Rand Paul from Stop This Insanity posted by Voted Perot.

[Virginia Foulk]

 "FROM Ron Paul

Q: The first budget your proposed as senator cut all financial aid to Israel. You have since changed your view on that issue. What made you change your mind?
PAUL: I've said I would cut spending, and I've said exactly where. Each one of my budgets has taken a meat axe to foreign aid, because I think we ought to quit sending it to countries that hate us. I think we ought to quit sending it to countries that burn our flag. Israel is not one of those. But even Benjamin Netanyahu said that ultimately, they will be stronger when they're independent. My position is exactly the same. We shouldn't borrow money from China to send it anywhere, but why don't we start with eliminating aid to our enemies.
Q: OK, but you still say that Israel could be one of the countries that is cut from financial aid?
PAUL: Out of your surplus, you can help your allies, and Israel is a great ally. And this is no particular animus of Israel, but we cannot give away money we don't have.
Source: Fox News/Facebook Top Ten First Tier debate transcript , Aug 6, 2015
U.S. intervention in Libya strengthened Islamic State

Q: Some of your Republican critics argue that you are actually to the left of Hillary Clinton on foreign policy, that she's more hawkish than you are.
PAUL: Interestingly, many of the hawks in my party line right up with President Obama. The war that Hillary prominently promoted in Libya, many of the hawks in my party were right there with her. Their only difference was in degree. They wanted to go into Libya as well. Some of the hawks in my party, you can't find a place on the globe they don't want boots on the ground.
Q: And that's their point, that you're to the left of all them.
PAUL: No, my point is, is that they are actually agreeing with Hillary Clinton and agreeing with Pres. Obama that the war in Libya was a good idea. I'm not agreeing with either one of them. I'm saying that that war made us less safe, that it allowed radical Islam to rise up in Libya. There are now large segments of Libya that are pledging allegiance to ISIS, supplying arms to the Islamic rebels in the Syrian war.
Source: CNN SOTU 2015 interviews of 2016 presidential hopefuls , Apr 12, 2015
Stand with Israel Act: no US funds to Palestinian Authority

Israeli cafes and buses are bombed, towns are victimized by hundreds of rockets, and its citizens are attacked by Palestinian terrorists. It's time we took a stand for Israel by standing up to the enemies of Israel, the enemies that murder Israeli citizens.
That's why I proposed a bill called the "Stand with Israel Act" to cut off the flow of U.S. taxpayer dollars to the Palestinian Authority. As long as the Palestinian Authority is allied with Hamas not one more tax dollar should flow to them.
Source: 2016 presidential campaign website, RandPaul.com, "Issues" , Apr 7, 2015
2011: eliminate all foreign aid & rebuild America instead

Rand Paul's campaign strategy is to eliminate the widespread suspicion that Paul is an isolationist echo of his father, former Rep. Ron Paul, the libertarian icon who frequently inveighed against US intervention overseas. Paul may lose support from some libertarians who supported his father's past campaigns; the goal, though, is to get enough support from enough slices of various constituencies--libertarians who are willing to compromise, conservatives who are tired of war, & maybe even some Democrats-- to help power him through the race.
Early in his Senate career, Paul was clearly influenced by his father's views. In 2011, he proposed eliminating all foreign aid, including to Israel, insisting: "I just don't think you can give other people's money away when we can't rebuild bridges in our country." As he seeks the presidency, facing a wide and varied GOP field that includes candidates with far more hawkish views, Paul has backed off on his past support for ending U.S. aid to Israel
Source: Politico.com 2015 coverage of 2016 presidential hopefuls , Apr 7, 2015
Crazy for North Korea to use force; we'd declare war

Some argue that North Korea and Iran could be emboldened if the United States elects not to use force against Assad in Syria. This is simply not true. North Korea sits atop a stockpile of weapons in close proximity to tens of thousands of US troops. If Pyongyang ever used these weapons against our troops, they would see a massive response from the US. The American people would be united, and Congress would declare war in a heartbeat. For anyone to think otherwise--be they a hawkish American pundit or a North Korean despot--is crazy.
Likewise, Iran--or any nation developing nuclear weaponry--should not doubt the military strength and unified approach of the American people toward the terrorizing of US citizens and allies. Nor should these nations doubt that international resolve will coalesce and extract harsh penalties on nations that pursue these activities. Ultimately, the US cannot and will not take any option off the table in order to protect Israel and other regional democracies.
Source: 2015 official Senate website www.paul.senate.gov , Jan 15, 2015
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What's This?
Where do Ron and Rand Paul disagree on foreign issues?

