Rand Paul: Donald Trump's poll surge is just a brief 'loss of sanity' Read more

[#TheShadowyAbyss]

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http://www.businessinsider.com/rand-paul-donald-trump-poll-surge-2015-7

[Orthogonian Society Treasurer]

Can we really be certain that Rand Paul hasn't been replaced with a life-like android (literally a Randroid) intended to make him appear as bland and uninspiring as possible?

[Landslide Lyndon]

Republican sanity has been lost since the days of W.

[dudeabides]

Rand Paul has now won my respect.

[Senator Spark]

Meanwhile he is up in the polls a bit

[Fuzzy Bear]

If the GOP has lost its sanity, who is responsible for that?  Barack Obama?  Hardly; the GOP has been united in opposition to everything Obama since January 20, 2009.

Hillary Clinton?  If so, she's a pretty powerful woman, who can throw the opposition party into a total tizzy.  Maybe she's right; maybe we ought to be Ready For Hillary because the GOP isn't ready for prime time until it gets over its "insanity".

I don't believe there's been a "sanity loss".  I believe that the problem I"s that the GOP establishment is more geared with the desires of the donor and investor classes and have catered to them with policies that have enriched them (free trade, willful blindness on immigration) while using their noise machines to sell the GOP rank and file of how its great to have free trade with China and the cheap goods really do make that plant-closing worthwhile, eh?  Except a point has been reached where the Establishment is being called on their bullcrap by, I believe, a significant portion of the GOP base, plus the "Perot Voter" faction of the GOP; a group that was always Republican, and, while shrinking, still is part of the party, but which can't accept the free-trade doctrines and agreements that have hurt THEM.  And Donald Trump is the first Presidential candidate since Perot (and Pat Buchanan) to address THESE issues; the rest of the GOP have become bought-and-paid-for free traders. 

What would happen, for example, if there were "teach-ins" on free trade, in the manner that there were "teach-ins" on the Vietnam War in the 1960s?  The Vietnam War "teach-ins", for better or worse, turned the Democratic Party into the anti-war party.  The GOP has gained into its ranks many working class white voters fed up with Obama and the perception of his rewarding those who won't work, but how do such voters feel when they see how free trade impacted other manufacturing jobs in America, and threatens to impact theirs?  What kind of chasm would such a movement produce in the GOP?

So I'd ask Rand Paul:  Are you part of the Free Trade problem?