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What Was the Effect of Rand Paul's 10-Hour "Filibuster"?
An anonymous reader writes: Sen. Rand Paul held up a vote on the Fast Track Authority for an eleven hour dissertation on the flaws of: the Patriot Act, the replacement the USA Freedom Act, bulk data collection including credit card purchases, the DEA and IRS's use of NSA intel. for "parallel construction", warrant-less GPS bugs on vehicles, as well as the important distinction of a general warrant versus a specific one. "There is a general veil of suspicion that is placed on every American now. Every American is somehow said to be under suspicion because we are collecting the records of every American," Paul said. The questions is what did the "filibuster" really accomplish? The speeches caused a delay in Senate business but it's unclear what larger effect, if any, that will have.
The question is, would he have done this even if not running for president?
The answer is obviously yes, based on past behavior. Rand Paul has been one of the few people willing to go on record voting against things he does not agree with, instead of not voting at all.
So while of course some element of it is PR, that is not the core reason as to why he did this.
The past precedent is that Rand Paul will say inflammatory things that may or may not be true, in order to attract attention to himself.