Is Rand Paul Transforming the GOP? Nick Gillespie on Hardball (Video)

Updated with video. Click above to watch.

I'll be on MSNBC's Hardball tonight at 7 P.M. Eastern Time, talking about Sen. Rand Paul, Ferguson, and the militarization of police.

For more details about the show, go here.

To read my Time.com column on getting cops to wear body cameras, go here.

Comments

[hamilton]

If it's at 7, you should finish up in time to see Brady in the first Pats preseason game, Nick.

[Greg83]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyZ_LCTSbcE

They showed an old clip of Rand defending free association. How surprising.

Rand will never come on their channel again after that ambush with Cory Booker a few weeks ago, so now they have to use Gillespie.

[Notorious G.K.C.]

What did they do with Booker?

[Greg83]

They were on together to discuss mandatory minimum reforms and the host brought up the ERA nonsense, and Rand went off on them about how he's learned his lesson to try and have a philosophical discussion with the charlatans at MSNBC.

So I don't expect to ever see him back on that channel in any capacity, if he has any sense (which he does).

[Fist of Etiquette]

Hardball is much more palatable without Matthews.

[sloopyinva (previously -inca)]

What the fuck,is a "Hardball"? Sounds like something that should be on the playboy Channel or a show with Andrew Zimmern.

[Dammit, not again]

Here in the northeast "hardball" is (archaic) slang for the game of baseball, as distinguished from its (effeminate) bastard, "softball."

On the national level, I think "hardball" connotes dangerous-but-legal play in baseball; think of sliding into a base "spikes up," or barreling over a catcher, or tossing a brush-back pitch at a hitter crowding the plate or intentionally hitting a batter who took a little too long rounding the bases after he hit a home run at his last at-bat.

Now that I think about it, the stuff in the above paragraph is basically the only interesting part of baseball, which is mostly a colossal bore.

[sloopyinva (previously -inca)]

Yeah,and it's all also now against the rules.

Fucking pussies have ruined baseball,too.

[Knarf Yenrab!]

Wanna know how I know you're not a real libertarian? 😉

[MegaloMonocle]

Something to do with pizza?

[Daily Beatings]

Does it involve a scotsman?

[sloopyinva (previously -inca)]

I'd wager that Rand Paul will transform all politics in America before he transforms the GOP alone. He's reached waaaaaaay across party lines in a way that builds new voting blocs rather than temporary coalitions. And since his likely 2016 opponent, should he win the GOP nomination, will be a shrill, hawkish supporter of DOMA, the Patriot Act, NDAA and the Iraq War, those blocs might shift for the foreseeable future.

[VG Zaytsev]

I heard Victor Davis Hansen say that he'd vote for Hillary over Rand in 2016.

So yeah, the next presidential election could reshuffle the political deck in a way that hasn't happened since 1980.

[sloopyinva (previously -inca)]

I'd go even farther back. In my opinion, this would possibly take us back to the traditional roles of the two parties:
Dems: Jim Crow supporting, interventionist, regulatory, progressive and censoring of all opposing views.
GOP: inclusive, small-government, non-interventionist expanders of individual rights at the expense of the states.

I'm thinking Coolidge vs Wilson here.

[Dammit, not again]

So, uh, you think that if Rand Paul is nominated that the Democrats, who regularly collect 95% of Black votes, are going to revert to supporting Jim Crow?

Could you say a little bit more about this?

[Dances-with-Trolls]

Well if you think of Jim Crow as legislating separate standards for different groups based on how they are viewed socially/politically by the Democrats then it is really a continuing impulse for them, just with different targets.

The differences on college campuses regarding sexual assault allegations and free speech rights is a glaring tip off that the core characteristic of progressivism is alive and well.

[sloopyinva (previously -inca)]

I'd be happy to.

You see, after shit like what's happening in Ferguson, MO, the Paulites are gonna get the spotlight a bit on cop violence. And they're gonna try to put a stop to it by crushing the unions and supporting more community oversight of the cops. The Dems are gonna have to choose: poor blacks or big-money pubsec unions. And it's pretty clear which way they're gonna go. And add to that the vocal support of expanded gun rights, the decrim of many drugs and sentencing reform that Paul has expressed (all things the progs are by and large opposed to as are the unions that represent,cops and prison guards), and you have a recipe where the Dem core ends up with the supporters of laws that tend to disproportionately impact blacks...which results in the perception, if not reality, of a de facto Jim Crow state.

I can see it flipping in a decade completely unless the Dems see the light and actually choose to assist in the destruction,of the cop unions that perpetuate the systemic and unaccountable violence being meted out by cops, which is much more often carried out against minorities.

[Dances-with-Trolls]

I think "a de facto Jim Crow state" is laying on a little strong, Sloop.

What you are getting at, though, is something that I could see possibly happening to both parties where the growing (and quite natural) conflicts between the various factions in them cause a distinct change in their characters.

I think that it might require the emergence of an at least semi-viable third party to actually effect, but the inherent conflicts are getting harder and harder to cover up. Also, if Rand Paul can puncture the Republican = Racist narrative in any meaningful way then we also might start to see some serious movement.

[sloopyinva (previously -inca)]

I just don't know how "strong" it is when the Dems push for gun control and at the same time love that they create criminals out of blacks at a disproportionate rate for petty, non-violent offenses that remove their right to own a gun.

I've always maintained that their gun control measures are aimed at blacks because they are shit-scared of them. I still do.

[Dances-with-Trolls]

Maybe one prong of their gun control efforts, but not the totality of them. Not anymore, anyway.

I don't think that it's an intentional outcome, but rather the predictable result of combining the various policies that they enact which I'm sure boggles the mind of many a true believer. Which is why I'd say it's a little strong.
It goes back the the inherent conflicts of the various Democrat factions. Public sector unions, particularly law enforcement and teachers unions, are in direct conflict with urban minorities. The only thing keeping them together is the OMG RACISTS!! narrative, which why they push it so hard all the fucking time. They lose that the whole thing falls apart.

[Corning]

are going to revert to supporting Jim Crow

Inflation, Gun prohibition, Zoning and and building codes, drug war, heavy labor and small business regulation, Federal and Union control of schools, dependence on aid, are all cornerstones of the Democrat party and are all making it impossible for blacks to reach economic parity with white.

One might ask if the dems ever stopped supporting Jim Crow.

[Jerms]

If we could somehow get them to believe this.

[AdamJ]

Don't forget prosecutor and attorney support.

[Dances-with-Trolls]

VDH is the General Montgomery of political pundits.

[Knarf Yenrab!]

Isn't Hanson an old-school Democrat who crossed party lines because W was fundamentally indistinguishable from an old-school, warmongering Democrat?

I don't see preferring Hillary over Rand as particularly out there for someone who's actually attracted to Team Purple for its ideology. Rand is a wishy-washy libertarian, but he's as radical a character as you'll find within the contemporary Overton window.

[LynchPin1477]

That was a surprisingly level headed and pretty fair segment.

[Notorious G.K.C.]

Yes, allowing for the usual swipes at Republicans and the incomprehension of how a non-racist could support freedom of association.

[LynchPin1477]

True freedom of association is so far outside the mainstream right now that bringing it up is just stupid, politically. It was stupid of Rand to address it as plainly as he did.

[AdamJ]

Lesson learned hopefully.