EthnicMajority

(AlterNet) Following his tea-party insurgent Senate primary victory over the establishment Republican candidate in Kentucky, Rand Paul created waves when Rachel Maddow forced him, uncomfortably, to admit his opposition to parts of the Civil Rights Act. To many in the civil rights community, and to the political center, this comes as a shock.

It shouldn’t be.

For years, libertarians opposed government interference with private business, whether that means opposition to environmental regulation, labor laws, or anti-discrimination laws. The son of libertarian presidential candidate, Ron Paul, it’s not surprising that Rand Paul also believes those things. Rand Paul has made it clear that he’s not in favor of a repeal of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and that he supports the vast majority of it. What’s the problem then? He specifically opposes the provisions that prohibit discrimination in what are known as ‘public accommodations,’ which are really private businesses such as hotels, movie theaters, or lunch counters.

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Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele says he was not comfortable with Rand Paul’s views on civil rights.

Steele’s comments came during a fiery debate with Democratic National Committee Chairman Tim Kaine on “This Week.”

Paul, who won the Republican Senate primary in Kentucky on Tuesday, drew criticism for his comments suggesting the 1964 Civil Rights Act perhaps was too expansive in insisting private businesses not discriminate.

“I like the Civil Rights Act in the sense that it ended discrimination in all public domains,” Paul said in April.

“I abhor racism, I think it’s a bad business decision to ever exclude anyone from your restaurant,” he told the Louisville Courier Journal, “but at the same time I do believe in private ownership.”

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(Yahoo News) After an intense 24 hours, tea party darling Rand Paul — Kentucky’s new Republican nominee for the Senate — is stepping back from his criticisms of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. He tells conservative radio host Laura Ingraham that he does in fact support the historic legislation. And he tells CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that he would have voted for it if he were in the Senate.

That statement came after he declined to say he supported the act in interviews Wednesday on NPR and “The Rachel Maddow Show” on MSNBC. In both those exchanges, Paul said that though he personally abhorred discrimination and believed it should be banned from government-funded programs, he disagreed with the provision in the Civil Rights Act that banned discrimination by private businesses. Paul, along with many libertarians, believes that the federal government should have a very limited role in the everyday lives of Americans.

But after a firestorm Thursday, Paul told Ingraham that it was a “poor political decision” to go on Maddow’s show and declared that he supported both the ban on public discrimination and the ban on private discrimination.

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(Wall Street Journal) Now that he’s the Kentucky Republican Senate nominee Rand Paul is facing increased scrutiny for statements he’s made regarding the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

In a handful of media interviews, most recently on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show” Wednesday evening, Paul would not commit to a firm yes-or-no answer when asked when he would have voted for the landmark legislation.

Paul has contended that while the legislation was correct in ending racial discrimination, he’s turned the question into a philosophical one over whether or not the federal government should be able to intrude on how a private business conducts itself. That may work well in the classroom, but it’s a tricky position to take as a political candidate on national television.

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