Rand Paul and The End of The Republican Party (And the Dems Too)

Break out
the champagne, folks. The traditional parties aren’t
clicking with voters like they used to.

Only Team Red and Team Blue dead-enders can
disagree. In
January, Gallup found a historically high number of Americans –
42 percent – self-identify as politically independent. The
Republican brand is totally in the crapper, with just 25 percent
copping to that affiliation, and the Democrats are flatter than a
leaking bottle of SodaStream seltzer, pulling just 31 percent
(abandon
hope, all ye who pray for Elizabeth Warren).

The one major exception to politics as usual on the national
stage, I argue in a new Daily Beast column, is Sen. Rand Paul
(R-Ky.), who is injecting libertarian viruses into the body politic
like some sort of Dr. Feelgood.
A snippet:

Paul recognizes that the way forward on the national stage is
not to get hung up on social issues (marriage equality, abortion,
immigration) that act as dog whistles for the party faithful but do
little to address widespread concerns about the size, scope, and
competence of government. After years of activist government under
both George W. Bush (who
jacked spending, regulation, and surveillance like nobody
else) and Barack Obama, a large and growing majority of Americans
agree that government is “trying
to do too many that should be left to individuals and
businessess”. The record 72
percent of people who consider government a bigger threat
than big business or big labor to the future of the country are not
likely to be wooed back to the Republican and Democratic folds via
fervent appeals to build a really tall wall along the U.S.-Mexico
border or to
fight against the Koch Brothers.

While Paul’s past calls for a libertarian embrace of freedom in
“both the economic and the personal sphere” have
been inconsistent, he’s now also talking about procedural
reforms that voters of all ideologies should support. “There is a
third way and it’s out there,” he told Beck. “We need term limits,
we need reading the bills, we need single-purpose bills…I think
you would see people from both parties rally” around such
ideas.

Read the whole thing, including interesting comments about Paul
from Democratic strategist Joe Trippi (whom Reason TV
interviews here). Trippi, who masterminded Howard Dean’s
internet-fueled insurgency, thinks Paul could be among the first
candidates to win the White House in a post-political-party
era.

Matt Welch and I interviewed Rand Paul in 2011. Check it
out: