It wasn’t the Giuliani moment some were hoping for, but it was a glimpse of how Rand Paul might handle his more hawkish rivals for the Republican presidential nomination.
As Chris Christie argued that opposition to current bulk data collection practices endangered the country, Paul shouted at him to follow the Bill of Rights. And he was able to do it without losing the conservative Republican audience, reminding the crowd which president was overseeing the surveillance and was the recipient of Christie’s hugs.
Paul wasn’t given much time, but he was eager – sometimes a bit too eager – to mix it up and mostly made good use of the opportunities he had. On the Islamic State, he emphasized not sending weapons to places where they could wind up in jihadists’ hands. He defended diplomacy with Iran. He tightened his argument on foreign aid, including Israel. And he didn’t back down on surveillance.
Nowhere did he land a knockout punch and libertarians looking for him to channel his father still had ample grounds for complaint. Even as he defended diplomacy with Iran, he reiterated his opposition to the deal actually on the table, which Ron Paul supports. The Kentucky senator basically triangulated between Republicans who want to rip up the agreement on day one and the Obama administration.
Paul didn’t say the Iraq war was a mistake as clearly as Donald Trump or even Jeb Bush did, although the Islamic State question was prompted by his past criticism of the war. He didn’t get an opportunity to repeat his objections to “Hillary Clinton’s war” in Libya.
So there is still a risk that he will be too dovish for hawks and too hawkish for doves. But speaking a few hours after Lindsey Graham turned a response about Planned Parenthood into a call for reinvading Iraq, it is evident Paul can make his contrasts with the rest of the field on foreign policy and civil liberties clear enough without alienating Republican regulars. Can he do it better in future debates?
When Christie berates public sector employees at town hall meetings, he doesn’t assume that the intentions behind a government program prove its effectiveness. Why make the same assumption about warrantless surveillance? It’s an argument Paul can add to his observation that conservatives who don’t trust the government to deliver the mail should be equally skeptical of its ability to build democracies in the Middle East.
This is still a niche Paul has to himself. The big winner of the “happy hour” debate, Carly Fiorina, tipped her hat to surveillance skeptics by saying she didn’t “believe that we need to wholesale destroy every American citizen’s privacy” to catch terror suspects. How reassuring!
The fact that Bush and Scott Walker essentially faded into the background while Trump appeared to be running against Megyn Kelly suggests that the field remains open. The risk for Paul is that he winds up sparring on these issues not with Christie or Graham, easy moderate foils, but Marco Rubio, who performed well Thursday night and is less easily attacked from the right (except on immigration, where Paul may be hesitant to tread).
We won’t see a reappearance of those “Rand Paul is the GOP front-runner” stories anytime soon. But perhaps it will be easier for Paul to get back to libertarian basics with less to lose.
