Rand Paul tries Republican rewrite

>>> the fast and furious "rewrite" of the losing republican party platform continues. a consensus has emerged among rewriters that the first place they can do business with the democrats and appeal to more voters is immigration reform . in the senate, democrats would need no more than a half dozen republicans to join them on immigration reform to pass a bill. the most important new republican immigration reform erin the senate emerged today. the man mistakenly think of as the most conservative republican senator. he is possibly the wackiest republican senator, but because is libertarian, he is liberal and conservative at the same time, and so on immigration reform , senator rand paul is now the most liberal member of the united states senate . he told politico this morning he wants to carve a compromise immigration plan with an eventual path to citizenship for illegal immigrants , a proposal he believes could be palatable to conservatives. paul is working on a novel plan he says would assimilate many of the 12 million illegal immigrants currently in the country. quote, if we assimilate those who are here, however they got here, don't make it an easy path for citizenship, there would be an eventual path, but we don't make anybody tomorrow a citizen who came here illegally, but if they're willing to work, willing to pay taxes, i think we need to normalize those who are here. that is to the left of the democratic party position on immigration, if there is a democratic party position on immigration. no one has been advocating a path to citizenship for everyone who is here illegally, but now rand paul is. the most the democrats have been pushing, if you can call it pushing, is some form of a dream act for kids that grew up in the united states and graduated from here, graduate from college, join our military, a narrow approach to immigration reform . the dream act does nothing to address the problems of the undocumented grandmothers among us. now comes rand paul saying he wants to go far beyond the dream act , and there's more. rand paul wants to work with the liberal chairman of the senate judiciary to eliminate mandatory minimum sentences for some drug possession cases. this is the part of libertarianism that is liberal . real libertarians are opposed to all drug laws . real libertarians say you should be able to consume anything you want, that you should be free to harm your body with whatever you choose to ingest. like his father before him, rand paul is a tortured libertarian, which is to say he is a republican libertarian who goes along with restricting reproductive freedom because his party tells him to, but the glimmers of real libertarianism that the paul family bring to the national stage include things we will hear from no other politician in washington. rand paul , like his father, wants to reduce, if not eliminate our military footprint overseas. this position is to the left of everyone in the democratic party . rand paul will be able to find no democratic co-sponsors for a bill that would downsize the military as much as he would like. with his father, the perennial presidential candidate headed for retirement at the end of the year, politico asked rand paul if he will run for the republican presidential nomination in 2016 . senator paul 's reply was i'm interested in the national debate. and we should all be interested in having senator paul in the national debate, especially as a republican presidential candidate . he won't win a republican presidential nomination , of course, he has no better chance than his father did, but he will force republicans to listen to liberal ideas, just like his father did. he will also thrill the republicans with how conservative he is on tax and budget issues. rand paul has paid his dues as a conservative, and seems to believe that in the wake of last week's republican defeat at the polls, he can now step forward and offer his more liberal ideas to widen the party's appeal to voters, as long as he never admits that they are liberal ideas. he told politico i think i might have the ability because nobody really questions at least not so far whether i'm conservative enough. senator paul told politico he wants to, quote, get out in front of rewriting the republican party platform because, quote, i want to show what conservatives would or can accept. and so the man who has major problems with the civil rights act , something he would have voted against if he were in the senate at the time, is tonight intent on leading the republican party toward some positions to the left of the democratic party . such is the magic of american politics in this era of democrats, defeated republicans, and libertarians. i always wait