The KGB Oracle Forums General Public Discussion (SPECIAL ACCESS) KGB Political Debate Central Wrong Stand, Rand

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/09/rand-paul-mitch-mcconnell/404701/

Instead of playing to his actual core base of libertarian leaning "purple" Republicans, Paul has decided to double down on the social wedge issues.

Wrong stand, Rand.

Not only are you trying to be RC to the Coke and Pepsi of true culture warrior blowhards like Cruz and Trump but you are alienating a swath of people who tend to play down your fringe involvement (usually forgiven out of understood political necessity )in culture wedge-issue BS.

I understand why he is doing it, but think he would have been better served rallying his own base with attacks against the police and corporate welfare and surveillance state than trying to become the most obnoxious guy on the abortion train.

I am disappoint.

This leaves only Bernie.

Ironically, I think Bernie is part of the reason Rand has started taking a louder tack on the abortion thing.

A lot of people like myself see Bernie running against basically just Clinton , and instead of just supporting Rand we hedge our bets. I have been hearing about this more than one might think, at least 2nd and 3rd hand.

I guess, the easiest way to put it is - to categorize people by the periodicals they most relate to:

On one hand you have The Blaze , on the other you have New Republic. Rand and Bernie have many supporters from each camp respectively. But then you have a sizable group, at least in terms of energy and donations that associate more with Wired.

The Wired group can shift more or less small "l" libertarian, and more or less small "l" liberal but generally arent about the big "C" in conservative. Govt should just not be obnoxiously intrusive and shady. This group is usually pretty high on Rand, but Bernie might do as well especially when his opponent is just Clinton.

After all, I think many people recognize the difference between the "hard power" and "soft power" of the Presidency.

Some of this Wired group even likes other parts of Bernies platform, but for the most part I think there is a large group of people who just wants an accountable govt that doesnt over reach into Minority Report territory and doesnt run the State and Defense dept out of AIPAC's lobbying offices.

Indirectly, I think Bernie has taken a bit of air out of Rand's campaign.

Or maybe seeing actual video of people callously picking through the body parts of murdered babies was just too much for his conscience to take, and rather than focus on playing politics he's decided to take a principled stand. I know that doesn't make sense to anyone inside the beltway, but many people find it refreshing.

Honestly I dont see anything having to do with abortion on either side of the issue as anything but Establishment smoke and mirrors to divide and conquer.

Public only has so much attention span, the more of it thats taken up by abortion, the less is left to pay attention to real accountability.

If we want to talk about murdered babies, lets talk about Syrian Christians slaughtered by the ISIS we armed and funded at behest of AIPAC and the Evangelical crowd that provides them with so much of their backing in the US.

I'm totally with you. I'm in the process of doing what I can to help get those people out of there.

I don't know what else to do, because I've lost complete faith in the idea that our representatives actually care what we think any longer.