Rand Paul Wants Pork Too

I suppose It’s to be expected that the newly elected sometimes find that they most soften some of their campaign promises, but usually they will wait until they actually get into office. It’s been barely a week since the election and Rand Paul is already promising to bring home the bacon.

Father and son, age 47, have different styles. Asked what he wanted to do in Washington in a Wednesday morning television interview, the senator-elect said that his kids were hoping to meet the Obama girls. He has made other concessions to the mainstream. He now avoids his dad’s talk of shuttering the Federal Reserve and abolishing the income tax. In a bigger shift from his campaign pledge to end earmarks, he tells me that they are a bad “symbol” of easy spending but that he will fight for Kentucky’s share of earmarks and federal pork, as long as it’s doled out transparently at the committee level and not parachuted in in the dead of night. “I will advocate for Kentucky’s interests,” he says.

So you’re not a crazy libertarian? “Not that crazy,” he cracks.

He sounded a little different while he was campaigning.

More importantly, it seems like a very big shift from this February 2010 post (“Rand’s no-pork pledge“) from his campaign website:

Rand Paul appreciates Republican Senator Jim DeMint introducing today a one-year ban on earmark spending and a balanced-budget amendment. Rand strongly supports both initiatives and has made them centerpieces of his campaign for limited government, including his signing of the Citizens Against Government Waste “No pork pledge.”

“The Tea Party movement is an effort to get government under control,” Rand said. “I’m running to represent Kentuckians and to dismantle the culture of professional politicians in Washington. Leadership isn’t photo-ops with oversized fake cardboard checks. That kind of thinking is bankrupting our nation. Senator DeMint understands that and has taken action to stop it.”

I would have expected a little more time between Paul’s election and statements like this one.

Maybe he will pull it it off, his Father Ron Paul also supplies his district with pork, and has proven soft on the 2nd Amendment. He didn’t support us in the Guns in National Parks, or in streamlining the paper work for Gun manufacturers. I suppose principles only count while your actually running.

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Blogging is something I do for myself. I've been blogging since Sept. 2003, mostly about politics, guns, and observations about the word around me.
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1 Response to Rand Paul Wants Pork Too

  1. JKR says:

    Rand didn’t renege on his earmark pledge. He has signed on to cosponsor the earmark ban De Mint is pushing for a Tuesday vote within the GOP Senate caucus. He has also repeated his pledge on numerous sites, because the WSJ misstated what he said. The WSJ thinks earmarks are dandy.

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