NBC "Meet The Press" - Transcript
Interview
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MR. GREGORY: Dr. Paul wondered publicly Friday where his honeymoon was, and later, citing exhaustion and an unwillingness to answer any further questions about his stand on civil rights and the role of government, canceled his appearance here. But there are questions about his principles left unanswered, like whether his belief in limited government means he opposes, say, the minimum wage, the ban on child labor laws, or workplace safety rules. Perhaps the bigger question is whether this fresh new face in politics is now a weaker candidate than he was Tuesday night.
I want to turn now to our guests, the chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Senator John Cornyn, and his counterpart, chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Senator Robert Menendez.
Welcome, both of you, this morning to MEET THE PRESS.
SEN. ROBERT MENENDEZ (D-NJ): Good to be with you.
SEN. JOHN CORNYN (R-TX): Thank you.
MR. GREGORY: Senator Cornyn, Rand Paul's spokesman sent a statement to MEET THE PRESS this morning indicating that he didn't want to be on the program because he wanted to avoid the liberal bias of the media, and I wonder what your view is, whether you think this is liberal bias that's ensnared him this week or whether it's the articulation of his own views about the limited scope of government that had senior Republicans in the party telling him to avoid the national spotlight?
SEN. CORNYN: Well, Dr. Paul's new to running for public office, and I think it's Bob's experience, I'm sure my experience, that you see novice candidates occasionally stumble on questions. I think he's clarified his position. But I think he's done the right thing. As much fun as this is, David, to be here with you, I think he needs to be talking to the voters back in Kentucky, the people who actually will be able to cast a ballot on whether he's elected as the next United States senator or not.
MR. GREGORY: Well, I--obviously being here is not as important as the larger point, which is don't you think this is fair game, questions about his views about the limit and the scope of government?
SEN. CORNYN: Well, I do think that's a, a fair topic, and I'm sure you'll be hearing extensively from him and all the candidates over the next six months. But the fact of the matter is Rand Paul's leading his opponent in the, in the general election by 25 points.
MR. GREGORY: You don't think he's a weaker candidate today than he was Tuesday?
SEN. CORNYN: He's leading by 25 points; I have to let the numbers speak for themselves. But I think we will have a, a discussion about the role of government in our lives. There are too many Americans, or many Americans, I should say, who believe that government has simply gotten too aggressive, it spends too much, it borrows too much, and we've had too many government takeovers. I think he will speak directly to that, and I think people will respond favorably.
MR. GREGORY: Do his views concern you?
SEN. CORNYN: I don't know what all his views are. I've watched this exchange, but the fact of the matter is I think he's doing the right thing by talking to the people of Kentucky and...
MR. GREGORY: But, Senator, my--you have heard his views, and, and it's not as if he hadn't thought this out. He's got very specific views about even the Civil Rights Act. He took issue with only one of the titles in the Civil Rights Act, so it's not as if this was some sort of ambush. He's thought a good deal about this; he's articulate about what he believes. You've heard that. Do you agree or disagree?
SEN. CORNYN: Well, he's clarified his views that he's opposed to any kind of discrimination period, and I applaud him for clarifying that view. I just think that every time you have a citizen who decides to run for public office who's not a professional politician that occasionally they're going to stumble. Sometimes their philosophy, when you start to articulate it and carry it to its logical end, they have to come back and say, "Well, you know, what"--we just have temper that with experience.
MR. GREGORY: But, but his, but his view is that private businesses should not be subject to a government mandate even about discrimination. Is that something you agree with or do you think that's beyond the pale of, of mainstream conservative views?
SEN. CORNYN: Well, David, what I heard him say is he supports the Civil Rights Act. He clarified his views, and I think that's--that should be the end of it.
MR. GREGORY: Senator Menendez, your take on what you've seen in the last few days.
SEN. MENENDEZ: Well, it seems to me that this is an example of what's happening to the Republican Party across the country, beating the Republican establishment, but it's the mainstream losing to the extreme. Clearly, with Rand Paul, here's someone who, you know, as you have already cited, questions elements of the Civil Rights Act as it relates to the private sector, says that President Obama's comments about making BP responsible in the oil spill is un-American, wants to end farm subsidies across the country, including in Kentucky. I'll take our matchup with Attorney General Jack Conway, who's a crusading attorney general--rooted out Medicaid fraud--against someone who clearly is in the extreme, even questions the, the Americans with Disabilities Act. So I think this is an example of what's happening to the Republican establishment across the country, the establishment being beaten by extreme candidates whether it be here or in Florida or, as you see, surging in Colorado and Nevada.
