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Sen. Rand Paul has made safeguarding civil liberties a cornerstone of his presidential campaign, and he hasn't been afraid to take on his own party in that fight. At the end of May, as key provisions of the USA Patriot Act were set to expire, Paul took to the Senate floor in a heroic 10-hour filibuster to make sure the act would expire before his Senate colleagues had a chance to pass legislation to entrench the National Security Agency's abilities to collect Americans' phone records.

It was a gutsy bit of political maneuvering that showed he was willing to stand up for his libertarian views even if they are out of sync with his party. But when it comes to the question of abortion -- a private and deeply personal decision a woman sometimes has to make -- Rand Paul believes government should be making our most intimate decisions for us. He rightly believes that Big Brother shouldn't be monitoring our phone calls but yet somehow believes the state has a right to interfere in a woman's decision to end a pregnancy.

This week, Sen. Paul is leading the charge on defunding Planned Parenthood after anti-abortion activists released deceptively edited videos that purport to show that the nonprofit organization benefits from fetal tissue donations. Paul is trading in the lie -- there's no other way to say it -- that Planned Parenthood sells fetal body parts. In fact, when Planned Parenthood clinics donate fetal tissue for research, they do so only with the consent of the woman, and they are reimbursed enough only to cover the cost.

Some may object that Sen. Paul isn't violating his libertarian principles because he's simply working to stop government funding for the organization. But that's not the issue. Rather, Paul is using the video opportunistically as a step toward his ultimate goal: preventing a woman who has decided to have an abortion from getting one.

Federal funds should pay for all abortions, but they don't -- they only cover abortions in cases where the pregnancy threatens the life of the woman or resulted from rape or incest. So why is Paul making all this fuss about defunding Planned Parenthood?

Sen. Paul has made no secret that he wants to make abortion illegal. He has promised to support any legislation that would end it. In March 2013, Paul introduced the Life at Conception Act, which, had it passed, would have defined human life as beginning at conception, granted fertilized eggs the same legal status as people, and outlawed abortion in all circumstances. The only exception Paul thinks there should be is if denying the abortion would cause the woman to die. And even here Paul is late to the game, only conceding that exception two years ago.

In a statement on behalf of the National Pro-Life Alliance, Paul characterized the Supreme Court as having "played god with innocent human life," accusing the court of having "condemned more than 56 million babies to painful deaths without trial merely for the crime of being inconvenient" since the Roe v. Wade in decision in 1973. This is a slanderous and callous characterization of the three in 10 American women who have decided to terminate a pregnancy and shows that Paul has little concern for one of the most fundamental civil liberty protections for women, as if mere convenience is all that is at stake for these women and their families.

Given his goals, it's no surprise that he would take advantage of the recent controversy to further them. But here's the thing: More than 90 percent of the services Planned Parenthood provides are preventive, including lifesaving cancer screenings, birth control, and testing and treatment for sexually transmitted infections and HIV -- and it is primarily low-income women who benefit from these services.

And the controversy he is basing this bill on is dishonest and manufactured by a disreputable group of anti-abortion activists who have launched 10 attacks on Planned Parenthood and other reproductive health centers of the last eight years through trickery, deceit, and outright lies. One of the organization's board members, Troy Newman, has called the murder of doctors who provide abortions "justifiable."

Nonetheless, on Twitter, Sen. Paul tweeted that the video shows a "top doctor describing how she performs late-term abortions to sell body parts for profit!" The full video shows no such thing, with Planned Parenthood's senior director of medical services explicitly stating: "Our goal, like I said, is to give patients the option without impacting our bottom line. The message is this should not be seen as a new revenue stream, because that's not what it is."

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Rand Paul, Libertarian? | Anthony D. Romero

Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.), a Republican presidential candidate, called onCongress to pull federal funding forPlanned Parenthood, saying the money should go to community health centers instead.

Paul has introduced a bill to defund Planned Parenthood. The nonprofit has been mired in controversy in recent weeks over videos purporting to expose its allegedly illegal and unethical fetal tissue donation practices.

[Get caught up on whats in the Planned Parenthood videos]

"I think we can have disputes, you know, over abortion. Our country is divided. Some people are pro-choice, some are pro-life,"Paul said Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union." "I think most people do want to defund this....It would bemuch less emotional for everyone if we just funded community health centers and didn't fund Planned Parenthood."

