Tag Archives: rand paul

Rand Paul Is the Best-Dressed Man in Washington

by AlbertoGurney Posted on October 15, 2014

Mother Jones

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With election day less than a month away, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is hitting the campaign trail to stump for Republican candidates. On Wednesday he’ll be in Virginia with Senate candidate Ed Gillespie and congressional hopeful David Brat. He’ll be in New Hampshire on Thursday with former Sen. Scott Brown. He’s been in North Carolina with Rep. Walt Jones and Senate nominee Thom Tillis, and Kansas with Sen. Pat Roberts and Gov. Sam Brownback.

But for Paul, fall is about something more than just laying the groundwork for a 2016 presidential campaign. It’s turtleneck season.

He’s taken his licks in the past. An otherwise flattering profile in Vogue mocked his “dad jeans” and “notorious sartorial taste.” That’s one way of looking at it. Another—more accurate—way of looking at it is that Rand Paul is the leading fashion visionary of DC, nay, the world. The Nebuchadnezzar of Normcore, Sultan of the Sartorial, the Thelonius of Threads.

Here’s a quick guide.

Pleated khakis, blue-grey Polo Ralph Lauren sweater, black turtleneck, in October 2010:

Billy Suratt/Apex MediaWire/ZUMA

Black blazer, black turtleneck, button, January 2012:

Charles Dharapak/AP

Blazer, black turtleneck, Ray-Bans. Burger by In-N-Out. En route to the Reagan library in 2013:

Rand Paul/Facebook

Olive-green sweater vest, black turtleneck, button, while discussing the mythical NAFTA Superhighway in Montana, winter 2008:

fatkidinabucket/YouTube

Trenchcoat, split-pea vest, black turtleneck:

Metallic tan blazer, black turtleneck, while discussing taxation on Kentucky Tonight in 2008:

Kentucky Tonight/YouTube

Pleated khakis, black blazer, metallic blueberry on creamsicle, fall 2010:

Charles Bertram/Lexington Herald-Leader/ZUMA

Royal denim shirt with gold-standard combo:

Billy Suratt/ZUMA

Christmas:

Boston Liberty Project/YouTube

Technicolor dreamcoat while grabbing lunch with Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), August 2014:

Matt Hildreth/YouTube

Blazer, tie, JNCO jeans, 2012:

Charles Dharapak/AP

Candy-striped belt with JNCOs:

Jeff Blake/The State/ZUMA

So where does he get his style from? We’ve got one guess:

Charles Dharapak/AP

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Rand Paul Is the Best-Dressed Man in Washington

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Rand Paul Holds Conference Call With Tea Partier Who Says Obama "Has Muslim Sensibilities"

by TobyTheodore Posted on June 3, 2014

Mother Jones

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On Tuesday, Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) was the guest speaker on Rev. E.W. Jackson’s semi-regular conference call, during which Jackson, a tea party activist, said that President Barack Obama has “Muslim sensibilities” and that gay Americans “want to destroy us.”

Jackson, who was the losing Republican nominee for lieutenant governor of Virginia last year, is known for his many offensive and outlandish statements about gays, lesbians, non-Christians, and Obama. Jackson has warned that yoga leads to Satan, Obama is using NASA to expand Islam, and the Democratic Party platform is “an agenda worthy of the Antichrist.”

During the call, Paul generally gave routine answers to questions on abortion, border security, and the size of the military. One caller did ask Paul if he supported Obama’s recent declaration that June was LGBT Pride Month and if he believed homosexuality is an illness. The question was reminiscent of a tweet Jackson wrote in June 2009, when Obama designated June as Pride Month: “Well that just makes me feel ikky all over. Yuk!”

“I don’t think that there’s really a role for the federal government in deciding what people’s behavior at home should be one way or another,” Paul said. “It’s not something the federal government needs to be involved in.”

After Paul left the conference call, Jackson said he suspected the caller who asked about Pride Month was trying to harass them. “Thank god he was respectful,” Jackson said. “But I just want to encourage everybody, that they are going to talk about us like we’re dogs because all they know is hatred, because all they know is anger and bitterness, because there’s something wrong with them on the inside…And by the way, they also want to destroy us…We are in a fight for our very lives, for our survival.”

Jackson then discussed Obama’s announcement of the release of Bowe Bergdahl, an American soldier captured in Afghanistan. He said that the president “could not help but smile” when Bergdahl’s father, Robert, said “allahu akbar—or whatever it is they say” at the press conference.

Jackson continued: “I have been roundly criticized for saying the president has Muslim sensibilities. That’s not my statement—that’s just a statement of fact…In this situation you would think he would have restrained himself. But he could not help but smile when that man said ‘Praise be to Allah.'”

(Bergdahl actually said “Bismillahir Rahmanir Rahim,” which translates to “in the name of Allah, most compassionate, most merciful.”)

