The Daily Gamecock

Rand Paul talks politics with USC students

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Around 120 people squeezed into the Gressette Room, a space with a maximum capacity of 70,  on Tuesday in hopes of seeing a man with curly black hair wearing a white button up shirt, jeans and cowboy boots. 

Second-year political science student Brett Harris initially dismissed the announcement that Senator Rand Paul was coming as a rumor, but when he found out it was true, his reaction was "holy s---t."

Paul’s explanation for coming to USC was simple — attracting the younger generation of voters.

“I tried to find out what’s on their mind and I tried to let them know that the Republican Party is interested in the young folk,” Paul said.

Presenting his stance

Paul believes that the Republican Party hasn’t done enough in the past to win an election, and he thinks the way to fix that is to increase the diversity of the party.

“I do think people are hungry for something more, and I think that we’ve run good candidates in the past … but it hasn’t been enough,” Paul said. “I don’t think the party is big enough to win again until we have a bigger party. That means more diverse. That means black, brown, white, young, old, rich, poor.”

A primary focus of Paul’s lecture was privacy, an issue he thought young voters could rally behind.

“I think most young people are maybe not so concerned about a balanced budget amendment or taxes or regulation because they don’t have any money yet, but they are concerned about their privacy,” Paul said. “The Republican Party has also been great and defending the second amendment, but I think it’s time we say we’re also for the rest of the Bill of Rights.”

Paul stated that one of the biggest issues in the fast-approaching 2016 election is voter choice.

“I think the big issue is really choice; whether or not you should be allowed to choose who your doctor is or choose what insurance you buy,” Paul said. “I think that’s the biggest objection for most people to the president’s health care plan; that he takes the choice from the individual, and he assumes it himself.”

The senator  also criticized President Barack Obama for decisions he has made in office, saying that he has acted unconstitutionally in many of his decisions. He specifically called the president out for criticizing Congress for being ineffective as a way to justify his actions.

“My concern is that indicates his false understanding of democracy. Democracy is messy," Paul said. “To go above the law and just saying, ‘I’m going to legislate as a president,’ that’s unconstitutional. That’s illegal, and we’ve got to stop him.”

Referencing current events, Paul also talked about how he would have handled the highly-controversial terrorist group, ISIS. He said he would have asked for permission from Congress for a formal declaration of war, and then he would have instituted a military plan.

“That’s the way the Constitution indicates it should occur, and this president is acting outside the law,” Paul said. “Either [Obama] was afraid to have the vote for the election, afraid he might not win the vote, or for one reason or another he didn’t do it the constitutional way.”

Meeting the politician

After he spoke, Paul took question from individuals in the audience as well as questions posted on Twitter under the #USCaskRand tag. These questions included: ' What can be done about public education to better prepare young people for college and a changing work environment?’ ‘Students leaving college are less likely than ever to get a job. What can be done to support those leaving higher education?' And even, ‘Where'd you get your boots?’

 “The opportunity to hear and speak and to finally get my picture made with him, which has been a yearlong quest, was really good. It was really amazing,” Harris  said. “I think he’s the closest link to our Founding Fathers and what they envisioned anyway.” 

Blurring party lines

As a student government-sanctioned event, student government secretary of state affairs Trey Byars wanted to make sure that the event was perceived as bipartisan. When he organized the event, he marketed towards Democrats and Republicans alike.

Byars said that it was much easier to find speakers from the Republican Party for free than it was to find speakers from the Democratic Party for a reasonable price, primarily because of the area and because of the openness surrounding the presidential election on the Republican side.

Out of the speakers available, the student government members who organized the event believed that Paul was a non-polarizing choice.

“Rand Paul has really cast himself as a bipartisan candidate. I think people knew that, and that’s why they were willing to engage with him,” undersecretary general of government affairs McBryde Campbell  said. “People can interface with Rand Paul because he has a wide variety of interests that represent a lot of the interests on both sides.”

In the end, Byars said he was satisfied with the turnout of individuals from many different ideologies. Audience members also expressed their satisfaction with the bipartisanship of the endeavor.

“The problem is, we lost sight of, I think, who we are as a nation. We’ve traded our national identity in favor of a political one. So many people are so quick to identify as a Republican or a Democrat before as an American,” Harris said. “We have to start focusing on the things that matter most, get our priorities together and get this country on the right track because if we don’t, there will be no government and there will be country in which we can even debate the smaller issues.”

Visiting the young voters

According to one of the organizers of the event, the fact that Paul was willing to speak at USC shows his willingness to interact with potential voters.

“I think we’re seeing the emergence of a new ideologue; someone who will not pander to the young people vote, but he’s willing to engage with the young people and make sure they’re interested,” Campbell said.

During his visit, Paul neither confirmed nor denied any presidential aspirations. But some audience members were confident in his ability to serve as president of the U.S.

“Rand Paul, I think, is our best choice for 2016,” Harris said. “Rand is a committed constitutionalist scholar and a constitutionalist-elected official ... this is a no-brainer to me. We need to send someone who’s disciplined and not afraid to say the hard things no one wants to hear.”

Student government hopes that students take away the idea that their voices and votes do matter.

“They have the ability to change things. They did in 2008,” Byars said. “Barack Obama was a completely different politician than we’ve ever seen as a country, and young voters almost unanimously put their arms around him and said, 'You’re one of us we want you.’”


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