The Brody File conducted a one on one interview with Rand Paul while down in Bowling Green Kentucky. he talks abotu his faith, the importance of the James Dobson endorsement, why he was successful as a Tea Party candidate and how the Tea Party can become more successful at the ballot box.
Rand Paul will be this week's guest on The Brody File show.
Watch the clips below along with partial transcriptions.
Rand Paul on his faith:
Rand Paul: “I’m a Christian. We go to the Presbyterian Church. My wife’s a Deacon there and we’ve gone there ever since we came to town. I see that Christianity and values is the basis of our society.”
Rand Paul: “98% of us won’t murder people, won’t steal, won’t break the law and it helps a society to have that religious underpinning. You still need to have the laws but I think it helps to have a people who believe in law and order and who have a moral compass or a moral basis for their day to day life.”
Rand Paul looking back on the James Dobson endorsement:
Rand Paul: “Enormous. I mean it was a really big thing. It’s interesting because it’s like so many other things that happened in the campaign. It happened through a one on one individual thing that sort of happened. I went to a pro-life rally in Paris, Kentucky. That is up north of Lexington and they’re several good friends that I’ve known for several months through the campaign that set this up and there was a man sitting in the audience who I never met and afterwards he came up to me and it was the day after Dr. Dobson had endorsed my opponent and I said yes we were disappointed but I don’t know Dr. Dobson. I guess he doesn’t know me and this man is an OBGYN from Lexington. He’s a pro-life doctor. He’s been active for 20 years and he knows how sometimes the movement gets splintered and fractured and people do things that really good people shouldn’t do even in a good movement people don’t act the way they should and he said I know Dr. Dobson. And I was like well OK and he says I’ll call him tonight and he did. He called him, talked to him one on one and within a day Dr. Dobson called me and we had a pretty good long discussion and I told him about myself because I think that what really sort of the one thing that kind of saddens me about this whole thing is that my kids go to a religious school. They’re taught at school that abortion is wrong and to have stuff mailed to my house by my opponent saying I’m pro-choice it confuses my kids.”
Rand Paul on why he was successful as a Tea Party candidate in Kentucky:
Rand Paul: “What do you have to do to be a Tea Party candidate? Many people can be a Tea Party candidate but I think in my case it sort of fits the bill very well. I’ve never run for office, never been elected to office and I really and part of the movement in the sense that from the very beginning I went to all their meetings and many people thought that I just had the vote from the beginning. You have to earn the Tea Party vote. I interviewed with every one of the different committees in the Tea Party and they will ask you: will you be a rubber stamp for the Republican Party and that’s not a good thing because they say sometimes the Republican Party is wrong.”
Rand Paul on how to translate Tea Party enthusiasm into success at the ballot box:
Rand Paul: "They do need a Tea Party platform and so I say lets coalesce it into some specific things and these are things I want to run on so when the primary is over and we run in the fall I don’t want to run away from the Tea Party I want to define what the tea party is.”
Rand Paul: “If you go around Kentucky every tea party is by city and sometimes by county and sometimes counties have two of them and sometimes they’re not talking so it will be a job and I’m hoping since I’ve been all around the state and met everyone that I can be a conduit for bringing some of them together and I’ve been suggesting for weeks now lets have a Kentucky Tea Party Convention and try to join together and talk about a platform and I don’t see this as outside the Republican Party. I see this as an influence that can be influential within the Republican Party.”