In July, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., was bashed relentlessly for being virtually alone in supporting the president’s efforts toward better U.S.-Russian relations. This was despite Paul holding this position many years before Trump got into politics.
On Thursday, the Senate voted to end U.S. support for the Saudi war in Yemen, and it’s being called the biggest rebuke of Trump to date. Yet, for Paul’s entire eight-year Senate career, he has tried to force a vote to reign in presidential foreign policy overreach time and again — and has usually been denied, including a bill two years ago Paul co-sponsored with Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., to halt U.S. arm sales to Saudi Arabia. That bill received only 27 votes.
Congress attempting to reassert its war powers is something at least a minority of Democrats used to do when George W. Bush was president, but less so under former President Barack Obama. This is something many Republicans joined Paul on during the Obama administration, but virtually none did under Bush (except for the lone examples of Rand’s father, Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, and a handful of others).
It is Paul who’s been consistent throughout, while most around him in both parties have changed their foreign policy and constitutional views based on which party’s president is in power and their feelings toward them.
It took the unique Trump presidency and the Saudi government’s killing of a U.S.-based journalist to get enough Democrats and Republicans together to do something Congress hasn’t done in decades.
This “is historic because really it’s been a long time since Congress has stood up, grabbed their constitutional power and said to a president, ‘You can’t go to war without our permission,” Paul told Vice News Thursday. “In fact, I can’t remember it really ever happening that Congress has done this. It is in the Constitution. Congress is supposed to declare war. The president is supposed to follow our direction.”
Extraordinary moment! For decades, Congress has relinquished power to the executive. Today the Senate sent a loud message: the declaration of war comes from Congress, & we don’t approve of our involvement in Yemen. Time to build here and stop bombing there! Today we took action!
— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) December 13, 2018
If Paul seems like a kid on Christmas morning right now, it’s because this is exactly what he came to Washington to do. Rand Paul is neither “Never Trump” nor “Always Trump,” but he is “Always Constitution.”
While Democrats and Republicans have largely ignored the Constitution, believing that the limits it places on the federal government and particularly the executive branch don’t matter much as long as their party is in control, libertarians such as Paul have been pounding the podium that the problem is unchecked power itself, not merely who gets to control it.
Paul has not led the charge to restore congressional war powers in this moment because he has a beef with the president. He doesn’t. The two are good friends and often allies, as the predicted passage of criminal justice reform should remind everyone next week. Nor did Paul oppose Obama’s unconstitutional foreign policy actions in Libya and Syria because he personally disliked him. Paul and Obama often agreed too, particularly, on criminal justice reform and also easing sanctions on Cuba.
Holding true to one’s principles should be a bipartisan affair. Politicians constantly putting partisanship over principle is arguably the biggest problem in Washington today, to the degree that members of Congress had any principles to begin with.
“Now can we start making the presidency less powerful?” asked Christian libertarian writer Bonnie Kristian less than one year into Trump’s presidency. Getting Washington politicians to finally adhere to the Constitution they took an oath to uphold has been a longtime libertarian goal.
“The real hypocrisy of the conservative movement is that they claim to be such fans of the rule of law,” Paul complained seven years ago, targeting his own party during his first year in the Senate. “But they sure aren’t willing to follow it, when it comes to how we go to war.”
These comments were made during a 2011 debate over Obama’s unconstitutional strikes on Libya. Paul said Congress had become “not even a rubber stamp, but an irrelevancy” when it came to foreign policy powers.
On Thursday, Congress became relevant again for the first time in a long time when it comes how America wages war. It was historic.
If Rand Paul seems excited, he should be.
Jack Hunter (@jackhunter74) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is the former political editor of Rare.us and co-authored the 2011 book The Tea Party Goes to Washington with Sen. Rand Paul.
