re: Senator Paul to Speak at Berkley

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Unlike Paul, (Jack) Kemp dressed in a jacket and tie (with his tell-tale collar bar), not baggy jeans. He was a U.S. congressman and wasn’t going to insult students by pretending to be an undergrad who’d just rolled out of bed.

Unlike Paul, he did not tell the crowd how his party colleagues were old and unlikable.

Unlike Paul, Kemp talked mainly about the promise of free market conservatism, the dignity of work and the blessings of private property ownership. He went to the core of conservatism, defended it and explained why students and the whole society should embrace it.

Unlike Paul, Kemp did not revel in students’ anti-government, paranoid visions. . . . . .



In the ’70s and ’80s, Ronald Reagan and Kemp went about the hard work of convincing habitual Democrat voters that conservatism might be in their interests. In contrast, Paul seems to be affirming bad impulses on the hard left and suggesting that conservatism is all about aversion to national security.

At least Paul’s father was candid about what he believed (which meant he wouldn’t be president) without sizing up what his audience wanted to hear. (Rand Paul, in this regard, is more like Hillary Clinton, who is happy to cater to the whims of each audience — be it filled with liberal feminists or hedge fund tycoons. She can be anti-war or pro-defense, whatever you’d like.)

No wonder the mainstream media eats this up. Paul is simultaneously playing to the hard left’s anti-defense sentiments (although it is not clear if he still thinks Edward Snowden is today’s Martin Luther King Jr.) while trying to discredit mainstream Republicans. In fact, if he keeps this up he’ll have his own MSNBC show.

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