Senator Rand Paul is my choice for president. He's the reason why I registered as a Republican. He is the conservative choice. And he is the most practical choice for president. And he is the only one who even mentions the Constitution.
Senator Rand Paul has the pragmatic foreign policy out of the fanciful 'punch Russia in the nose' that makes up the majority of the Republican field. He doesn't suck up to Putin like Donald Trump does, nor does he advocate for shooting down their planes in Syria and risk World War III like Governor Christie does. His foreign policy is not repeating the mistakes of the past, but chartering a new path from beyond the neo-conservative one that we have had for the past 20 years.
As he said in the CNN debate last month:
"Here is often variations of evil on both sides of a war. What we have to decide is whether or not regime change is a good idea. It's what the neoconservatives have wanted. It's what the vast majority of those on the stage want. They still want regime change. They want it in Syria. They wanted it in Iraq. They wanted it in Libya. It has not worked. Out of regime change, you get chaos. From the chaos, you have seen repeatedly the rise of radical Islam. So we get this profession of, oh, my goodness, they want to do something about terrorism. And yet they're the problem, because they allow terrorism to arise out of that chaos."
Let's not forget that Donald Trump plans to kill the families of terrorists, a violation of the Geneva Convention. The junior Kentucky Senator put it the best when it comes to Donald Trump,"If you are going to kill the families of terrorists, realize that there's something called the Geneva Convention we're going to have to pull out of. It would defy every norm that is America."
And one more strike against Trump; he understands that censoring the internet is stupid and that Donald Trump is stupid for thinking it's a viable idea. Once more, he put it best.
"I think if we ban certain religions, if we censor the internet, I think that at that point the terrorists will have won."
His support of the so-called "Cuba Thaw" is reminiscent of the old Thomas Jefferson foreign policy: "Peace, commerce, and honest friendships with all nations; entangling alliances with none." And if situations arise that directly threaten American interests, Rand Paul will deal with it like Thomas Jefferson did with the Barbary States. He understands that force is not needed for everything nor that repeating the mistakes of the past keeps happening. And he isn't going to make the sand glow.
We need a new path, a path of principled realism, not one of utopian fantasy.
Each of the candidates, with the exception of Rand Paul and Ben Carson, all want to expand the surveillance state. Ted Cruz bragged that the USA Freedom Act covered "100 percent of all phone records," while Chris Christie, Jeb Bush, and Marco Rubio all vied for being known as 'Surveillance Man.' They all want to show they are the biggest and baddest on violating the right to privacy. Rand Paul, on the other hand, fought against the surveillance state. He understands, as he eloquently puts it, that the records of Americans 'are none of the government's damn business.' His spirited defense of the 4th Amendment in the GOP debates shows how different he is from the rest of the Republican field, and rightfully so.
We all deserve the right to be free from an overly intrusive government spying on us without reason. The Fourth Amendment protects us from unreasonable searches and seizures and it appears that only Rand Paul understands that. He understands that calls for more surveillance is ultimately, 'Bullshit!'
One of the best parts of Rand Paul's campaign is his emphasis on criminal justice reform. He understands that our criminal justice system is backwards and that imprisoning people for non-violent drug offenses for 10 to 20 years ruins lives. He understands that mandatory minimums is wrong and idiotic. That police do not need to look like an invading army. That civil asset forfeiture must be reformed. And the war on drugs must end. As he wrote," Our nation’s laws should focus on imprisoning the most dangerous and violent members of our society. Instead, our criminal justice system traps nonviolent offenders -- disproportionately African-American men -- in a cycle of poverty, unemployment, and incarceration."
Oh, and pot. Repealing the federal prohibition on pot and letting the states decide (a majority of states have either legalized medical marijuana or decriminalizing it) is the best way to go.
Connor Friedersdorf sums it up best in The Atlantic:
"Rand Paul 2016: Because everyone else’s foreign policy is terrifying."