Jackson has a history of extreme statements. In two interviews in October 2012 with Americans for Truth About Homosexuality—which the Southern Poverty Law Center considers a hate group—Jackson accused homosexuality of “killing black men by the thousands.” He added that liberal activists who support gay marriage “have done more to kill black folks whom they claim so much to love than the Ku Klux Klan, lynching, and slavery and Jim Crow ever did.” Of gay people, he said:

Their minds are perverted, they’re frankly very sick people psychologically, mentally and emotionally and they see everything through the lens of homosexuality. When they talk about love they’re not talking about love, they’re talking about homosexual sex. So they can’t see clearly…Homosexuality is a horrible sin, it poisons culture, it destroys families, it destroys societies.

In those interviews, Jackson also said that the president “seems to have a lot of sympathy for even radical Islam, unwilling to call it terrorism, unwilling to deal with it.”

On the campaign trail last year, Jackson denied making the anti-gay statements, which were recorded.

Paul has made controversial remarks about same-sex marriage. After the US Supreme Court struck down the Defense of Marriage Act in June 2013, he said, “It is difficult, because if we have no laws on this, people will take it to one extension further—does it have to be humans?” Paul later said he was joking.

Paul’s office did not reply to requests for comment on Jackson’s claim Obama possesses “Muslim sensibilities.”

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Rand Paul Holds Conference Call With Tea Partier Who Says Obama "Has Muslim Sensibilities"

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Rand Paul Apparently Thinks Republicans Controlled Congress in 1978

by LeannaFraley Posted on April 23, 2014

Mother Jones

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Over at the mother ship, David Corn has assembled a bunch of clips of Rand Paul being less than reverential toward Ronald Reagan. Here’s an example from 2009:

People want to like Reagan. He’s very likable. And what he had to say most of the time was a great message. But the deficits exploded under Reagan….The reason the deficits exploded is they ignored spending. Domestic spending went up at a greater clip under Reagan than it did under Carter.

Ouch! That’s not just a hit on Reagan, it’s a direct suggestion that his fiscal policy was worse than Jimmy Carter’s. Jimmy Carter’s!

David has a bunch more along these lines. But here’s my favorite part:

After this article was posted, Paul’s office sent this statement from the senator: “I have always been and continue to be a great supporter of Ronald Reagan’s tax cuts and the millions of jobs they created. Clearly spending during his tenure did not lessen, but he also had to contend with Democrat majorities in Congress.”

Um, didn’t Jimmy Carter also have to contend with Democratic majorities in Congress? Bigger ones, in both houses? Or am I thinking about a different Jimmy Carter?

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Rand Paul Apparently Thinks Republicans Controlled Congress in 1978

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How Rand Paul Bailed on His Bold Plan to Reform Big-Money Politics in Washington

by GeorgeDeHamel Posted on April 17, 2014

Mother Jones

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This past weekend—days after Mother Jones revealed video of Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) claiming that Dick Cheney exploited 9/11 to start the Iraq War to boost profits for Halliburton, the military contractor where Cheney had been CEO—Paul claimed in interviews with ABC News and Business Insider that he had never questioned Cheney’s motives. He insisted he had merely noted that Cheney’s Halliburton ties had posed the “chance for a conflict of interest.” Paul was spinning—not acknowledging the actual comments. But when Paul was running for the US Senate in 2009 and 2010 as a tea party outsider who would take on Washington’s special-interest lobbyists, he repeatedly cited the Cheney-connected Halliburton as an example of what was wrong in the nation’s capital. In a videotaped talk on national-security policy, for example, Paul complained, “We give billion-dollar contracts to Halliburton, they turn around and spend millions on lobbyists to ask for more money from government. It’s an endless cycle of special-interest lobbyists.” At one campaign stop after another, Paul bashed Halliburton, and he boasted that he had a bold and imaginative plan for limiting the influence of big-money lobbyists and donors who funnel cash into the campaign coffers of candidates to win access and favors. But several years into his first term, Paul has yet to introduce this proposal—or say much, if anything, about it. In fact, he has been accepting contributions from the lobbyists he once so passionately decried.

On March 2, 2010, Paul appeared on CNN, and host Rick Sanchez asked him what he would do about the “unbelievable amounts of money that are being paid from certain industries into the campaign coffers of certain politicians…and how are you going to deal with that, if you get elected?” Without pausing, Paul confidently replied:

I think that I have a cure for it actually that will pass constitutional muster. What I would do is, on every federal contract, I would have a clause, and it says, if you accept this clause you voluntarily give up the right to lobby, you voluntarily give up the right to give PAC contributions. And I would have the top 20 officers sign it also individually, voluntarily give up their right to give political contributions…I’m talking about people who do business with the federal government. For example, we have big business that get billion-dollar no-bid contracts with the government. They take their first million dollars, and they buy a lobbyist. The lobbyist goes then and asks for more money. It’s a vicious cycle. So I would say if you want to do business with the federal government, what I would say is let’s have a clause in the contract, and it’s a voluntary clause, you don’t have to do business with the government, but if you do, then you give up certain things.

Paul’s critique was reminiscent of the position Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) advocated when he was a campaign finance reform firebrand years ago. McCain denounced the “iron triangle” of lobbyists, campaign contributions, and legislation. Paul, who has often slammed McCain for passing a campaign finance law imposing limits on what outside groups can do to affect federal elections, had devised his own way to break up this unseemly triangle.

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How Rand Paul Bailed on His Bold Plan to Reform Big-Money Politics in Washington

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