Paul credits success to tea party; says he can win without GOP’s help
CNN’s Kiran Chetry interviewed U.S. Senate candidate Rand Paul Friday morning about the tea party movement.
Paul said he can win the May 18 Republican primary in Kentucky without support from “mainstream” GOP organizations, such as the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
“I’m not positive that their endorsement actually is a help at this point,” Paul said. “Most people in Kentucky don’t want to be told by somebody in Washington who to vote for.”
Paul’s key opponent is Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson, who has received help from U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.
Here’s the interview:
About the Author: John Stamper is the accountability editor for the Lexington Herald-Leader. A native of Monticello, Ky., he has been with the Herald-Leader in a variety of roles since graduating from Western Kentucky University in 2000. Reach him at jstamper@herald-leader.com
Rob Powers | Feb 5, 2010 | Reply
The Tea Party is a farse. It is the republican party in disguise. The originators will wake up soon enough to realize the republicans are dictating vision and before you know it the party ideals will be the same. For me to get interested I need to hear less conservative richt.
It is a step in the right direction but the Tea Party really needs to step out of the shadows of republicans before I get interested.
Dave | Feb 5, 2010 | Reply
I think the National Tea Party has turned into a circus sideshow of every freak and geek organization. The elements of respectability are fast being lost.
Ken | Feb 5, 2010 | Reply
Go Rand!
Prof. Gilligan | Feb 5, 2010 | Reply
For being so superior in their intellect, liberals sure are missing the mark when it comes to the Tea Party.
Simply put, the Tea Party is the best thing to happen to the Democrat Party since Watergate. The Tea Party threatens divide the conservative vote in half, (half going to Republicans and half going to the Tea Party) and may be the ONLY thing that helps Dems retain their majorities come November.
And yet, Dems continue to ridicule the Tea Party. How “intellectually superior” is that?!?! Dems should be making campaign donations to Tea Partiers, not belittling them.
greengreenie | Feb 5, 2010 | Reply
well, he hasn’t done anything yet, so i am not sure what “success” he is talking about.
As for the tea party, if they are LESS conservative, they *will* look like the republican party, which has mostly abandoned REAL conservatism (they talk the talk but don’t walk it, when it comes down to real behavior).
Luke | Feb 5, 2010 | Reply
tea party leader tancredo on why obama was elected:
“we do not have a civics, literacy test before people can vote in this country.”
http://abcnews.go.com/WN/tea-party-fireworks-speaker-tom-tancredo-rips-mccain/story?id=9751718
KYTrueBlue | Feb 5, 2010 | Reply
I am all for more conservative politics and less government. I have been a faithful Republican since Kennedy sold out the freedom fighters at the Bay of Pigs but wouldn’t it make sense if the Republican party would move back to the right and cash in on a movement which has captured the minds and hearts of many conservative leaning people? The Tea Party movement takes up back to the simple citizen government envisioned by our founding fathers. Any party which truly catches this vision, if nothing else, will have succeeded in giving us a true choice of differing philosophies at the polls. That we do not have when the 2 major parties are so similar in persuasion.
Anne | Feb 5, 2010 | Reply
More popcorn!
ellsworth_toohey | Feb 5, 2010 | Reply
gh
The General | Feb 5, 2010 | Reply
Rand Paul is a kook just like his idiot father or is even crazier uncle, Wayne Paul.
Check out these videos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNfjhPFEyqw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlfdaWcyAGw
or this site:
http://adamholland.blogspot.com/2007/11/ron-paul-and-anti-tax-states-rights.html
Steve Magruder | Feb 5, 2010 | Reply
So we can expect Ayn Rand to now drop out of the GOP Primary and run as an independent?
After all, he doesn’t need the GOP. His words.
give credit where credit is due | Feb 5, 2010 | Reply
In all fairness though the tea party movement owes their success to the truther movement who owes their great success to the birther movement, who owes their great success to the denier movement who owes their great success to the oathkeepers.
Steve | Feb 5, 2010 | Reply
Well if Ron Paul is a kook, Barack Obama is twice the kook that Ron is….