Republican presidential candidate Rand Paul is calling on Congress to defund Planned Parenthood. He posted a video touting his stance to YouTube. (Rand Paul)

Paul stopped short of supporting threats by some lawmakers including fellow GOP presidential contender Ted Cruz (Tex.) ofa government shutdown over the issue.

"I support any legislation that will defund Planned Parenthood. But I don't think you start out with your objective to shut down government," Paul said.

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Rand Paul: Defund Planned Parenthood, fund community ...

Sen. Rand Paul believes that the United States Congress will reject the Obama administrations nuclear deal with Iran.

Theres a very good chance that Congress will vote to disapprove of the agreement, Paul tells The Daily Signal. I think theres a very good chance the president will then veto it, and then the real question is, will there be 67 votes to overcome this?

Congress is expected to vote on a resolution regarding the controversial deal sometime in September.

The Obama administration is focused on making sure it has enough Democrats on board to sustain a veto.Recently, the administration picked up support from two more Democrat House members, including Chris Van Hollen, the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee. Democrat Sen. Tom Udall is also on board.

Senate GOP leadership is pressing the Obama administration to provide the so-called side agreements that the International Atomic Energy Agency and Iran have in place. For Paul, one of the biggest problems with the deal isthe process of how sanctions are lifted.

What I would have preferred in this agreement would be that we gradually reduce sanctions over a several-year period, he said, so therefore we can continue to use those as leverage to try and enforce compliance on Irans part.

Paul says ultimately this deal will require the United States to trust the Iranians, and thats a big leap of faith.

The thing that bothers me and what Im concerned about is whether or not we can have leverage to continue to have Iran comply. They have to show some initial steps, but the question is, will they consistently comply?

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Rand Paul: Congress Will Reject the Iran Deal

Some of the people who should be the most enthusiastic about Pauls Presidential campaign have found themselves disheartened by it. Credit Photograph by Jon Hill / Redux

The Republican Convention is fifty-one weeks away, but, earlier this week, Politico published its first post-mortem of the campaign season. The subject was Senator Rand Paul, who last fall was hailed by Time as The Most Interesting Man in Politics, but now seems, in the estimation of Politico, to be the most interesting man whos struggling to stay in the Republican primary. A recent CNN/ORC poll found him tied with Ted Cruz for fifth place in the field, with support from only six per cent of those polled, behind Donald Trump, Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, and Marco Rubio. An NBC/Marist poll found him in sixth place in Iowa, and in ninth place in New Hampshire.

Last fall, Rand Paul seemed like a less quirkyand therefore, perhaps, more electableversion of his father, the former Congressman Ron Paul, whose 2008 and 2012 campaigns for the Republican Presidential nomination were grand cultural phenomena. Ron Paul toured the country, telling Republican voters things you might think they wouldnt want to hear. In the 2012 primary, he finished in second place, behind Mitt Romney, in New Hampshire, with 22.8 per cent of the vote. Four years later, one poll has Ron Pauls less recalcitrant son at only four per cent. The Web site FiveThirtyEight points out that, nationwide, Rand Pauls support is currently lower than his fathers was at this point in 2012.

What went wrong? There is no shortage of explanations, partly because contemporary politics has no shortage of professional explainers. The Politico story claimed that Paul is allergic to buttering up big donors, and suggested that his campaign is chaotic. (It included a particularly vivid anecdote about a near-physical altercation between Pauls campaign manager and a member of his security staff, who was described as a a 280-pound retired New York police detective and Paul family loyalist.) Paul himself told a reporter for the Boston Globe that one of the obstacles he faced was a crowded Republican field. Obviously, everybodys numbers come down when you divide it many different ways, he said.

None of this quite explains Pauls collapse, especially considering that some polls from last summer put him in the lead. Writing in this magazine last year, Ryan Lizza traced Pauls incomplete journey from an idea-driven libertarianhe once supported the legalization of all drugs, and argued that a free society should tolerate unofficial, private discriminationto an elected politician more willing to consider the exigencies of party loyalty. After Mitt Romney lost to Obama in 2012, many voices in the Republican Party were calling for a change, and the official G.O.P. post-election report warned that public perception of the Party is at record lows. This seemed like an opening for a nonconformist such as Paul.

