Why Do Some Progressives Dismiss Rand Paul For His Wrongs, But Not President Obama For His?

[matthewf]

[marybourg]

1. Dismiss the President?

[iamthebandfanman]

2. i highly doubt

there are progressives who forgive rand paul for all his transgressions based on one day.

[vi5]

3. When it comes to the actual ballot box....

I take a big picture approach and more often than not put the overall good of a person and their political party and their overall views above specific positions that I may disagree with.

But when it comes to day to day actions and words then I strive to be consistent. Consistently liberal. Consistently progressive. Consistently compassionate. If a politician on any given issue or in any given situations matches up with my own beliefs I will praise them and support them regardless of their party, and not worrying about their other positions. This doesn't mean voting for them or supporting them with money, but it does mean speaking out on behalf and in support of what they are doing.

The inverse is true when someone does something i disagree with or don't like. I don't care about their party. I don't give a shit who else would be worse or the same in that situation. I don't care whether speaking out against them is bad for "the party" or the morale of the party or the image of the person in question. Wrong is wrong and right is right on any given specific situation and that's what I base my own words and actions in the political arena on.

[20score]

14. Thank you. My thoughts exactly.

It makes me ill when I see liberals rationalize and support things that outraged them a few years ago.

If they knew how much in common they had with teabaggers, they would feel ill too.

[truth2power]

17. I couldn't agree more. Being consistently liberal, progressive and compassionate

is more important than "party". Otherwise we begin to look like a bunch of teabaggers - the point made by the post just below yours. I might add that I've been flogging this very point, here, for years.

If a person has no other opinion than that approved by the party, that person could be replaced by a computer and there would be no need for discussion boards at all. No need for nuance. That's not the way critical thinking works.

As far as the drone issue - and here's just one of the issues surrounding that - killing someone's 16 year old son and excusing it on the basis that the victim should have picked a better father (as one of Obama's spokespeople said..I can't remember who) is so horrific that it makes me physically ill.

I cannot possibly support something like that.

[A Simple Game]

4. Could you provide a link to a progressive dismissing Rand Paul for his wrongs?

Agreeing on one thing does not equate dismissing all or any wrongs, but you knew that, didn't you?

I see the progressive and liberal bashing hasn't ended with the loss of Meta.

[Harriety]

5. The media is making Rand Paul out to be a hero.

I know our President has done a good job. He has a very big heart and tries very hard to do the right thing. This Paul person now has been spotlighted in our national news this past week and also on the internet doing his grandstanding, and this coverage is making him instantly famous... for what? Yapping about something he agrees with? (He supports drones.) Now I hear he might be wanting to run for President in 2016? Spare me.

[Agnosticsherbet]

6. Rand Paul has this one policy with which I agree, but...

Sexual Equality Issues
Rand Paul Compares Paycheck Fairness To Soviet Politburo

Equal pay for equal work is "communist?"

http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/11/rand-paul-on-cain-scandal-its-getting-to-where-you-cant-joke-with-women-anymore.php (Rand Paul On Cain Scandal: It’s Getting To Where You Can’t Joke With Women Anymore)

So sexual harassment of women is just women's inability to take a joke?

Rand Paul on Civil Rights Act

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/01/09/400521/rand-paul-explains-his-familys-opposition-to-civil-rights-act-its-about-controlling-property/ (Rand Paul Explains His Family’s Opposition To Civil Rights Act: ‘It’s About Controlling Property’)

Apparently, it is unfair if everybody can't own one.

Rand Paul on Contraception

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/rand-paul-slams-birth-control-mandate-it-infriges-on-religious-liberty-but-is-also-about-economic-freedom/ (Rand Paul Slams Birth Control Mandate: It Infringes On Religious Liberty As Wells As ‘Economic Freedom’)

Doing anything to help women get and use contraception is an attack on a man's religious right to let his sperm wonder where it may. I can hear him singing Every Sperm is Sacred.

Rand on Gay Marriage

Only the Church can define marriage, which apparently means that Catholic Priests who pork Choir Boys in the Confessional can decide that consenting loving gay adults are living lives of grievous sin and can never be allowed to love each other in the sight of God or be considered equal under in the eyes of very human law.

There are so many issues about which Rand Paul is so grievously wrong that no twenty-first century progressive can accept him, and not liberal of any century could accept him. One issue does not make him a progressive, it only makes his prominent Neanderthal grow ridge a little less obvious.

President Obama doesn't always make policy choices with which I agree, but the majority of them have moved this nation in the right direction. Comparing the two policy by policy shows there is no comparison.

[liberal N proud]

7. Maybe their not as progressive as they claim.

[kenfrequed]

8. Uhm... Do you really want an answer to this?

For starters there is the word 'dismiss' I suppose.