I find it funny that liberals have an extremely hard time formulating rational arguments, instead they just resort to calling everyone that doesn’t agree with Socialism a kook……
Chingo | Feb 5, 2010 | Reply
give credit, are you a communist, a socialist, a presidential term limit remover, or pelosi?
The General | Feb 5, 2010 | Reply
Barack Obama is the man whose stimulus helped lower unemployment, increased the stock market, and lowered taxes on working families.
He saved the auto industry from losing hundreds of thousands if not millions of jobs.
We are poised for job growth by the end of the quarter. Rand Paul’s father and his even crazier friend Peter Schiff even admitted they would send this country into a Great Depression rather than allow the president and allow the Federal Reserve to do what is necessary to rescue the economy.
Buck Feshear | Feb 5, 2010 | Reply
There is no such thing as the “Tea Party.” A tea party is a political protest, not a group of people organized into a political party.
Jack McCock | Feb 6, 2010 | Reply
The TARP bailouts, stimulus plan, and cash for clunkers have all been failures. The Federal Reserve is not going to resuscitate the economy by continuing to print money out of thin air. This is what played a big part in our current economic problems. It is impossible for America to spend its way into prosperity.
ellsworth_toohey | Feb 6, 2010 | Reply
General,
You are wrong. This progressive notion that intervention is necessary for correction is one that is losing its hold, thankfully.
Schiff and Paul argue for letting the economy correct on its own, because in the end, it will anyway. You are just trying to outrun something with infinite stamina.
You can’t run monetary policy like Greenspan was allowed to do for all those years, and not create a huge bubble that will necessarily correct itself one way or another. We need to take our lumps and get through it. If the GM were to have gone under, it would have been bought up by competitors and production would have kept going, it would have simply been sold for $.50 on the dollar and those at the very top would have paid the worst price, which is what you want anyway, I’m sure.
Dinking around with the economy and trying to engineer it is what got us into this place. You guys have to start learning this.
The General | Feb 6, 2010 | Reply
First of all 90% of the stimulus funds are not being created out of thin air. Second while I despise the TARP program, something had to be done. A collapse in credit is what led to the Great Depression. If you read Milton Friedman, he explains what caused the Great Depression was the failure of the Fed to rescue the banks. Sitting around and doing nothing is what led to the Great Depression. I should note that over half of TARP has been repaid. I would like to see the big banks broken up, however I don’t believe that will happen.
The automobile industry would not have been bought up as you explained. There was no credit available, and had there have been a buyer available.
The auto industry failed because consumers demanded gas guzzling SUVs. When gas went up people no longer wanted them. I know what you are going to say, they should have made more fuel efficient vehicles. Well my father worked in the replacement parts industry, and you cannot simply have a plant that makes SUVs one day and hybrids the next. It takes years to convert a plant from producing one type vehicle to another. On top of that the auto parts suppliers would have gone under, and many did even with the bailout.
I will finally challenge you on the Federal Reserve causing the recession. Yes lowering rates to one percent was not a good thing, however the bulk of the problems came from financial institutes like Countrywide giving mortgages to anybody who could fill out an application. They sold the mortgages to Citi, JP Morgan, and Bank of America because they believed housing prices would continue to go up. This process continued even after the Fed raised the key rate 5.25%.
robbie | Feb 6, 2010 | Reply
The Tea Party is more of a state of mind….and because, as Mr. Paul states, no body can tell us how to vote, I’m votin’ for Bill Johnson; he may not have the big bucks on his side, but he is the most determined and qualified.
KathyB | Feb 7, 2010 | Reply
If Rand Paul doesn’t need Republicans, who is he going to get to vote for him in the primary?
That is the strangest thing I have heard in a while.
Buck Feshear | Feb 7, 2010 | Reply
I agree with Robbie. Johnson is the true conservative in the race. Paul is .. well, I’m not sure what he is, probably 75 percent Libertarian. And Grayson’s one of these politicians who is all things to all people and doesn’t have a set of core values and principles.