In 2012, Paul opposed the reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank, a government corporation that loans money to foreign customers of U.S. companies. He said it was absurd for the government to borrow money from overseas while also loaning money to foreign companies, and he was one of twenty Senators who voted against its reauthorization. Since then, the anti-Ex-Im movement has grown, and what was once considered a fringe movement celebrated a triumph when the Banks charter expired on the last day of June this year. Then, this past Friday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell moved to revive the Bank, angering many of his fellow Republicans. Senator Ted Cruz, another Presidential candidate, accused McConnell of having told a flat-out lie by denying, at a lunch meeting, that he had a secret plan to revive the Ex-Im Bank. Cruz, canny as always, probably calculated that his blunt language would get him plenty of press, and he was right. (The effort to revive the bank seems to have failed.)

Paul, by contrast, has forged a strategic relationship with McConnell, who also happens to be Kentuckys other Senator, and his eagerness to argue against the Ex-Im Bank suddenly seemed to have cooled. Late on Friday afternoon, during a radio interview, Sean Hannity asked Paul about Cruzs claims. I wasnt at that lunch, Paul said, executing a rather inelegant pivot. But what I can tell you is that theres a disconnectconservatives want to vote on defunding Planned Parenthood. Paul often wants to talk about defunding Planned Parenthood, these days, and while primary voters surely agree with his position, it doesnt much distinguish him from the rest of his Republican competitors. (Bush, Rubio, and Walker also support defunding.)

So what makes Paul stand out? For a time, one of his signature issues was opposition to the National Security Agencys bulk data-collection practices, but the issue grew muddier in June, with the passage of the USA Freedom Act, which ruled that data would be collected by telecommunications companies, instead of by the government; Paul considered this a very partial victory, and he delivered a long and equivocal speech expressing his mixed feelings. Pauls interest in criminal-justice reform once marked him as an unorthodox Republican, but an increasing number of Republicans are now talking about changing the way we fight crime. On national security, Paul used to be skeptical about the need to confront regimes deemed hostilelast fall, he parted company with many Republicans by calling for an effective diplomatic solution for limiting the Iranian enrichment program. But when the Obama Administration announced its nuclear deal with Iran, Paul joined his Republican rivals in calling it unacceptable. Finally, Paul has failed to establish himself as the candidate of Silicon Valley, which is often described as a libertarian-friendly community. The Politico story explained how Paul has failed, so far, to cultivate fruitful relationships there. And when Hillary Clinton suggested we ask hard questions about the gig economy typified by companies such as Uber, Paul responded with acerbic tweetsonly to be upstaged by Bush, a few days later, who used Uber to visit a start-up in San Francisco.

Some of the people who should be most enthusiastic about Pauls Presidential campaign have found themselves disheartened by it. Last week, Nick Gillespie, the editor-in-chief of the libertarian site reason.com, laid out the many un-libertarian things Paul has done and said. He called his campaign doubly frustratingthat is, neither principled nor successful. Maybe Paul would always have struggled to win over Republican primary voters. And maybe, during the gruelling months to come, he will rebound and, like a number of candidates in 2012, have a moment near the front of the pack.

But whatever happens, potential supporters like Gillespie shouldnt be so disappointed. Even as his campaign struggles, many of his issues are doing surprisingly wellin fact, thats a big part of the reason why Paul has struggled to define himself. The formerly indomitable Ex-Im bank has been vanquished, though perhaps it will return in another form; the N.S.A. has been reformed, though lightly; a diplomatic solution seems imminent in Iran, though of course people disagree about its effectiveness; criminal-justice reform has bipartisan momentum, though it may yet meet with resistance; politicians wishing to hamper companies like Uber are meeting stiff resistance, though they will keep trying. These are all tentative, partial, and temporary victoriesbut then, politics rarely offers any other kind. Rand Paul is struggling in the polls, but Paulism looks pretty healthy. Thats not good news for the Presidential candidate, but its also not such bad news for the guy who may still be, come 2017, a Senator from Kentucky.

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Why Is Rand Paul Winning on the Issues But Losing the ...

Rand Paul tells theWashington Posts Dave Weigel that Thursdays Republican presidential debate will pit himagainst rivals who want to blow up the world. He has reason to use stark language. After weeks of negative press, single-digit poll numbers, and lackluster fundraising, Senator Paul needs a Giuliani momentsomething that will do for his campaign what a showdown with Americas mayor did for his fathers effort after the first debate of 2007.