Where Ron Paul and Rand Paul agree on Foreign issues
Both oppose Iraq War
Both oppose Cuban embargo
Both agree on rights for Guantanamo detainees
Both agree on non-intervention abroad
Both oppose the TSA
Both oppose the United Nations
Where they disagree:   Ron Paul   Rand Paul
Iran:   Stay out of Iran   Keep options on Iran
Israel:   Cut off all aid   Maintain alliance
Privacy vs National Security:   Privacy first against terrorism   Spying on terrorists ok
Foreign aid:   End foreign aid   Limit foreign aid
Military Spending:   Cut absolute defense spending   Cut relative defense spending
Source: Analysis: Ron Paul vs. Rand Paul on the Issues , Jan 1, 2015
Good idea to end Cuba embargo; it hasn't worked

Paul became the first potential Republican presidential candidate to offer some support for President Barack Obama's decision to try to normalize U.S. relations with Cuba. The president's surprise announcement was slammed by several potential GOP candidates, including Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio, who said it amounted to appeasing the Castro regime.
Paul said in a radio interview that many younger Cuban Americans support opening up trade with Cuba. He also said many U.S. farmers would back Obama's moves because the country is a new market for their crops.
"The 50-year embargo just hasn't worked," Paul said. "If the goal is regime change, it sure doesn't seem to be working and probably it punishes the people more than the regime because the regime can blame the embargo for hardship. In the end, I think opening up Cuba is probably a good idea," he said. Paul's comments parallel those of Hillary Clinton.
Source: Ken Thomas on Associated Press, "Trade with Cuba" , Dec 18, 2014
50-year embargo with Cuba hasn't worked; lift it

In a radio interview, Sen. Rand Paul took a very different tack from his Republican colleagues in responding to President Obama's decision to reopen diplomatic relations with Cuba. Paul told Tom Roten, a radio host in Huntington WV:
Q: What are your thoughts on the president's deal here with Cuba?
PAUL: I grew up in a family that was about as anti-Communist as you could come by. And when we first opened up trade with China we were thinking it was a bad idea. But over time, I've come to believe that trading with China is the best way to actually, ultimately, defeat Communism. You know, the 50-year embargo with Cuba just hasn't worked. I mean, if the goal was regime change, it sure doesn't seem to be working. And probably it punishes the people more than the regime, because the regime can blame the embargo for hardship. And if there's open trade, I think the people will see all the things that we produce under capitalism. So in the end, I think probably opening up Cuba is a good idea.
Source: National Journal 2014 coverage of 2016 presidential hopefuls , Dec 18, 2014
Normalizing relations with Cuba can lead to positive change

Sen. Paul launched a social-media assault on Sen. Rubio about reopening US diplomatic relations with Cuba. Rubio cast the first stone: After Paul asserted earlier in the day that opening up trade with Cuba is "probably a good idea," Rubio said that Paul "has no idea what he's talking about."
Paul then posted this message on Facebook: "Senator Marco Rubio believes the embargo against Cuba has been ineffective, yet he wants to continue perpetuating failed policies. After 50 years of conflict, why not try a new approach? I believe engaging Cuba can lead to positive change. Seems to me, Senator Rubio is acting like an isolationist who wants to retreat to our borders and perhaps build a moat. I reject this isolationism. Finally, let's be clear that Senator Rubio does not speak for the majority of Cuban-Americans. A recent poll demonstrates that a large majority of Cuban-Americans actually support normalizing relations between our countries.
Source: National Journal 2014 coverage of 2016 presidential hopefuls , Dec 18, 2014
Temporary stop on elective travel to fight Ebola

