Monday on the RealClearPolitics radio show, Tom Bevan, Andrew Walworth, and White House reporter Phil Wegmann discuss why Sen. Rand Paul is not backing Vice President Vance for the 2028 Republican nomination, and to what extent the Republican Party still exists beyond MAGA. Paul said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” that Trump’s policies contradict the free-market and non-interventionist promises he ran on. Were these libertarian principles ever a bigger driving factor for MAGA than pure anti-establishment anger? Bevan said Rand Paul is articulate and ideologically consistent, but a less interventionist foreign policy has always been a minority position inside the GOP. “Trump had managed to refashion the party and get everybody on board with his vision, and just sort of plow forward and do that. But when he’s not around, will the Rand Paul folks and others who have differences of opinion on these various policy issues feel empowered to speak out?” “Vance-if he is the nominee-has got to be able to put forward his own vision,” Bevan said. “It’s kind of similar to the question Kamala Harris was asked. ‘Is there anything that you disagree with Trump on? Is there anything that you would have done differently?’ He’s got to think seriously about that and how to answer it, and what those issues might be.” Wegmann cited something Rep. Thomas Massie told him years ago, reflecting on the Tea Party movement: “All the time I thought they were voting for libertarian Republicans, but after some soul-searching, I realized they weren’t voting for libertarian ideas. They were voting for the craziest SOB in the race, and Donald Trump won best in class.” “More than anything, the animating impulse here has been an anger with the establishment,” Wegmann commented. “I don’t see the Republican primary being about, ‘Ah, let us reason about markets and war power authority.’ I don’t know if we’re going back.”
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