Rand Paul - He's No Jack Kemp

With continued racial unrest in Ferguson, Missouri - which has trickled over into protests in other areas - the issue of race and racial discrimination is front and center in the arena of public debate.  Sadly, the Republican Party has become the party of racism and white supremacy and, worse yet, that seems to be just fine with most Republicans.  In this background, Rand Paul - would be presidential candidate - is trying to remake himself as open minded and willing to reach out to black voters and citizens.  The problem, of course, is that his current talk doesn't match with his past statements and actions.  A column in the Washington Post by a conservative columnist takes Paul to task.  Here are highlights:

Why should Republicans engage in outreach to African Americans, even though the level of suspicion is so high and the yield in votes is likely to be so low? 

Even among some reform-oriented conservatives, what might be called the Kemp project — after the late congressman Jack Kemp, who spent a career engaged in minority outreach — is viewed as a secondary concern. They consistently pitch their approach toward the middle class — in part to distinguish it from previous iterations of compassionate or “bleeding heart” (Kemp’s phrase) conservatism. The cover of the reform-conservative manifesto — “Room to Grow: Conservative Reforms for a Limited Government and a Thriving Middle Class” — features a lawn mower on fresh-cut grass. The conservative rebirth will evidently spring from suburban yards on a lazy Saturday morning. 

But the public critique of the GOP is not merely: “They don’t care enough about the middle class.” It is, rather: “They don’t care enough about the whole.” The Republican task is not merely to shift an impression of ­interest-group allegiance away from big business and toward suburban families (though this would be an improvement). It is to demonstrate that conservative ideology is applicable to the common good.

In this effort, outreach to African Americans is actually central. A party that does not forthrightly address the largest source of division in U.S. history and American life — now dramatized in the tear gas haze of Ferguson, Mo. — is not morally or intellectually serious. And even as a political matter, women voters, Catholic voters and younger voters would prefer a chief executive who seeks the interests of all Americans, including those unlikely to vote for him or her. A commitment to national unity is an indicator of public character.

So it is notable when a Republican presidential prospect such as Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky attempts to address issues of concern to African Americans. 

[B]ecause this effort is so important, it is also important to point out: The Kemp project, placed in Paul’s hands, would be an utter, counterproductive failure.

Paul has his own history. He employed, as a close Senate aide, a writer who styled himself the “Southern Avenger” and who authored a column titled “John Wilkes Booth Was Right.” This personnel decision would have been impossible to imagine from Kemp. But it points out the deep affinity between certain strains of libertarianism and the Lost Cause. While running for the Senate, Paul criticized the centerpiece of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 — the part desegregating public accommodations — because it conflicted with his libertarian conception of property rights.

Meanwhile, Rand Paul’s 2013 proposal for a balanced budget in five years — which would have eviscerated large portions of the federal government and weakened the social safety net — was less of a blueprint for reform than a demolition order.  

Paul has risen to prominence by employing a political trick, which is already growing old. He emphasizes the sliver of his libertarianism that gets nods of agreement (say, rolling back police excesses) while ignoring the immense, discrediting baggage of his ideology (say, discomfort with federal civil rights law or belief in a minimal state incapable of addressing poverty and stalled mobility). 

As a senator, this tactic has worked. But were Paul to become the GOP presidential nominee, the media infatuation would end, and any Democratic opponent would have a field day with Paul’s disturbing history and cramped ideology. On racial issues, the GOP needs a successor to Kemp — and an alternative to Paul.