Kentucky senator Rand Paul strolled onto the stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference outside Washington Friday as a committed crowd of supporters cheered. Wearing a light blue Brooks Brothers shirt (sleeves rolled up), a red tie, and blue jeans, Paul made a case for his liberty-focused agenda.
“There comes a time in the history of nations when fear and forgetfulness causes a nation to hesitate, to waver, and perhaps even to succumb,” Paul said, sounding as if he were reading from a founding document. “When the time comes, those who love liberty must rise to the occasion.”
Paul’s speech ran the gamut of issues, from Obamacare to privacy, but the most resounding applause came during his discourse on foreign policy and national security. The Republican set the tone of his remarks when he paraphrased the line from the U.S. oath of allegiance. “We must defend the Constitution against all enemies,” Paul said. “Foreign and domestic.”
Responding to the charge that Paul’s views on foreign policy aren’t “strong enough,” the senator argued that while he prioritizes national defense spending above all else, “when we get to foreign policy, we’re not all the same. Not all Republicans are the same on foreign policy.”
Paul said the country’s foreign policy should “promote stability instead of chaos” and “unencumbered by nation-building.” Defeating jihadists must be done, he said, “without losing who we are in the process.”
“At home, conservatives understand that government is the problem, not the solution,” Paul said. “But as conservatives we should not succumb to the notion that a government inept at home will somehow become successful abroad, that a government that can’t even deliver the mail will be able to build nations abroad.” He described the terrorist group ISIS as a “dangerous and barbaric cult” but blamed its rise on the “safe haven created by arming Islamic rebels in the Syrian civil war.”
Paul criticized former secretary of state Hillary Clinton’s “war in Libya” and her response to the terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi. “Her dereliction of duty should forever preclude her from higher office,” he said.
