Republican presidential candidate and Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said Sunday that he didn’t think the United States should increase its scrutiny of mosques or put American Muslims in a database.
It was a deviation from GOP rival Donald Trump, who had said that he would “certainly implement” a national database for American Muslims if elected.
A slew of Republicans seeking the GOP nomination — including former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) — were quick to condemn Trump’s remarks. Paul joined that group on Sunday during an appearance on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
“Yes, we should follow people who are a risk,” Paul said. “Should we talk to their neighbors and friends, should we talk to their Imam? Sure, all of that is legitimate. But should we target mosques and have a database of Muslims? Absolutely not.”
Paul added that monitoring mosques would require “some sort of a religious czar” that “isn’t consistent with our freedom.”
Watch Paul’s comments:
h/t: Huffington Post
Entertaining “wisdom” from Marshall:
"Next time Donald Trump says something outrageous, offensive,
ridiculous or demonstrably constitutional and you find yourself saying
he’s now going to decline in the polls, let me help. No. That’s not
going to happen.
Some people seem to be having a hard time detecting this pattern."
I’d be more impressed if he hadn’t been one of the ones declaring it over and over.
I KNEW this guy was a MUSLIM!!
Trying to scrape up the leftovers —
What we should target is guys fleeing liquor store robberies. With drones.
Well, Josh said it was Jeb or Walker, for that matter. In his defense, though, Josh wasn’t alone – a lot of long-time, knowledgable political observers believed the same back then. Trump (and Carson) would have been out of race already if conventional rules of politics had dictated the race.