Rand Paul: Romney couldn't attract enough people
Sure, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul may be welcoming Mitt Romney back into the fray for 2016 -- "the more, the merrier," he has said. And yes, Paul believes the former Massachusetts governor and 2012 GOP nominee would have been a better president than Barack Obama.
But in 2016, the Kentucky senator--who is weighing a run himself--said in an interview Wednesday, "When we choose who we are going to choose among the more the merrier, I think there is an argument to be made ...Governor Romney a month ago said, 'I've had my chance, it's time for somebody fresh and new.' And I kind of still tend to agree with what Governor Romney said."
I spoke with Paul in Manchester, New Hampshire, the second state that will vote in the 2016 nominating contests, where he is doing a series of events to get to know voters there.
The upshot for Paul is that Romney "couldn't attract enough people" to win the GOP nomination. Although he campaigned for Romney in 2012, Paul said the GOP needs to find a path to victory.
A winning constituency, he said, "has to be bigger and more diverse than we've ever had or we will not win or cannot win... there will be an argument for winnability, that we need to try something new."
Asked when he would announce his own plans for 2016, Paul said, "It's a maybe--and it's March or April."
Still, that timeline hasn't precluded Paul from building a campaign network, which he's been doing for months. He added two senior positions this week--a campaign manager for a potential 2016 campaign, Chip Englander, and a senior adviser, Chris LaCivita.
Paul recognizes that he's walking into a crowded field of contenders, but he says that he has a position that is "unique" in his party. He's concerned about the size of the debt and calls it, "the number one threat to our national security." He believes in what he calls a "more reasonable foreign policy," which he characterized as one that's "very judicious," in which "war's the last resort, and...we have to be worried about and wary of unintended consequences of getting involved in war that actually makes us less safe."
He was critical of many of his counterparts in Washington--both Democrat and Republican--for being too eager to put more American troops on the ground around the world. That was particularly true in the case of the U.S. intervention in Libya in 2011, which Paul called "Hillary's war" because of her role in shaping the American response.
"We made a mistake. We made the world less stable by toppling [Libyan dictator Muammar] Qaddafi. We should have not gotten involved. Hillary's decision to get us involved and to drag President Obama into that war in Libya made our country less safe," Paul said. "I think I'm the only one, one of the very few people on the Republican side who makes that argument that we should have not been involved in that Libyan war."
Other Democrats, Paul said, embrace a kind of "the Santa Claus approach" to economic policy, an allusion to a program that provides discounts on cell phones to low-income Americans.
"We don't think you get richer by getting a cell phone. We don't think you get out from your economic plight by getting two cell phones," Paul said. "There is a difference between--it's sort of the Santa Claus approach and the opportunity approach. Which one is easier to sell? It's easier to give things than it is to give opportunity."
He also said that Democratic opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline was "Luddite flat earth stuff" and said there was "no honest argument" against the pipeline other than pure opposition to oil and cars.
The House recently passed a bill to approve the pipeline that is also expected to pass the Senate. Mr. Obama has threatened to veto it, prompting accusations from Paul that he is not looking for middle ground on an issue that is bipartisan (there are a few Democrats in Congress that support the pipeline).
"The president needs to come and find the middle ground and that's where I really fault the president. What we've started out with is something that actually has very much bipartisan support," he said. "What I'm saying is the president's destroying the Democrat party and not doing a great job for the country either by not trying to find middle ground with Republicans."