The expiration of the sunsetting Patriot Act provisions may be too brief to have much of a national security impact, but they don’t have to be out of commission long to affect the 2016 Republican presidential race.
NSA surveillance pits two broad Republican sympathies — support for limited government and a desire for robust anti-terrorism policies — against each other. Edward Snowden’s revelations about bulk metadata collection coincided with reports about IRS scrutiny of Tea Party groups, putting pro-surveillance Republicans on the defensive.
Section 215’s expiration, and some careless headlines making it sound as if the entire Patriot Act has fallen by the wayside, may put GOP NSA defenders on firmer ground to make the national security argument. Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican who will make fighting both terrorism and libertarians the centerpiece of his campaign, declared the day the section lapsed.
Graham joins Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, Marco Rubio and Chris Christie as defenders of the NSA metadata dragnet. They will tell rank-and-file Republicans that the federal government needs every available tool to track down terrorists and prevent attacks.
The big question is how all of this affects Rand Paul, the Kentucky senator who has so far successfully blocked reauthorization of the provisions in question. Paul has certainly fired up his base, but he has also made many of his fellow Republicans very angry.
Paul has also isolated himself from other NSA surveillance skeptics in the Senate, including fellow 2016 GOP candidate Ted Cruz, by siding with a core group of libertarian-leaning House Republicans against the compromise USA Freedom Act. It will be easier for Paul’s detractors in the presidential field to gang up on him in televised debates. It also helps Cruz continue to triangulate between Paul and the most hawkish GOP presidential aspirants.
But there are also significant potential upsides for Paul. First, he has the civil libertarian position all to himself. In a big, deeply fractured field where even front-runners seldom break 20 percent of the vote, cornering the market on a significant constituency is important even if they’re not a majority of the primary electorate.
Second, the likeliest outcome is that the USA Freedom Act eventually passes in some form. That means that unlike Cruz’s defund Obamacare gambit, Paul’s semi-filibuster of the Patriot Act vote will force some reforms, even if they are not the specific reforms Paul preferred. Paul’s filibuster of John Brennan over drones appeared to move public opinion on that issue.
Why does this matter? All senators are vulnerable to the charge that they give speeches but don’t have to accomplish things like governors do. This is especially an easy accusation to level against boat-rocking senators like Paul and Cruz. Paul can argue his marathon speaking sessions produce some tangible results.
For Paul, there are two big risks. The first is that high-pitched fighting with fellow Republicans will bring out the worst hyperbole on both sides and drive up Paul’s negatives with grassroots Republicans. The second is that Paul will scare away the conventional conservatives he needs to reach in order to expand beyond his father’s base.
This Washington Post story quotes Iowa Republicans who are squeamish about Paul’s civil libertarian stand. These voters express confidence in the government’s ability to fight the war on terror. But by the same token, the story shows older Republicans lining up to see Paul even though they don’t care for his NSA critique.
That’s the big political question coming out of this Patriot Act dust-up. Can GOP hawks ranging all the way from Bush, Walker and Rubio near the top of the polls to Graham and George Pataki near the bottom use this to marginalize Paul? Or will they spread the pro-Patriot Act vote too thin and allow Paul to fire up his most passionate supporters at little cost?
The answer may take longer to figure out than getting surveillance reauthorization through the Senate.
