Republican presidential candidate and Kentucky Senator Rand Paul argued that fellow candidate Donald Trump has “never really supported conservative causes” and fellow candidate Texas Senator Ted Cruz “modified his position” on ethanol “to be for it for a while” on Wednesday’s “Mark Levin Show.”
Rand said of Trump, “I just think he comes from a different tradition. You know, he’s been a progressive Democrat. He’s almost seventy-years-old now. He’s never voted in a Republican primary. He’s never really supported conservative causes. He really wants power because he thinks as a successful businessman, I guess he’s had a few bankruptcies, but as a successful businessman he thinks that he can just fix things. But a lot of us conservatives, we come from a tradition where we distrust power, we don’t want centralized power, we don’t want power in the hands of a Republican or a Democrat. We want the power to be devolved back to the states and to the people the way our founders intended. And I just — that’s a foreign tradition to him.”
Later, while discussing Trump’s complaints about Fox’s coverage of him, Rand argued, “I think he doesn’t want — see, Megyn Kelly asked him some questions about why he’s been bankrupt so many times, and part of his shtick and part of his act that he puts on is, is that he’s this famous powerful businessman, and because he can make so much money, that’s the kind of expertise we need running our country. Problem is, is that it gets rid of the mystique and it destroys the veneer of who is trying to present himself as, if you talk about his bankruptcies, or you talk about the plumbers and the carpenters that didn’t get paid when he stiffed them. He makes it sound like, oh, it’s no big deal. I just did this. I used the laws. And I think he doesn’t like to have to explain that there’s any weakness within his business acumen. But to me, it’s worse than that. Even if he were the world’s greatest businessman, I am very very concerned about giving power to any one individual. And I don’t think he respects or understands the tradition of limited government that means that you have to limit the centralization of power.”
When asked about his position on ethanol, Rand stated that he doesn’t support the current program or any mandates. He added that Cruz has “sort of modified his position recently to be for it for a while.” Rand further argued that production mandates are like something the politburo would do.
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