Paul Rand's Filibluster

The Junior Senator from Kentucky rose to speak, and he just kept on speaking. When he was finally done he had propelled himself to the vanguard of the Republican Party, in the process the sacred political institution of the filibuster received yet another blow. A few weeks ago nobody outside of Kentucky knew who Rand Paul was. At that time, the young guns of the Republican Party were Marco Rubio, Chris Christie, and Ted Cruz. Paul was not yet the Great Young Libertarian Hope of the RNC. Then Rand had his little Mr. Smith Goes To Washington moment and a star was born. A lot can change in thirteen hours. But in the midst of Rand’s big moment the filibuster took another hit. Paul’s and others actions have continued to change the definition of the filibuster. Once a quaint if not desperate attempt to give voice to the minority, the filibuster has morphed into an unstoppable monster that feeds off political gridlock.

When the dust and Paul’s throat had finally cleared, the Fifth amendment stood protected, Brennan was confirmed, and America was safe from diabolical murder drones. So what really happened? Paul’s coming out party happened, along with the birth of his 2016 presidential bid.

            This was never about Brennan. It was never about drones. It was never about the Fifth Amendment. It was about Paul.

            Shortly after his filibuster Rand spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference. Then he won the CPAC straw poll, usually a strong indicator of the next GOP presidential nominee.

            He gave a speech that sounded almost identical to the repetitive pseudo libertarian ideology that made up the majority of his filibuster. Suddenly Paul has a stump speech.

Obama used his keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention to test out his stump speech upon the world. Paul was not the rising star he is today during the 2012 convention. Unlike Obama he did not have the opportunity to be the keynote speaker at the RNC convention.

So he took matters into his own hands. He found a way to twist a CIA nomination into a discussion of his solution for the struggling GOP’s identity crisis. Paul tried his stump speech out on the senate floor, and he found a way to make the whole world watch. You may only have caught a sound bite of Paul’s speech, but that’s all you needed to get the gist of his vision of an RNC 2.0.

It was a savvy political and marketing move. In the age of social media Paul managed to reach his target base of the “college libertarian” by one of the oldest, played out tricks in the book.

There is a great deal of irony in watching the 140-character Twittershpere blow up over a man rambling about nothing for thirteen hours. But the gambit worked and Paul’s name is trending; not just on twitter or Facebook but on traditional news outlets, and more importantly in 2016 presidential polls.

I do not fault Paul for making a thinly veiled personal move on the senate floor. Every senator in history has done that. I blame him for misusing the filibuster and thus adding ammunition to the growing movement to end or severely cripple it.

            Presidents Obama and Bush used so many executive orders that the American public has come to view that strategy as normal as opposed to extreme. In similar fashion the Republican Party has used or threatened to use the filibuster during the last few years more then any other time in U.S. history. It has been a successful strategy, but just as with executive orders, it is a misuse of a small constitutional loophole, almost an oversight.

            Many would argue for the destruction of the filibuster all together. Harry Reed has certainly grown sick of it and was behind the late January filibuster reforms. Reforms that were intended to streamline the process and make filibusters more rare.

            It seems those reforms did not work. I do not believe that any reforms would work; the inherent power of the filibuster is that once a legislator starts talking only his own body can really put a stop to him. There is no real way to change that.

Nor am I in favor of abolishing the filibuster. The filibuster has a certain mystique in the American political landscape. The great equalizer, it gives a voice to the minority in moments of desperation.

            The real way to stop filibusters, executive orders and the like is for congress to become a little bit less polarized. Political gridlock is the cause for these desperate measures. Republicans and Democrats need to take a step back and realize that as effective and attention drawing these filibusters and executive orders are they were never intended to be common components of the modern political lexicon.

            Paul claims his basic beliefs lie in opposing big government; and he believes that this same message appeals to the young base he is working so hard to gain. Ironically, I cannot think of a better example of big government then a half empty senate room held hostage by a self aggrandizing senator speaking on murder drones and his own future amid a government sequester.

            The filibuster is like a comet; they are entertaining to watch every now and again but I’d be all right if I did not see another one for seventy years.