In fact, Rand Paul has the opportunity to do much more than his father ever could. But hes missing it: Rands Giuliani moment is the Iran deal, and it calls for action, not words.

Rands support forthe deal would transform the politics of the Republican race at a stroke.He would also risk losing rather than gaining supportwhen the deal was announced, 30 percent of Republicans supported it, and those votes could have been Rands. Polls since then have been mixed and most indicate Republicans oppose the diplomatic effort, evenoverwhelmingly so.

But thats where the Giuliani example is relevant: no pollster or campaign professionalwould have told Ron Paul to stand up to Giuliani like thaton an issue, national security and terrorism, that Giuliani owned and where Republican voters overwhelmingly disagreed with the Texas congressman. But Ron Paul did it anyway, and in so doing he pulled off something political pros usually believe is impossible or irrelevant: he changed voters minds.

He didnt change nearly enough to win a single primary, of course, either in 2008 or in 2012. But Rand Paul starts from a stronger position and higher profile than his father had before that debate. If Rand dared, instead of being yet another single-term senator vying for the nomination, he could overnight become the most important player in the GOPon the biggest foreign-policy issue of the day. Hed get invited to every talk show as the one Republican with the audacity to side with the president to make a deal for peace. Hed be denounced, too, by every neocon outlet. In other words, hed get the full-spectrum attentionthat Donald Trump now commands, knocking himout of the headlines, if not off the top of the polls.

Hed also be a legislative leader, a man Democrats and Republicans alike would have to court ahead of the vote on Iran. The pressure would be extraordinary, but if he stood by his support for the deal, he would have a polarizing and rallying effect, bringing other Republicans aroundhowever many could be brought aroundand shattering the GOPpro-war consensus that the neoconservative media has worked so hard to create.

Rand would perhaps even be in a position to demand legislative concessions from the Democrats and Obama; leadership would also be leverage. That might not be enough to defund Planned Parenthoodbut consider what the public would be presented with if Rand Paul clearly supported the president on issues like Iran and sentencing reform but clearly separated from Obama and the Democrats on abortion and taxes. Hed give all voters something to think about, cutting across the left-right divide that has only meant defeat for Republicans in the last two presidential elections.

Instead, the strategy Rands team have devised for him is much more cautious, and its dividend so far has been dwindling support. But it doesnt matter if a candidate drops into the single digits in the pre-primary season, and even if Rands fundraising could be betterBush, Cruz, and Rubio beat him easily last quarterhes still a top-tier candidate. His playbook is to win on bread-and-butter Republican issues, demonstrating his support for tax cuts by literally cutting through the tax code with a chainsaw, courting Christian conservatives by calling for an end to federal funds for Planned Parenthood, keeping his libertarian supporters on board by opposing the NSAs domestic surveillance, and reaching out to several groups at onceincluding libertarians, Christians, and some liberalswith criminal-justice reform.

His approach to two thorny questionsimmigration and foreign policyhas been in line with this bread-and-butter strategy. Theres a vocal and somewhat large bloc of voters who say they want to restrict immigration, and while they may not tend not to vote in such a way as to prove their commitmentTom Tancredo would have been a force in 2008 if they did, and John McCain would not have been the GOP nomineean appeal to restrict immigration certainly wont lose Rand many primary votes. By contrast, explicit noninterventionist appeals wont win many: there arent legions of foreign-policy voters to begin with, and what few there are in the Republican Party are mostly hawks.

The logic of this play-it-safe strategy is impeccable. But its a logic that works against Rand Paul: after all, if voters want a bread-and-butter Republican, they have better options. Ted Cruz is a better orator, Marco Rubio is more charismatic, Scott Walker has an executive record. Christian conservatives arent going to choose Rand Paul over spiritual kin like Ben Carson and Mike Huckabee just because Rand, like the rest of the field, is antiabortion. (For one thing, the religious right suspects that in his bones Rand Paul is just too libertarian to fight till he bleeds againstsame-sex marriage.) Pauls foreign-policy maneuvering, meanwhile, has the curious effect of leaving him the candidate least liked by hawks but no longer much loved by doves. What his campaign team has devised isactually a winning strategy for Scott Walkeror even Jeb Bush.

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Is Rand Paul Missing His Giuliani Moment? | The American ...