Rand Paul defends father on ‘Meet the Press’, ‘Don’t be trashing my dad too much’

On Sunday morning’s episode of Meet the Press with David Gregory, the host asked guest, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) about a myriad of issues from the future of the GOP, to Edward Snowden to Mike Huckabee’s recent comments about women.

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One of the interesting parts of the interview had the junior Kentucky Senator out defending his father, former Texas Congressman Ron Paul.

The exchange went like this:

Gregory: The future of the Republican Party and frankly, your place in it is a big story. Just this morning, the front page The New York Times has this headline “Rand Paul’s mixed inheritance”. Senator looking to move libertarianism from the fringe to the mainstream. How big of a hurdle is this for you if you’re going to run for president?

Paul: You know, I think there always are perceptions of what is extreme versus what is mainstream. I’ve always said you know, spending what comes in, balancing your budget is actually the very reasonable sort of proposal and spending a trillion dollars you don’t have is an extreme proposal. So really it’s a matter of getting our message out. But i think we’ve been talking a lot about poverty. It’s about debating not who wants to cure poverty, Republicans want to help people who are unemployed and help people get jobs but it’s about what policies work. the reason we don’t think grants work, we spend $1 trillion in the stimulus. they said it was $400,000 per job because you give it to the wrong people. nine out of ten businesses fail. So if government picks who they give the money to to create jobs, nine out of ten times they’re wrong and pick the wrong person. What i asked with my economic freedom zones is dramatically lower taxes but give it to the businesses that are already started and the consumers have already voted for, but that’s different than what we’ve been doing in the war on poverty for 50 years.

Gregory:  It’s interesting the role of government, you’ve often referred to the tyranny of the federal government. Again, it comes down to mainstream versus extreme. Fellow Republican and maybe he’s one that will run against you for the Republican nomination, Ted Cruz, has described your strident libertarianism of your father [Ron Paul] as an issue that will always be a shadow over anything you try to do.

Paul: You know, I think one of the things, and you know, don’t be trashing my dad too much. That’s my dad. you know? But the thing is, I would say that my dad was extraordinary in Washington and in being genuine, being really liked by people on both sides, being close to people from the conservative wing of the party but also very close to the Congressional Black Caucus, as well. He went to Berkeley and had 7,000 kids on their feet. He went to Liberty University and had 7,000 people, 7,000 conservative Christian kids on their feet. So that’s a rare figure in politics and I would say i’m proud of my dad and what I would say, I’m trying to do is to try to bring that message to an even bigger crowd.

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