A Few Words About Fancy Farm

I just saw video of the speeches from Jack Conway and Rand Paul at Fancy Farm last Saturday. Conway really kicked Rand Paul's butt. Paul is a pretty weak public speaker who wasn't saying much of anything about anything. He wasn't talking about his own ideas, he wasn't talking much about the Obama administration, and he wasn't talking much about Jack Conway. Pretty much all Paul did was recite the number of pages in the tax code and federal regulations and recite the names of President Obama, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi.

It was lame and fell flat.

The question, though, is whether any of this makes any difference though. Political scientists have argued for years that campaign managers, political consultants and ad agencies have become the principle figures in political campaigns rather than candidates. Rand Paul's campaign takes this one step further. Given that Paul has by-passed the Republican campaign infrastructure, his campaign is being driven primarily by Fox News.

Conway referred to Paul as trying to be the "prince of cable tv."

It's more accurate to view Rand Paul as the "puppet of cable tv."

I'll be volunteering and giving money to the Jack Conway campaign

Rasmussen on Conway/Rand Paul Race

The Rasmussen polling organization came out today with a poll showing Rand Paul eight points ahead of Jack Conway in the Kentucky state senate race. Rand Paul's staff was probably more cheered, but they can't feel really secure until Rasmussen has them 28 points up. That's because Rasmussen has developed such a Republican tilt in his polling that he can't be counted on to accurately gauge support for Democratic candidates. PPP polling had Rand Paul and Jack Conway tied. My assumption would be that the race is somewhere between tied and Paul being two points ahead.

Rand Paul: Conservative, Libertarian, Segregationist

Yesterday, NPR was sniffing around the question of whether Rand Paul would have voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 if he had been in the Senate.

That's a significant and uncomfortable question for any libertarian-inspired, small government conservative. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 made every lunch at the local diner and every trip to Woolworths into a federal matter because it banned racial discrimination in relation to serving customers, hiring workers and management, promoting people to new positions, and just about every matter connected to the conduct of private business.

If you like the Civil Rights Act of 1964, you see the federal government acting with real heroism to overturn a monstrous system of segregation that made the American South an evil place of racial hate, intimidation, violence, and deprivation. I read about the fight over the Civil Rights Act every day for months when I was a 9 and 10 year old kid. I'm proud to say that I've always supported the Civil Rights Act of 1964 even though I'm embarrassed to say that the legislation was so desperately needed in my country and I'm doubly embarrassed to say that because I'm white and people like my relatives were enforcing segregation in the South and more silently discriminating in the North.

But if you're a libertarian conservative, you would be more likely to see the federal government acting in a completely illegitimate and unconstitutional manner to force private businesses to serve African-American customers, hire African-American employees, and promote African-American employees when hired. If you're a libertarian conservative, you value the freedom of white employers to serve, hire, promote, and fire who they want over the freedom of African-Americans to shop, work, and receive recognition for their efforts.

Moreover, the Civil Rights Act violated libertarian/conservative principles of federalism because it represented a massive expansion of the power of the federal government in relation to the states. In many ways, the Civil Rights Act was even worse the New Deal from a "federalist" point of view. Where the New Deal offended federalist sensabilities by establishing a number of new federal programs and regulations, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 overturned a vast web of state laws pertaining to race in the South. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 not only vastly increased the power of the federal government, it curtailed the power of Southern state governments in the area of their highest priority--race relations.

These were the reasons why Barry Goldwater voted against the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and these are the reasons that Rand Paul would vote against the Civil Rights Act if it were brought back up for a vote today.

Paul explained [to the Louisville Courier-Journal] that he backed the portion of the Civil Rights Act banning discrimination in public places and institutions, but that he thinks private businesses should be permitted to discriminate by race.

In an ideal world, Rand Paul would take the country back to the period before 1964 when private businesses were free to discriminate against African-Americans in any way they wanted.
To be fair, Paul should get credit for his honesty on the issue. Even though the Republican Party has been the party of conservative white racial backlash against Civil Rights ever since Goldwater's candidacy in 1964, few if any Republicans have acknowledged their opposition to what they have to view as one of the "original sins" of big government in Civil Rights legislation.

But that honesty doesn't make him qualified to be a U. S. Senator from Kentucky.

Or anywhere else.

RSI Sends Money to Conway

Jack Conway won a close primary over Dan Mongiardo yesterday evening. A couple hours later, RSI sent him $25 and will volunteer to make phone calls after another donation. The fall campaign for Kentucky's open Senate seat will be a tough but winnable battle for Conway. RSI urges everyone to help as much as possible.