Q: Is the government following the right policies on Ebola?
PAUL: I think the president's biggest mistake was saying," oh, it's no big deal, you can't catch it if you're sitting on a bus. And we're not going to stop any travel." It's very contagious when someone is sick. I don't think anybody should be riding on a bus or coming from Liberia to visit when they could be contagious. So, I think a temporary stop of travel for elective travel, if you're coming to visit your relatives, couldn't that wait for a few months?
Do you think we ought to tighten the restrictions on who can come to this country?
PAUL: From the beginning of our country, we always had restrictions on infectious disease. That was one of the primary things we did at our border. Commercial travel for people who just want to visit the US, that really isn't a necessity, and we can wait few months on it. And it would make our problem a lot less if we were only thinking about health care workers coming back.
Source: Face the Nation 2014 interview: 2016 presidential hopefuls , Nov 2, 2014
No quarantine on returning Ebola doctors unless symptomatic

Q: What about mandatory quarantines for health care workers who return to the U.S. after treating Ebola patients in Africa?
PAUL: It depends on your stage of the disease. Quarantine is a tough question, because the libertarian in me is horrified at the idea of indefinitely detaining anyone without a trial. One of our basic rights is habeas corpus: if anybody was detaining you, you have recourse to a lawyer and to a judgment.
Q: She had a lawyer. They filed suit to get her out of New Jersey. Now she's in Maine and again saying, "I am not contagious."
PAUL: Well, I think common sense would say that it makes a different whether or not you're febrile, afebrile or asymptomatic.
Q: She doesn't have a fever.
PAUL: Right. When you're febrile, you're beginning to be contagious. And so there is a reasonable public concern. I think that we have to be very careful of people's civil liberties, but I'm also not saying that the government doesn't have a role in trying to prevent contagion.
Source: CNN SOTU 2014 interview series: 2016 presidential hopefuls , Nov 2, 2014
GOP hawks fear my world view, but Americans support it

On the opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal, Rand Paul has been accused of "bark-at-the-moon lunacy." (Paul's meeting last fall with The Journal's editorial board quickly went sour. People who attended described the meeting as awkwardly contentious-- until Rupert Murdoch, the newspaper's owner, walked into the room and brought down the temperature.) The headline on a column last month in the National Review asked: "Rand Paul's Foreign Policy: For the Situation Room or the Dorm Room?" The reason the attacks are so personal and so hostile, Paul said, is that Republicans who favor more American involvement in the world fear that his view, not theirs, is gaining support. "The country is moving in my direction," he said.
Source: NY Times 2014 coverage of 2016 presidential hopefuls , May 24, 2014
Neocons are neoisolationist: 'all should behave like us'

Paul bristles at an adjective often used to describe his foreign policy: isolationist. "Not only am I for being involved, I'm actually for more involvement than the neocons," he said, referring to the branch of conservatism that supports an interventionist foreign policy. "The neocons are really neoisolationists," he added, "in the sense that they are so hardened--that everybody should behave like us, and everybody in the world should be in our image--that they discount the concept of looking at things realistically and negotiating with people who don't have our point of view."
Paul often complains that his worldview is caricatured by people who are eager to cast him as a clone of his father, former Representative Ron Paul of Texas, who is deeply suspicious of American involvement overseas. "They start out with a mischaracterization of his point of view, bastardize it, make it worse," the senator said.
Source: NY Times 2014 coverage of 2016 presidential hopefuls , May 24, 2014
Eventually end all foreign aid, but unrealistic for now

