Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, who has spent months on the road promoting Republican candidates in 32 states, said the GOP is poised to take control of the Senate in the November election and immediately approve construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, address corporate taxes and reform prison laws.
“I’d be surprised if we don’t win the majority,” he told the Washington Examiner. “I think the wind is at our back, the president is increasingly unpopular,” said Paul, adding that there are some Democrats “that would probably run the other way if [President Obama] came to their state.”
Paul, who is mulling a 2016 presidential bid, is so confident of picking up the needed six Senate seats that he has already met with fellow Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell, the chamber’s minority leader, to discuss what the new majority would do starting in January.
“We pass legislation,” he said. “I’ve talked with Sen. McConnell about this, he’s intent on passing legislation.”
What’s more, he said that instead of paying back Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for blocking GOP legislation for six years, Republicans would seek Democratic assistance — including Obama’s.
“If you allow the minority to be part of the process, to have amendments, and to frankly shape the legislation, we’ll pass legislation,” he said. Paul said the GOP would move fast to take up some of the 400 House-approved bills corralled by Reid, including Keystone XL, criminal justice reform and a plan to “repatriate” overseas profits at a discounted tax rate.
“There are probably two dozen bills that have bipartisan support,” he said.
Easy enough, but he knows that Obama’s veto pen stands in the way of enacting legislation. So he offered a proposition to the president, one the GOP had for Bill Clinton in 1990s when he was handed a Republican Congress as he sought to polish his legacy.
“He has to decide if he wants to go down in history as the most unpopular president in history, or whether he wants to work with Congress,” Paul said.
THE ‘IT’ QUESTION: ARE YOU SAFER UNDER OBAMA?
It has been the go-to question for Republican candidates ever since former President Ronald Reagan crushed Jimmy Carter in 1980 by asking, “Ask yourself: Are you better off than you were four years ago?”
Now, as the country deals with scary national security threats, an underground effort among conservatives is moving to adapt Reagan’s question to the Ebola and ISIS crises.
Pushed through conservative blogs, the question is just as simple: “Ask yourself this: Are you more likely to be infected or beheaded than you were six years ago?”
One conservative activist called the Reagan redux the “it question,” adding, “It might be funny if not so true.”
COLLEGE KIDS PREFER DRUDGE, HUFFINGTON POST
It’s no secret that college students are increasingly unplugged from the news of the day, but a new study finds that when made aware of an interesting story, they prefer to follow it on two big digital sites: the Drudge Report and Huffington Post.
An analysis “of all the ways [students] get their news seems to indicate that they prefer nontraditional outlets, Drudge Report, Huffington Post, podcasts, to any other form,” said the survey of 417 college students and their use of mobile technology published in the scholarly journal Electronic News.
The survey, provided to the Examiner, found that a driving factor is that students trust sites run by those they know, or feel they do, and who they consider part of their online media family.
It’s bad news for big outfits including Fox and the New York Times. “Participants prefer to get their social media news from individuals, journalists, friends they know, people they’ve heard of, rather than organizations, even if they are established news organizations,” the study said.
OBAMA’S LEGACY: WENT TOO FAR, WAS UNSUCCESSFUL
He still has two years to go, but pollsters and historians are already sizing up President Obama’s legacy and it’s not in the category of “great.”
The latest poll was conducted by John Zogby, who told the Examiner that even Democrats are discouraged by Obama. Just 49 percent of Democrats told the Zogby Analytics Poll that Obama will be “remembered as largely successful.”
Overall:
• 25 percent said Obama tried to change things and was mostly successful.
• 30 percent said he was unsuccessful.
• 32 percent said his changes went “too far.”
“President Barack Obama still has two years. These will be critical to his legacy. And so will be perspective,” Zogby said. “Remember: Lincoln and Truman were skewered when in office; Warren G. Harding was loved.”
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected].
