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Civil Liberties

Brawl for Liberty: Watch Rand Paul's Awesome New Wrestling-Inspired Attack Ad

And in this corner... Obama the email reader

Robby Soave | 5.29.2015 9:43 AM

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Large image on homepages | Liberty Pac
(Liberty Pac)

Sen. Rand Paul draws first blood this campaign season with an attack ad that riffs off WWE commercials. The ad, paid for by a pro-Paul PAC, promises that Sunday will be the "biggest brawl for liberty of the century." That's the day that Congress will reconvene to debate Patriot Act reauthorization—something Paul and other libertarian-leaning Republicans are fighting against.

The ad notes that Paul's opponents include "Obama the Email Reader" and "his so-called conservative accomplices, the capitulating Canadian, Ted Cruz." Sen. Lindsey Graham also gets a shoutout.

Paul's opponents liked to chide him for supposedly "running to Obama's left" on civil liberties and national security. But it's the other Republican candidates who are marching in lockstep with the president to protect a law that violates the freedoms of every American in service of ever-expanding federal powers. Cruz, Graham, et al clearly have a poor conception of individual liberty if they can't recognize that the Patriot Act tramples the U.S. Constitution every bit as much as Obamacare, something they all oppose.

We'll see if Republican primary voters buy the bogus argument that constantly sacrificing liberty for the federal government's dubious security goals is somehow a conservative position.

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NEXT: Tonight's Stossel: The College Scam, with Instapundit's Glenn Reynolds

Robby Soave is a senior editor at Reason.

Civil LibertiesRand PaulElection 2016Patriot Act
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