Rand Paul Slammed By Fellow Republican Peter King [Video]
Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) came under fire from Representative Peter King (R-NY) Sunday. King says members of the libertarian members of the GOP like Rand Paul were wrong to support a recent bill to defend the NSA and their spy programs.
King believes Rand Paul and other libertarians in the party who have taken firm stances against US foreign policy were like 1972 anti-war Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern, CNN reports.
In June Senator Paul said in an interview that he supported NSA document leaker Edward Snowden. Paul says Snowden merely did an act of civil disobedience. He also compared the punishment that Snowden may face to the jail time activists like Henry David Thoreau and Reverend Martin Luther King Jr served.
Congressman Peter King finds the comparison outrageous. He also thinks Paul represents a dangerous “isolationist streak” in the Republican party. “It totally goes against the party of Eisenhower, Reagan, Bush. I mean, we are a party of national defense,” King said.
A number of Congresspeople from both sides of the aisle have come out in support of the highly controversial NSA programs revealed last month. Representative King says that those Republicans who don’t get behind the NSA are going to rip the GOP apart, reports Raw Story.
Paul is like McGovern, King says. As an anti-war politician, he says, McGovern “destroyed their [Democratic] party for almost 20 years. I don’t want that happening to our party.”
King refers to a recent vote over a bill to cut funding to the NSA in the House which saw a number of supporting votes from both the far left and far right. The bill failed to pass, but by a narrow margin. Even so, King says it was “absolutely disgraceful that so many Republicans voted to defund the NSA program.
Last week New Jersey Governor Chris Christie also blasted libertarian Republicans. He said that those who are against the NSA programs, like Senator Rand Paul, should talk to the families of September 11th victims.
The video below is a clip from Sunday’s State of the Union where Peter King explains that he does not want Rand Paul to be “the face” of his party:
[Image via circulating via photopin cc]
