Ron Paul says he’s not his son’s keeper when it comes to the roiling debate over an Islamic cultural center planned for lower Manhattan. After it became clear today that the legendary Texas libertarian and his Kentucky GOP Senate nominee son, Rand, differ over the proposed Cordoba House project — Ron rips critics for treading on the Constitution, while Rand takes the politically popular I’m-against-it-at-Ground-Zero view — I asked Ron’s congressional spokesperson to weigh in on the divide.
“Rand Paul is his own man,” Rachel Mills said in an email this afternoon. It’s a terse but to-the-point response that suggests an acknowledgment from the Ron Paul camp that, when it comes to the rights of Muslims to build where they please, the elder and junior Paul do not see eye-to-eye.
To recap: Rand Paul says that the Cordoba House shouldn’t be built, and that the money that was to be used to build it should be donated to a 9/11 victims’ fund instead as a sign of unity. Ron Paul calls rhetoric opposing the project “all about hate and Islamaphobia.”
