Rand Paul woos blacks by offering to hide criminal records
Last time I checked, black people
- were concerned about getting and keeping jobs
- were concerned about competition for jobs from illegal aliens
- were concerned about crime in their communities
- wanted to live in a country with the rule of law and protection of private property rights, so gangs couldn't go around burning down their stores with impunity
So Rand Paul goes to speak to a group of black students at Bowie College, and what does he say?
He repeatedly condemned the harsh drug sentencing laws that put so many minority defendants behind bars. “If you smoked some pot or grew some marijuana plants in college, you ought to get a chance,” he said.
A chance to do what? To do some more drugs? Note whom Rand is talking about here: not just casual drug users, as well as hardcore addicts, but even big-time drug dealers, those who grew "some" marijuana plants. Rand wants to "give a chance" to drug dealers who sold drugs to children. Why should we give them any special chances at all?
Mr. Paul also made a case for expunging criminal records of people who have been convicted of nonviolent felonies so they can find employment more easily, a stance that puts him at odds with many in his party.
If you run a day care center, don't you want to know if you're hiring a felon, even a nonviolent felon? Would you want to hire a sales associate at a store where the applicant had been convicted of a nonviolent felony – like theft? There's a reason felons have a hard time getting work: because they've proven they're untrustworthy. Wiping their records would only do a disservice to businesses that rely on integrity.
… he believes there are still “two Americas” as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said almost a half century ago.
Rand Paul talks like a Democrat. Must we have this race dividing and class warfare rhetoric from Republicans as well as Democrats? I think he's running in the wrong primary.
If I were black, I'd find this insulting. This kind of appeal makes it look like Rand Paul thinks most blacks are either criminals or closely related to criminals. They're not. They care about the same things their countrymen of other colors do – liberty, freedom, rule of law, and protection of private property rights. Why not treat them as people, instead of a group of halfway-house convicts?
Pedro Gonzales is the editor of Newsmachete.com, the conservative news site.