MR. GREGORY: The--his views, Dr. Paul's views about the limits of government also has to do with the deficit, and that's really the thrust of what he's run on, his concerns and other tea partiers concerns about the debt. This is what he said at a unity event in Kentucky yesterday.
(Videotape)
DR. PAUL: We have an annual deficit of nearly $2 trillion. Interest alone on the debt is $383 billion. I think there is a day of reckoning coming. I don't want that day of reckoning to involve chaos as we're seeing in Greece.
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MR. GREGORY: That is a potent message. There's a reason why he won so big, and your party is in charge of the White House and Congress. Isn't this a liability, government spending and the debt, for Democrats this fall?
SEN. MENENDEZ: Well, we'll have to remind, David, the, the public that Republicans left this president and this Democratic majority with two wars raging abroad unpaid for, a couple of trillion dollars in tax cuts unpaid for, a new entitlement program unpaid for; and what we had to do is inherit the economic mess they gave us and try to stop us from going into a--very well a possibility of a depression and move forward from losing three-quarters of a million jobs, when Barack Obama took office, for the first quarter of each month--for the first quarter of 2009 to gaining nearly 300,000 jobs last month, from negative GDP growth to positive GDP growth. So it seems to me, including, you know, having Republicans run away from their own proposition of a bipartisan commission to deal with the national debt, something I voted for, something the Republican sponsors actually ran away from.
MR. GREGORY: Senator:
SEN. CORNYN: There they go again blaming it on George Bush. I don't know when this administration, when the Democratic leadership that got the majority in November 2008 are going to take responsibility for the 23 percent increase in the national debt since President Obama was sworn into office. Under the president's own budget, our debt-to-GDP ratio will be up to 90 percent by 2020, 90 percent, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Greece is at a 115 percent. So it's easy to see that unless we take our foot off the accelerator when it comes to spending and debt, if we don't do the sort of fundamental reform of entitlements, cut back on spending and do the same sort of budget scrub that every family, every small business has had to do during this recession, that we're going to be heading off a financial cliff. And I don't see the administration taking their foot off the gas at all. I see them stomping the gas and going even further to grow the size of government and spend and debt.
MR. GREGORY: The, the debate about the debt will continue.
I want to ask you, Senator Cornyn, one other question, though, about the tea party and its impact. This is how The Economist reported it this week in the context of Dr. Paul. We'll put it up on the screen. "The impact of the tea-partiers is a decidedly mixed blessing for the Republicans. On the one hand, the party benefits from the passion and dollars this widespread grassroots mutiny against big government is able to inject into local campaigns. On the other, they are in danger of pushing the Republicans well to the right of the mainstream. Dr. Paul, like his father, is a genuine radical who believes in paring government down to the bone." You have the fundamental conflict for the tea party, which is how is a movement predicated on limiting the size of government actually going to govern within the government? Tea party and the Republicans, is it an asset or a liability?
SEN. CORNYN: Well, the tea party, tea party movement and libertarians like, like Dr. Paul don't believe in no government. They believe in limited government, smaller government, government that lives within its means. The fact is, as a New York Times poll said recently, that 57 percent of independents, the people who actually win elections, or, or tip the balance of elections, sympathize with the tea party movement. Our friends on, on the Democratic, the Democratic Party have tried to marginalize these people and claim like they're somehow less than patriotic Americans, when these are folks who perhaps have not gotten involved in politics before, who've gotten off the couch, who've gone to town halls, who've gone to these rallies to express their view that that spending has got to stop.
MR. GREGORY: But it's fair--I mean, even in the case of, of Dr. Paul, I mean, you would admit, wouldn't you, it is a--it's a question, and, and I don't know the answer, where they think the line is in terms of the role of government? In terms of regulation?
SEN. CORNYN: Well, that...
MR. GREGORY: In terms of what laws the government should pass? I mean, you would, you would admit that Dr. Paul is still opaque on this point? There's a lot of questions that he has invited.
SEN. CORNYN: And that's what the next six months of the campaign's for.
MR. GREGORY: Right. Yeah.
SEN. CORNYN: I think what we've seen in the time that President Obama has been in office, in the time that Democrats have basically run Washington, is an antipathy toward the private sector and the job creation capacity that only they can provide. They...
MR. GREGORY: All right, we're going to come back to this with our guests in just a moment.
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