But really, President Obama is more conservative than I would prefer and he occasionally gets it wrong. Despite this he agrees with me in overall policy objectives. President Obama wants to raise the minimum wage, put some cost controls of the medical industry, make college more affordable, assure better access to healthcare, and generally help us all out.

Rand Paul is a bloviating blowhard that believes in an Ayn Rand style capitalist state and the only reason he is excited about 'drones' is because it serves as a dog whistle for the right wing.

If you want to be about civil liberties put forth some legislation. If you want to be anti-war then be anti-war. But Drones? That is what you plan on hanging your hat on? No. His obsession with drones and benghazi is just the latest in a right wing meme.

Serious anti-war activists are against war itself as a foreign policy, not against oversized model airplanes with bombs on them.

Serious people concerned about civil liberties should be trying to protect our communciations and emails and to assure our first and fourth amendment rights, not whimper about searches at airports or whine about planes with cameras on us. If you stop pissing about terrorism and force law enforcement to have to get warrants again then the problem is solved. But the Reich Wing doesn't want that. They want the appearance of being pro-civil liberties without having the inconvenience of having to actually deliver on it.

[Tarheel_Dem]

9. It's the internet, where anyone can assume any identity they choose, even "progressive".

[Jack Rabbit]

10. For the record: I agree with Senator Paul on drone strikes against American citizens

I will even go so far to say that it wouldn't bother me a bit if Mr. Brennan's nomination were blocked and the President were forced to scuttle it.

The fact that we now have a Democratic president in the White House doesn't make me think any differently about the president's authority to abridge an American citizen's right to due process today than a few years ago when we had a Republican usurper there. And, of course, you can't abridge one's right to due process or any other civil liberty any more dramatically than by killing him. Simply put, the president does not and should not have the authority to detain without due process or kill any individual except under circumstances clearly defined by the Supreme Court in Ex parte Milligan or in the heat of actual combat. To make a long story short: no, a drone strike is not actual combat. A drone strike should be carried out with a high level of care to avoid killing innocents or even Americans suspected of treason who have not had a day in court.

This doesn't mean I feel any differently now than I did last week about the stands Senator Paul has taken on other issues or on his twisted world view that falls under the name libertarianism. Senator Paul is just one more ideologue who would march all of humanity off a cliff in the name of liberty. Personally, I view with suspicion any one with an ideology that promises utopia or some other summum bonum in the name of liberty, racial purity, equality, God (by whatever name), Mom and Apple Pie or whatever ideal is at the center of an ideologue's beliefs.

It is simply to say that on this matter Senator Paul is right and President Obama is wrong.

Please don't try to read anything else into it.

[RBInMaine]

13. Don't jump on Rand Paul's hyped up CRAZY TRAIN on this issue. Obama isn't out to kill anyone. It's

all SHIT.

[Jack Rabbit]

16. Response

From the Atlantic
Dated 24 October 2012

How Team Obama Justifies the Killing of a 16-Year-Old American

Cornered by reporters with video cameras, former White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, a senior adviser to President Obama's reelection campaign, attempted to defend the kill list that the Obama Administration uses to determine whose body should next be blown apart. American drone strikes have resulted in hundreds of dead innocents in the last four years, even as the program has killed a number of high-level al Qaeda terrorists. There are two remarkable things about the ensuing exchange, which eventually turns into a discussion about a dead 16-year-old kid:

{Video}

First, it's vital for the uninitiated to understand how Team Obama misleads when it talks about its drone program. Asked how their kill list can be justified, Gibbs replies that "When there are people who are trying to harm us, and have pledged to bring terror to these shores, we've taken that fight to them." Since the kill list itself is secret, there's no way to offer a specific counterexample. But we do know that U.S. drones are targeting people who've never pledged to carry out attacks in the United States. Take Pakistan, where the CIA kills some people without even knowing their identities. "As Obama nears the end of his term, officials said the kill list in Pakistan has slipped to fewer than 10 al-Qaeda targets, down from as many as two dozen," the Washington Post reports. "The agency now aims many of its Predator strikes at the Haqqani network, which has been blamed for attacks on U.S. forces in Afghanistan." The vast majority would never make their way to New York or Washington, D.C., and the Obama Administration would never agree to rules that permitted only the killing of threats to "the homeland."

Read more at the link.

Please tell me, RB: Is Robert Gibbs in league with Senator Paul in spreading this SHIT around about our President?

[20score]

15. We need more people who are consistant in their beliefs.

And fewer that will rationalize any wrong doing - on both sides of the political divide.

So, thanks.

[jsr]

11. The broken clock is an opportunistic asshole

just like his father.

[RBInMaine]

12. Because Rand Paul is a fucking NUTCASE, is saying CRAZY SILLY SHIT, and the drone thing is HYPE.

[truth2power]

18. Hype? Just about every other progressive site and individual is apoplectic about this....

I guess they are all crazy.

[marble falls]

20. What progressive forgives Paul's bad stuff? He's right about the filibuster and that's about it.