Rand Paul is right

When Rand Paul took control of the Senate floor just before 6 p.m. Eastern, virtually every one of his Republican colleagues grimaced. Five years ago, they would have cheered him.

Paul's speech, which slowed attempts to pass a massive budget deal before the government shuts down at midnight, was a savaging of his party -- a party that appears to have turned 180 degrees from the deficit hawks of the mid 2010s who insisted that government spending was ballooning out of control and was crippling the country.

"When the Democrats are in power, Republicans appear to be the conservative party," Paul said at one point. "But when Republicans are in power, it seems there is no conservative party. The hypocrisy hangs in the air and chokes anyone with a sense of decency or intellectual honesty."

He is 100% right.The simple fact is that Republicans in the Obama era defined themselves primarily as committed to reducing government spending and shrinking the nation's debt. The ur-document of that age was Paul Ryan's budget, in which he proudly touted the need to confront entitlement spending and make the hard cuts necessary to keep the country solvent for the foreseeable future.

"Our debt is a threat to this country," Ryan said in a 2013 speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference. "We have to tackle this problem before it tackles us."

He was far from alone. Republicans insisted that any spending legislation -- even for disaster relief -- be paid for with budget offsets. Every major Republican leader talked about debt and deficit relentlessly.  That focus on deficit reduction and spending restraint bled into the 2016 primary as the top tier candidates -- including Paul -- championed it. One candidate, however, did not. That candidate was Donald Trump, the self-proclaimed "king of debt." Trump showed little care or concern for the issue that had animated the party he was running to lead.
So cavalier was Trump about the deficit that Mitt Romney, the party's 2012 presidential nominee, lambasted him for it in a speech aimed at convincing Republicans to drop Trump.

"His tax plan in combination with his refusal to reform entitlements and honestly address spending would balloon the deficit and the national debt," said Romney.

And then Trump won. Not just the Republican primary, but the election. And suddenly his priorities -- immigration, trade protectionism and a tax cut -- became the party's principles. Curtailing spending and reducing debt went out the window -- or at least way down the list of what the GOP cared about. And Ryan, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and almost the entire rest of the Republican Party -- sans Paul and a handful of House conservatives -- went along for the ride.