Dear Rand Paul: Please Tell Dad to Shut Up

[Valin]

The Federalist:

Robert Tracinski

January 9, 2015

 

If Rand Paul wants to have any chance of running for the Republican nomination for president in 2016, not to mention the presidency itself, there is one thing he needs to do immediately.

 

Tell Dad to shut up.

 

In response to the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris, Ron Paul took a break from his usual blame-America-first rhetoric to blame France first. On an internet television show, Paul the Elder declared, “France has been a target for many, many years, because they’ve been involved in foreign affairs in Libya, and they really prodded us along in—recently in Libya, but they’ve been involved in Algeria, so they’ve had attacks like this, you know, not infrequently.” He continued:

 

(Snip)

 

But Ron Paul wants to overrule the Islamists’ own statement of their motives. I call this Bin Laden Syndrome by Proxy: taking someone else’s terrorist attack, fantasizing what you think his motives ought to be according to your world view, and then using the attack to try to get everyone to climb onto your own ideological hobby horse.

 

It goes without saying that there isn’t much of a market for that outlook, particularly among the Republican base. It smacks too much of appeasement. There might be some good reasons to alter our foreign policy, but avoiding the anger of our sworn enemies is not one of those reasons.

 

So if Rand Paul wants a chance in 2016, he has to convince his father to zip it.

 

(Snip)

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