Rand Paul in The New York Times 2010s

On Civil Rights: Don't register guns federally, nor marriages

I asked about same-sex marriage: "I don't want my guns registered in Washington or my marriage," he told me. "Founding Fathers all got married by going down to the local courthouse. It is a local issue and always has been."

What about rapidly-changing opinions on the matter? He took a soft tone. "Society's changing," he said. "People change their minds all the time on this issue, and even within the Republican Party, there are people whose child turns out to be gay and they're like, 'maybe I want to rethink this issue.' So it's been rethought. The President's rethought the issue. A lot of people have rethought the issue."

Was Paul hinting that he, too, could change his thinking? He said, "I believe in old-fashioned traditional marriage. But, I don't really think the government needs to be too involved with this, and I think that the Republican Party can have people on both sides of the issue."

"You could rethink it at some point, too?" I asked. He shrugged. It wasn't a yes or a no.

Source: Jonathan Martin in 2014 NY Times: 2016 presidential hopefuls Dec 25, 2014

On Foreign Policy: GOP hawks fear my world view, but Americans support it

On the opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal, Rand Paul has been accused of "bark-at-the-moon lunacy." (Paul's meeting last fall with The Journal's editorial board quickly went sour. People who attended described the meeting as awkwardly contentious-- until Rupert Murdoch, the newspaper's owner, walked into the room and brought down the temperature.) The headline on a column last month in the National Review asked: "Rand Paul's Foreign Policy: For the Situation Room or the Dorm Room?" The reason the attacks are so personal and so hostile, Paul said, is that Republicans who favor more American involvement in the world fear that his view, not theirs, is gaining support. "The country is moving in my direction," he said. Source: NY Times 2014 coverage of 2016 presidential hopefuls May 24, 2014

On Foreign Policy: Neocons are neoisolationist: 'all should behave like us'

Paul bristles at an adjective often used to describe his foreign policy: isolationist. "Not only am I for being involved, I'm actually for more involvement than the neocons," he said, referring to the branch of conservatism that supports an interventionist foreign policy. "The neocons are really neoisolationists," he added, "in the sense that they are so hardened--that everybody should behave like us, and everybody in the world should be in our image--that they discount the concept of looking at things realistically and negotiating with people who don't have our point of view."

Paul often complains that his worldview is caricatured by people who are eager to cast him as a clone of his father, former Representative Ron Paul of Texas, who is deeply suspicious of American involvement overseas. "They start out with a mischaracterization of his point of view, bastardize it, make it worse," the senator said.

Source: NY Times 2014 coverage of 2016 presidential hopefuls May 24, 2014

On Foreign Policy: Eventually end all foreign aid, but unrealistic for now

The issue of aid to Israel also came up last year in a meeting with the board of the Republican Jewish Coalition. Members pressed the senator, and he conceded that while he would eventually like to terminate all foreign aid, he knew that would not be realistic now. "You could see he was a work in progress," said a member of the Jewish coalition's board. "He's thinking about these issues; he's trying to learn."

Part of Paul's strategy is to appear before audiences that are not necessarily friendly to him, such as the Heritage Foundation, where he left the impression that he knew he must evolve.

Some observers say this is the evolution of a savvy politician with presidential ambitions. Paul says it is more like a slow reveal. "I've been expressing gradually where my foreign policy is," he said. "Foreign policy isn't set in stone. It isn't either-or. And it isn't always right or wrong."

Source: NY Times 2014 coverage of 2016 presidential hopefuls May 24, 2014

On Principles & Values: This is not Wendell Ford's seat; it's the people's seat

There was a revealing exchange reminiscent of a pivotal moment in the Massachusetts senate race earlier this year. Conway, the Democrat, said it was "a tremendous honor to be running for Wendell Ford's senate seat."

Paul replied, "I didn't know it was Wendell Ford's seat. I thought it was the people of Kentucky's seat."

The response mirrored an exchange that occurred in MA earlier this year, when a debate moderator made a reference to the late Ted Kennedy's senate seat and Scott Brown, the insurgent Republican, shot back: "It's not the Kennedy's seat. It's not the Democrat's seat. It's the people's seat."

"The people's seat" became the rallying cry for Brown, who won the race. The phrase neatly captured the zeitgeist of a year in which insurgent grass-roots candidates across the country have been a forceful presence.

Wendell Ford, a Democrat, holds a Kennedy-like place in the Kentucky political firmament. He represented Kentucky for 24 years in the Senate, & served as the state's governor.

Source: NY Times coverage of 2010 Kentucky Senate debate Oct 3, 2010

The above quotations are from Media coverage of political races in The New York Times, 2010-2019. Click here for other excerpts from Media coverage of political races in The New York Times, 2010-2019. Click here for other excerpts by Rand Paul. Click here for a profile of Rand Paul.
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Page last updated: Dec 02, 2021