The issue of aid to Israel also came up last year in a meeting with the board of the Republican Jewish Coalition. Members pressed the senator, and he conceded that while he would eventually like to terminate all foreign aid, he knew that would not be realistic now. "You could see he was a work in progress," said a member of the Jewish coalition's board. "He's thinking about these issues; he's trying to learn."
Part of Paul's strategy is to appear before audiences that are not necessarily friendly to him, such as the Heritage Foundation, where he left the impression that he knew he must evolve.
Some observers say this is the evolution of a savvy politician with presidential ambitions. Paul says it is more like a slow reveal. "I've been expressing gradually where my foreign policy is," he said. "Foreign policy isn't set in stone. It isn't either-or. And it isn't always right or wrong."
Source: NY Times 2014 coverage of 2016 presidential hopefuls , May 24, 2014
We don't need grandstanding tough talk against Russia

Sen. Rand Paul may not be a foreign policy hawk but he is a political one. He wrote, in a recent critique of his Republican colleagues: "What we don't need right now is politicians who have never seen war talking tough for the sake of their political careers." Paul was talking about grandstanding responses to the Ukraine crisis. It wasn't a pinprick attack about a policy disagreement: Sen. Paul is claiming his rivals--ignorant to the sacrifices of war--are too cavalier about committing American troops to foreign conflicts in their rush to make a name for themselves. He made this point in an essay where he also charged these performance hawks with misappropriating Ronald Reagan's legacy, a special desecration in a party where the 40th president is revered.
It wasn't immediately clear who Paul was attacking. He did not name names, but that may simply have been because he had too many targets. He could have been referring to several of his potential rivals for the presidency.
Source: CBS News 2014 coverage of 2016 presidential hopefuls , Mar 11, 2014
My worldview: engage both friend and foe in dialogue

People sometimes ask me what my worldview is. I really am a believer that foreign policy must be viewed by events as they present themselves, not as we wish them to be. The world of foreign policy has been turned on its head in the past decade.
I believe the answers to most problems that confront us around the world can and should be approached by engaging both friend and foe in dialogue. No, I don't naively think that dialogue always works, but I believe we should avoid the rigidity of saying that dialogue never works. I believe we should approach diplomacy from the notion that dialogue is nearly always preferable to war but that potential enemies should never mistake, as Reagan put it, our reluctance for war, with a lack of resolve.
I consider foreign policy to be an unending process of learning and that I am very open to learning new ideas, whether they are indeed new, or maybe just new to me.
Source: Rand Paul OpEd in The National Interest , Jan 16, 2014
Prioritize embassy security to avoid another Benghazi

Numerous reports have do$#%ented the security failures that resulted in the tragic deaths of four Americans at the consulate in Benghazi. The failures of management that led to these decisions are reprehensible; the lapses in judgment indefensible.
One of the most troubling aspects of the Benghazi attack is the complete disregard that State Department leadership gave to the repeated requests for enhanced security. Should funding have been an issue, the State Department always has the option available to come to Congress for approval to transfer funds within accounts. No requests for reprogramming were made by the State Department.
In addition to increasing diplomatic security accounts in this budget, I have supported legislation to provide the State Department transfer authority to prioritize diplomatic security at our embassies around the world. However, it is worth noting that this money will only be effective if it is responsibly managed by officials at the State Department.
Source: A Clear Vision to Revitalize America, by Rand Paul, p. 42 , Oct 1, 2013
No isolationism; but don't go abroad seeking enemies

America's national security mandate shouldn't be one that reflects isolationism, but instead one that is not rash or reckless, a foreign policy that is reluctant, restrained by Constitutional checks and balances but does not appease; this balance should heed the advice of America's sixth president, John Quincy Adams, who advised, "America goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own."
Source: A Clear Vision to Revitalize America, by Rand Paul, p. 37 , Oct 1, 2013
Against terror but first comes preserving the Constitution

Christie denounced the effort to pull back on anti-terror measures as "dangerous" and warned that those--like Paul--who are attempting to craft an American retreat from the world are playing with fire. Paul immediately fired back at Christie saying he's against terror but only wants to preserve the Constitution. But he's made it clear that what he wants is a massive pullback of efforts to seek out and fight Islamist terrorists as well as a general retreat from America's position as a global power with commensurate responsibilities. Paul has tried to call this stance "realism," but stripped of its rhetorical trappings that attempt to differentiate his positions from those of his father, Rep. Ron Paul, it is merely warmed-over isolationism. Paul has sought to play upon the war-weariness of Americans after Iraq and Afghanistan to bring this isolationist trend into the mainstream from the margins and fever swamps of the far right and far left, where it has dwelt since before WWII.
Source: Jonathan S. Tobin in Commentary Magazine , Jul 26, 2013
US aid enables a war on Christianity in the Middle East

