to the United States, "with the help of liberty lovers
everywhere."
During his speech on Tuesday, Paul channeled a more populist tone by touching upon themes such as economic inequality.
"Under the watch of both parties, the poor seem to get poorer and the
rich get richer," he said. "Politically connected crones get taxpayer
dollars by the hundreds of millions and poor families across America
continue to suffer. I have a different vision, an ambitious vision, an
ambitious vision, a vision that will offer opportunity to all Americans,
especially those who have been left behind."
However, observers note that his policy proposals would only worsen the situation for America's poor.
As Matt Bruenig
wrote for the Demos think tank
Policy Shop blog,
Paul supports a tax platform that effectively redistributes wealth from
the poor to the rich. Further, Bruenig notes, the Kentucky Senator
subscribes to a "college-student-inflected libertarianism where he
thinks things like taxes and social insurance are the forceful
aggression of the government."
Vox reporter Dylan Matthews
outlines
what exactly Paul would attempt to do as President of the United
States, based on detailed, federal budgets put forth by the Senator
annually. Proposals include eliminating or drastically cutting two of
the biggest programs for the working poor, the Earned Income Tax Credit
and the Child Tax Credit, as well as eliminating Section 8 housing
vouchers.
Senator Paul's father, Rand Paul, former U.S. Representative for
Texas, ran two presidential campaigns on a similar platform—though he
has been widely
dismissed as "bonkers" or "woman-hating crazy."
Paul now joins
Senator Ted Cruz
of Texas in the bid for Republican candidacy and will likely be joined
in the months ahead by other hopefuls including former Florida Governor
Jeb Bush, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, and Wisconsin Governor
Scott Walker. Florida Senator Marco Rubio is expected to launch his
campaign next week.
A recent
CNN poll has Paul
placing third for the party nomination at 12%, behind Bush at 16% and Walker at 13%.
According to his campaign website, Paul will immediately hit the
campaign trail with scheduled stops in New Hampshire, South Carolina,
Iowa and Nevada.
Despite the obvious attempt to distance himself from the pack with a
pledge to "defeat the Washington machine," critics say that according to
the Senator's own record, he is no better than the rest.
As the
Nation's John Nichol's
wrote
Tuesday, "Unfortunately, the supposedly 'different' Rand Paul talks a
better line than he delivers." Nichols points to the recent example of
Paul's thwarting of the
District of Columbia Budget Autonomy Act,
a power-to-the-people measure designed to give DC voters and their
elected officials more authority over the spending of their tax dollars.
"When it counts, Paul reveals himself as an rather too predictable
contemporary Republican," Nichols continued. "He is not interested in
winning the battle of ideas. He is simply interested in winning—and if
that means using the power of big government to thwart the legitimate
and honorable democratic aspirations of citizens, so be it."
