It is highly likely that as a result of Senator Rand Paul’s maneuvers, barring a last minute reversal, the Patriot Act will expire Sunday night. This is something of a triumph for the Kentucky senator even if it is likely to be a short-lived one. Even under the rules of the Senate which allow individual senators vast leeway to gum up the works if they so choose, it’s likely that a frustrated Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will be able to force an end to this exhibition by Wednesday and that the House version of a renewal called the USA Freedom Act, will eventually be adopted by the Senate. It is to be hoped that the 72-hour interval won’t harm national security. But the main political conclusion to be drawn from this affair is that Paul’s long and arduous effort to attain the status of a mainstream Republican leader and presidential contender is now officially over.
As I noted last week, Paul’s recent filibuster of the Patriot Act renewal didn’t have the same impact of the same stunt when he executed it in early 2013. That filibuster captured the imagination of the country not just because it was well done. It worked because his concerns about the Obama administration’s use of drone attacks seemed to capture both the cynicism that many Americans felt about the government but also because it came at a time when the threat from Islamist terrorism seemed to have receded. But in the wake of the rise of ISIS as a result of President Obama’s negligence and shortsighted Middle East policies, that stance no longer resonates with as many people, especially Republican primary voters.
But rather than let a bipartisan majority of Congress work their will and allow U.S. intelligence to continue their necessary work of monitoring possible terrorist threats, Paul has doubled down on his obstructionism. The result is that, at least for a few days, he will have won and stripped the government of its ability to conduct bulk data collection. Paul and his fellow libertarian cynics about efforts to combat terrorism will assert that no harm will be done to the country, a proposition that cannot be proved or disproved without access to the sort of intelligence that is unlikely to be in the public domain or even possessed by members of the Senate. Yet, even if the country is so fortunate that nothing important will slip by its spooks during a possible 72 hour blackout, the point here is that Paul’s crusade has finally exploded the notion that he is a mere foreign policy “realist” rather than a housebroken version of his father’s old extremist libertarian faction.
McConnell was resisting the House version until this week because he rightly considered its attempt to limit the government’s ability to monitor terrorist contacts to be both unnecessary and potentially dangerous. But since neither Paul nor some left-wing Democrats who share his views would play ball, the Majority Leader was forced to embrace the House bill as the only way to effectively renew the Patriot Act before it expired. This retreat availed him little since Paul was not satisfied with having his say and getting a vote, but actually chose to let the law expire, albeit for only a few days.
Suffice it to say that if Senator Paul were the mainstream Republican, he has been trying to pose as for the last two years as he prepared his presidential run, he wouldn’t have done this. It is one thing to grandstand about these issues, even on the ludicrous premise that the government was thinking about sending drones to kill American citizens peacefully sipping coffee in Starbucks, as he did in his 2013 filibuster. It is quite another to use your power as a senator to actually halt U.S. intelligence efforts merely in order to feed the paranoia of a segment of the public.
It bears repeating that the metadata collection that he is so riled up about was both constitutional and a necessary tool for American intelligence forces as they work to continue to try and forestall attacks on the homeland as well as terrorism abroad. The National Security Agency isn’t reading your emails or listening to your phone conversations. But it will seek to do so if you are in contact with a known terrorist. The House version of the bill forces the government to go to a court before it can use any of the data it seeks. That’s an extra precaution that ought to satisfy the Patriot Act’s critics, who nevertheless cannot point to a single instance in which the government has misused the information it gleans from the procedure.
Paul’s stance puts him to the left of President Obama on this issue. That’s nothing new since his foreign policy views are, as a general rule of thumb, far closer to that of the Bernie Sanders wing of the Democratic Party than those of most of his fellow Republicans. But while his calls for a weaker defense and a retreat from a position of strength abroad can sometimes be couched in terms that allow him to pose as a follower of the first President Bush, his recent antics give the lie to this effort.
Paul will likely continue to be a disruptive force in both his party and the presidential contest, especially in a field as big as the one Republicans will have in 2016. But by claiming, as our Noah Rothman noted this past week, that it was his fellow Republicans, rather than President Obama, who should be held responsible for the rise of ISIS and then his effort to torpedo intelligence collection Paul has finally dropped any pretense that he is attempt to gain the votes of mainstream conservatives.
He has, instead, reverted to being merely a slicker and more ambitious versions of his cranky extremist father. Unlike Rep. Ron Paul, Rand seemed to harbor genuine hopes of expanding beyond his small yet vocal band of libertarian backers. It was fun while it lasted, but that is over. So should be any notion that he is anything more than a factional leader who has no chance of being nominated, let alone elected president.
