The Republican leader who spoke calmly and factually in Russellville Friday morning stood in sharp contrast to the trio whose childish accusations and retorts had turned the GOP presidential race into a glut of ripe material for comedians and satirists the night before.
U.S. Sen. Rand Paul conducted a Town Hall Meeting at Roy’s Bar-B-Q March 4. He was dressed in an open neck shirt, blue blazer, jeans and cowboy boots. He talked about issues, needs and concerns facing the country, not about body parts or accusations.
In a nationally televised debate the night before, candidates Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio had dealt with name-calling and sophomoric attempts at making their opponents look bad with crude humor.
Paul refused to talk about politics at Friday’s standing-room-only event at Roy’s. Even as he expressed many areas of disagreement with President Barack Obama, he did so without attacking the man or the office.
Yet those who have voted in primaries and caucuses so far this season have overwhelmingly preferred Trump, Cruz and Rubio over those who want to discuss issues and offer solutions, such as former Ohio governor John Kasich or Sen. Paul, who dropped out of the presidential race after a lackluster showing in the Iowa caucuses.
Retired State Rep. Sheldon Baugh said in introducing Paul that he hopes to be able to support him for president again in 2020. He reminded the audience that Dr. Rand Paul first surfaced in Kentucky politics when he headed Kentucky Taxpayers United.
Sen. Paul began his presentation by showing the crowd an enlarged facsimile of a $2.4 million check, symbolizing the unused funds he has returned to the US. Treasury over the past five-plus years from his office budget.
He pointed out a variety of governmental expenditures that he considers wasteful, including:
*Free college tuition for foreign students
*A natural gas fueling station in Afghanistan, when few people there have cars and none of them have cars that burn natural gas
*$200,000 for every Chevy Bolt car built
*$800,000 for televised cricket matches in Afghanistan when almost no one in the country plays cricket and very few have television sets
*Foreign aid for countries which criticize and torture Christians
He talked about the controversy over the selection of a new Supreme Court justice to replace the late Antonin Scalia. He agrees with his fellow Republicans that the next president should choose the next Supreme Court justice. The power of the presidency to make executive decisions without Congressional action is a major question facing American government, Paul said. He believes that it would be wrong for an outgoing president who has repeatedly taken unprecedented executive action to name a justice who might uphold the right for such executive actions, he said.