Before the Arab Spring, Christianity flourished in small outposts, like the Coptic Christians in Egypt. I had hoped that the Arab Spring would bring freedom to long-oppressed people throughout the Middle East, but I fear the Arab Spring is becoming an Arab winter.
Today, Christians in Iraq, Libya, Egypt and Syria are on the run--persecuted or under fire--and yet, we continue to send aid to the folks chasing them. While they burn the American flag and the mobs chant "Death to America," more of your money is sent to these haters of Christianity.
Even if all the atrocities to Christians were not occurring in these countries, we simply don't have the money to engage in this foolishness.
  VP"

Left a message for VP, because he likes to stay on STI. And I would like to have him post here. But if he won't, I'll borrow his posts. Don't agree or disagree with him, just like reading what he has to say. 

[kevin kiernan]

Try listening to his own words and then make up your mind instead of letting others opinions lead you. Have your own opinion. Allowing talking heads to steer your vote to make it their vote is weakness . Be bold and have your own opinion.

[Virginia Foulk]

Thank you for the post, however, VP mentioned the actual dialog of what he was listening to.. So again, it is as you say. Listen, read, use your own mind to consider what is being posted. I have no reason  to agree or disagree. My mind has been following all candidates for now - even the Other party. How else can we understand what THEY are up to. And I have liked Rand Paul, just am looking for more.

[kevin kiernan]

[kevin kiernan]

Rand Paul is not a career politician. He was elected as a Tea Party favorite in 2010. He is a Washington ousider who has had to fight both Democrates and members of his own party because of his Stance against the establishment government procedures. His stance of a constitutional government is un-equaled. Even Ted Cruz can not hold a candle to him when it comes to the constitution. His personal conservative values do not get in the way of the constitution.That is what we are suppose to be doing here . Not electing someone who will only use the constitution to advance his own values. That is the division that this country has been suffering from, and is exactly what career politicians want. Keeping the masses fighting and divided over social issues keeps them in a job.Even Ted Cruz is a career politician who plays the conservative constitutional ploy only to advance his career. It is a smart ploy on his part... I have seen the bait and switch before. Yes he is a conservative, and yes he does stand with the constitution. But he will be compromised because because he really deep inside ,wants government to stay pretty much the same size. Rand Paul has been fighting against all career politicians. The man truly stands alone in his defiance of big government. This is my opinion of course. But seeing how this thread was started taking another deceitful shot at Rand Paul., I feel it necessary to set the record straight...I think going to you tube and getting Rand`s speeches to listen too, is the best way to know the man. Look at his voting record and what he has stood for.. He is the only politician I know that has lived up to his Oath of office 100%.

[Virginia Foulk]

Sorry, Kevin, this post was not a post against Rand Paul.. I like Rand Paul and so does VP.  Well, this did bring out some more insight about him.  I do not like some of what he says, but then, as you say, he is for the Constitution.

It was his words within the post, in response to questions..

[kevin kiernan]

Yes they were his words to questioning , but it was used in surrounding text that did not show the true intent of his words. Talking heads know how to spin words around so they kinda lose the intention of them.

[kevin kiernan]

That is why I say to listen to the person yourself as to form an opinion that is truly your own.Do not allow me or anyone to make your decision for you. Let me add that I bring the speach here so you can watch it yourself. I do have opinions but I do not force them on anyone . This person you take advice from is just trying to form your opinion.Otherwise he or she would bring the video to you so you can judge for yourself.

[Virginia Foulk]

Gotcha, so as you suggest - however, I do not have Youtube, and VP actually listens and follows all candidates. So sometimes VP's posts are so insightful and sometimes, I have troubles following them. But he is Tea Party - through and through.