Rand Paul, trying to clear some notions...

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While politics is probably a dead duck, it is still functioning as if it had legs.  And, to an extent, it does.  While I have backed out of it, seeing it more as a trap than a hope, I do listen and watch... and quip.  Some politicians are beginning to stand out for the next election cycles, for whatever that really means.  Both conservatives and... hybrids.  I consider Mr. Paul to be a hybrid.  Possibly a very good one.  Of course, as such, even 'conservative' pundits must be watched very carefully.  They all, regardless of political standing, attempt to create the foundations of the notions on various politicians, wrongly or correctly, so as to sway public appeal.

I was watching one, discussing Rand this evening, who suggested President Reagan wasn't an isolationist, and that the Republican party is not isolationist and hasn't been since Reagan, while suggesting Rand was a semi-isolationist.  And, while that has some merit, it isn't the whole of it by far, nor even honest on the face of it.  First, while I do believe Rand would be less active militarily, and certainly wouldn't be declaring wars (no matter what they are called, sending in troops to kill people or capture a territory is war) without an act of congress, I do not think he would, at all, be predisposed to doing nothing.  And while it seemed to many that Reagan was on the front lines, the truth is, most of his efforts, save a famous line that supposedly (but could not possibly have) brought down the Berlin Wall, were diplomatic or highly classified, extremely precise, terribly and finally and completely lethal, tactical military strikes.  That is precisely how I see a Rand administration working, and I do approve of that method.

Few realize that Reagan, when terrorist camps in various parts of the world would begin to become a threat, then move on to the planning stages, would send in whatever was needed to... close a particular tap.  He certainly didn't hit every poison well, just the ones that were on the brink of poisoning more than local minds.  There were dozens of terrorists camps at any given time, perhaps a hundred or more, in Europe, the Middle East, and in South America, but only a few of them ever threatened to go hot.  Those were cleaned like doing the dishes.  It was clean, covert, quick, and functional, not like these multi-wars going on today.  I have wondered if after a 9/11 if Reagan would have reacted differently.  And I keep coming to the conclusion that, the way he did things, there wouldn't have been a 9/11 with (a) Reagan in office.  Then again, congress (Democrats) messed with how intelligence and domestic LEOs could interact, among many other things, softening our capacity to know and react to threats leading up to and certainly after Reagan (and even he ignored some of their laws in order to keep things kosher).

When your worst enemy is a congress that wants America attacked, and hold enough power to fiddle with security and it's function, that becomes tricky.  Basically, a president who doesn't want war or a 9/11 will have to fiddle himself.  He will have to take risks.  And he will have to have people who will take a fall if need be.  *cough* Lt. Col. North *cough*  I have some notion that Rand Paul might have that kind of possibility.  As well, Reagan, and the Republican party, before the Bushs, was definitely at the very least, quasi-isolationist, very much in the vein of Reagan the Real if you ignore revisionism, and I suspect Rand (though never like Ron) Paul would be similar.

There are other candidates I will be reviewing.  My preferred candidate from the last cycle is really hitting home run after home run, and no, he isn't a fat-boy libtard.  And while he has immigration issues, the rest of the slate looks pretty good, in speech and practice.  I'll be... running through my favored picks over time.  Hopefully I will have a handful, a reasonably dossier on each, and a final pick by next election, even if I happen to be finishing the thread from Paris, Australia or Berlin, Argentina, or... wherever I really am not.