Rand Paul on How Not to Be Co-opted by Washington

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky. addresses CPAC, Feb. 10, 2011.

/ AP Photo/Alex Brandon

WASHINGTON -- Following his speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference Thursday, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul - the Tea Party-backed, Libertarian-leaning Republican pushing for drastic cuts to balance the budget - answered a few questions from Hotsheet about how to keep from being coopted by Washington and his proposal to cut the defense budget.

"Because I've been fairly outspoken during my campaign and here, I think I'll get less pressure from special interests," he said when asked if he'd yet see the dark side of Washington. He talked about how a president of a university whose "job is to advocate for money" said he realizes the country has to come before his earmark needs.

"So I think people understand that and are willing to work through what it's going to take," he said. "I think you have to realize the alternative. Everybody always wants to talk about 'oh, are you going to cut this.' The alternative may be chaos if we don't get our debt under control."

Paul then addressed whether he can be reelected if he spurns the special interests that spend lavishly to fund political campaigns.

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"I think the interesting thing is that it may be the opposite of conventional wisdom," he said. "Conventional wisdom is you have to pass out as much money as you can to as many special interests as you can, get their PAC money, run your campaign, you win. But [that] may be wrong."

He continued: "Look at [New Jersey governor] Chris Christie. He's bold and outspoken and challenges people and I think he still seems to be popular - he hasn't had an election yet. But I think we'll find out. My prediction is, one, I believe in it, but two, I think you can actually tell the truth and get more votes. I think you can be bold and get more votes."

Paul also addressed his proposal to cut military spending - something that elicited a number of boos from the CPAC audience of conservative activists when he brought it up during his speech.

"I think you can do it and still have a strong national defense," he said. "I think you can still protect a country against terrorists by having more small and mobile forces that can protect us and stop terrorism from occurring. I think large, land-scale wars are maybe not the best way to approach terrorism."

He noted that there are 100,000 American troops in Afghanistan compared to less than 100 members of Al Qaeda. He said under that ratio, there would have been about 50 million U.S. soldiers abroad during World War II.

"No one would have understood that ratio," he said. "So I think you can have many less soldiers in Afghanistan and still control Afghanistan."

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Paul declined to address repeated questions about whether America should close its bases in places like South Korea and Germany. He said his proposal is to cut six percent from the 2010 military budget. Pressed on that sounding like a relatively small percentage, he said, "it's six percent of a very large number."

"Military expenditures are like over $700 billion," said Paul. "...it's still a significant amount. It's also significant in the sense that we haven't gotten any conservatives to sign onto it yet. And it ultimately is the compromise. Conservatives have to decide that there is some waste in the military budget, and they also have to decide practically that you can't balance the budget by looking at this much [he holds his fingers up slightly apart] of the budget."

Are his colleagues afraid being accused of being soft on terror?

"Everybody is," Paul said. "Because people will sometimes distort things and call you unpatriotic and say you don't care about your country. But I think national defense is the most important thing we do here. But I don't think that means that every dollar is sacred."

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Brian Montopoli is a senior political reporter for CBSNews.com. You can read more of his posts here.

[mary-miami]

All extremes are bad, whether they be left (Communist) or right (Fascist). Tea Party are extreme right. They don't want government intervention anywhere, yet the very rich cannot be trusted to pay fairly or treat their workers with respect. If it weren't for Federally mandated minimum wages, they would pay slave wages. Tea's also want to do away with the 14th amendment which bestows citizenship on all people born on US territories, yet they hire undocumented workers and either pay less than minimum or cheat them and pay nothing. There have been news reports on this. Tea's want to destroy the First amendment which gives all of us Free speech, press, religion, right to protest peacefully and petition; yet they don't want their gun rights taken away. Don't touch the American Constitution. It has kept us free for over 200 years and many soldiers have died to protect the rights it stands for. When you vote for a Democrat or a moderate Republican, you know that when their term is up, they will leave peacefully because they respect our Constitution. Tea Party is just a nazi party in disguise.

[tsigili]

Prioritize everything, and cut where it is most wasteful to the country. Number one on the list.......ALL foreign aid!

[levelheadedtoo]

Paul says the things that define him. "get their PAC money, run your campaign, you win. But [that] """may""" be wrong." What does he mean taking their money MAY be wrong. Either it is or it isn't. He likes to use allot of words like "I don't think, or I think or maybe, might be, or could be." He just sound like a politician that is about to go over to the Dark Side or "maybe" he is already there. Baggers, it sounds like the armor is rusting.

[thinking-voter]

I see. Rand Paul, who has been in Washington all of a few weeks really now knows all about how not to be co-opted.

I'd go for what us said about the 8 times over reduction and instead of paying for retm-w's unemployment, I'd gladly pay the newly returned workers for anything having to do with improved education, repaired or refurbished infrastructure or expanding renewable energy.

[us_1776]

Despite the fact that we have enough fire-power to kill every man, woman and child on this planet 23 times over, you will never get the right-wingers to support reducing the defense budget. That is because the military-industrial companies syphon off huge amounts of public money from the treasury and a portion of that ends up as campaign contributions to right-wing candidates.

Maybe Rand can convince them to pare it down to being able to kill everything on the planet only 8 times over. But I doubt it.


.

[retm-w]

So we shut down the military industrial companies and layoff 100 of thousand workers and you will still be paying for their unemployment benefits.