Freed from the need to build coalitions to pass legislation, Paul and fellow GOP senators Cruz and Rubio are unleashing an arsenal of crowd-pleasing conservative proposals along the campaign trail. Some, like calls to abolish entire federal departments, are staples of GOP presidential campaigns going back decades that have never come to fruition. Others are of more recent vintage, such as scrapping the post-9/11 Patriot Act.
The cool reception is a stark reminder of the gulf between presidential campaigns and a Congress designed to frustrate the will of any president. The proposals are being written off as wrongheaded or unrealistic not only by Democrats but by Republicans.
Sen. Lamar Alexander, the folksy Tennessee Republican who ran unsuccessfully for the White House twice, used to propose abolishing the Department of Education and cutting the pay of lawmakers so he could “send them home.”
“That sounded pretty good on the stump so I kept saying it,” Alexander recalled. “You’re going to hear a lot of things in a presidential campaign that appeal to the primary audience that don’t have much chance of making their way into national policy.”
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