Republicans were on the defensive yesterday over last week’s debatable remarks by Rand Paul, the party’s applicant for Senate in Kentucky, in which he queried one part of landmark civil rights legislation passed in the 1960s. Mr Paul’s comments controlled the airwaves on US political talk shows, as leading figures from both parties sparred over the implications before November’s congressional elections. “it appears to me this is an illustration of what has happened to the Republicans across the country. It’s the main line losing to the extreme, ” Bob Menendez of New Jersey, chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Council , told NBC’s Meet the Press. But John Cornyn, his Republican opposite number from Texas, retorted that Mr Paul was a victim of his very own inexperience. “He is explained his perspectives and he is against any type of discrimination, period.
I just think that each time you have got a voter who comes to a decision to run for public office who isn’t a pro congressman that infrequently they are going to stumble. ” Mr Paul, who is backed by the anti-government Tea party movement, had cancelled a planned appearance on the NBC show, referencing “liberal media bias”.
Chatting to MSNBC on Wed. following a powerful victory in the Kentucky primary for Senate, Mr Paul recounted he’d have attempted to change one supply of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that prevents personal firms from discriminating against buyers. He later explained that he supported the law. However , Michael Steele, manager of the Republican National Board , sought to distance himself from Mr Paul’s remarks.
We fought terribly hard in the 1960s to get the civil rights bill passed as well as the voting rights bill. So I suspect that any effort to look backwards, it isn’t in the best interests of our country and definitely not in the best interests of the party.