Story highlights
Ron Paul slams "bipartisan support" in Washington for war against ISIS
His son, Rand Paul, has said he would vote for air strikes
However, Rand Paul did not vote this week for another part of the plan to fight ISIS
Sen. Rand Paul said this week that he would vote in favor of going to war with ISIS, but his father, former Rep. Ron Paul, made it clear Friday night that he sharply opposes further U.S. involvement in the Mideast region.
Speaking at a libertarian-leaning conference, Ron Paul slammed the “bipartisan support” among congressional lawmakers for “rubber-stamping what President Obama wants” in the fight against the militant group.
More broadly, he suggested that Senate Republicans aren’t that different from their Democratic counterparts.
Some people think “if the Republicans take over the Senate this year, that will hamstring the president and everything’s going to be OK,” he said at the Liberty Political Action Conference in Alexandra, Virginia. “That’s a joke.”
“It wouldn’t be OK because they all believe in the same thing, they believe in the federal reserve and they believe in the war. They believe in the spending and the intervention overseas,” he said.
Obama’s proposed plan includes expanded air strikes against ISIS and arming and training Syrian rebels who are also fighting off the threat.
Congress has not voted specifically to authorize air strikes against ISIS, but Rand Paul has said he would vote in favor of doing so.
The Kentucky Republican has long been more moderate than his father, a former Texas congressman who ran for president three times and has strong support among the libertarian base. Still, Rand Paul has largely opposed foreign interventions in the past, and his decision to support air strikes has been viewed as more hawkish than his previous stances.
The Senate on Thursday passed legislation that would also approve the arming and training of Syrian rebels
But Rand Paul was one of 12 Republicans who voted against the legislation, saying he feared the weapons would end up in the wrong hands. He launched into a lengthy Senate floor speech Thursday against the plan, blasting “barnacled enablers” for pushing a policy that he believes would be ineffective.
Ron Paul never mentioned his son, who spoke the previous night on the same stage, during his remarks about foreign policy.
The former congressman, however, said that the family got together the previous night to have “strategy meeting.”
“I’m going to reveal some secrets to you,” Ron Paul told the audience, cheekily hinting that he was going to talk about Rand Paul’s likely presidential bid in 2016.
But the former congressman jokingly went on to list a number of mundane family matters, such as when’s the next golf game and details about a family wedding.
“We did have some very, very serious discussions,” he went on to say. “And of course some very important things too about what the family’s doing and that is the truth. The issues are very, very important to all of us, and yet the family is pretty important to us too.”