Rand Paul Met with AIPAC
Jason Zengerle reports:
Ron Paul, in addition to his extreme views on the federal government, has been a harsh critic of the Republican Party's "military adventurism," and in the past Rand has faithfully echoed his father's views. He opposed the war in Iraq, once characterized the September 11 attacks as "blowback for our foreign policy," and scoffed at the threat of Iranian nukes. And yet here he was in Washington, seeking out a secret meeting with some of the Ron Paul Revolutionaries' biggest bogeymen. At a private office in Dupont Circle, he talked foreign policy with Bill Kristol, Dan Senor, and Tom Donnelly, three prominent neocons who'd been part of an effort to defeat him during the primary. "He struck me as genuinely interested in trying to understand why people like us were so apoplectic," Senor says of their two-hour encounter. "He wanted to get educated about our problem with him. He wasn't confrontational, and he wasn't disagreeable. He didn't seem cemented in his views. He was really in absorption mode."
The following month, he met with officials from the powerful lobbying group AIPAC (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee), which has frequently clashed with Ron Paul over what the group views as his insufficient support of Israel. Paul, according to one person familiar with the AIPAC meeting, "told them what they wanted to hear: 'I'm more reasonable than my father on the things you care about.' He was very solicitous."
All of this has left Republicans in a state of high anxiety about which positions Paul will maintain—and which ones he's willing to bend on—once he enters the Senate. "After the primary, there's been a split and a debate," a Republican strategist involved in efforts to derail Paul this past spring tells me. "Half of us think Paul is far more ambitious than his father—he doesn't just want to prove a point, he wants to be a player—and that his ambition will outweigh his ideology." According to this view, Paul's success will ensure his obedience. "I think he'll be laundered by the Senate a little bit," another prominent conservative predicts. "He'll still sometimes be a pain in the neck for the leadership, but I'd expect him to get Senate-ized over time."
But not everyone is so sure. Says the Republican strategist, "There's the other half who think he really is his father's kid, he's kind of a schmuck, and he may well lose a seat we should otherwise win—and frankly, we aren't terribly upset about it."
This debate is at its most intense inside the head of Mitch McConnell. During the primary, McConnell's only meeting with Paul took place in a hangar at the Louisville airport. According to a person familiar with the conversation, McConnell pressed Paul to pledge to vote for him for Republican leader—something Paul refused to do. (Billy Piper, McConnell's chief of staff, denies that his boss sought Paul's commitment.) All these months later, Paul still won't make a firm pledge. "The whole question of 'Will Rand vote for McConnell for leader?' is a power play," explains one Paul ally. "If Mitch is a little bit on edge, so much the better. He should be."
The two men didn't sit for a meeting again until four days after Paul's primary victory—this time in Frankfort for a GOP Unity Rally at which Grayson, McConnell, and other prominent Kentucky Republicans endorsed Paul. After the rally, the group retreated to a conference room in the Kentucky Republican Party headquarters (officially known as the Mitch McConnell Building), where McConnell realized he was no longer in a position to be making demands of Paul. "He wasn't forcing opinions on anyone," one of the meeting's participants says of McConnell. "He just gave advice on the things Rand wanted advice on. He was in answer mode." Since then, McConnell has continued to go to bat for Paul, privately and publicly. "He's doing the professional thing," says Michael Clingaman, a former executive director of the Kentucky GOP. "He's laser focused on what matters most: retaining the seat and keeping the numbers in the Senate."
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