'He has his opinions. You’ll have to ask him where he disagrees. Not me,' says Ron Paul. Ron Paul Institute opens amid split

Ron Paul made an impassioned plea for shuttering Guantanamo Bay Wednesday at a launch event for his new Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.

Just hours earlier, his son Rand Paul said he does not favor closing the prison.


The generational split highlights the conflicting goals between a politician on the make and an ideologue riding off into the sunset.

( PHOTOS: Ron Paul’s career)

“I don’t talk to him in detail for the precise reason that I’m not looking to sort that all out,” Ron Paul said. “He has his opinions. You’ll have to ask him where he disagrees. Not me.”

A background sheet distributed at Wednesday’s roll out said the older Paul, 77, has been “unshackled by the restrictions of government service” — as if that ever posed a problem for the iconoclastic libertarian during his decades in the House.

The younger Paul, 50, is open about his designs on the Republican nomination in 2016. Recent moves to present his foreign policy vision as in the mainstream have showcased a desire to expand from his father’s base. He was notably absent from the program to honor his dad and will not be on the new group’s advisory board.

( PHOTOS: Rand Paul’s career)

Ron Paul recalled getting booed during a Republican debate last year when he called for a “Golden Rule” on foreign policy. He noted that many voters told him in 2012 they agree with his positions on everything but national security.

Rather than emphasize those views that might be broadly popular, Paul is creating the new group to educate a younger generation on the merits of avoiding conflict overseas and protecting civil liberties at home.

He stressed that his interest isn’t in advancing the Republican Party.

“Instead of being obedient to the party, we have to be obedient to the truth,” he told a crowd of about 70 at the Capitol Hill Club.

Executive director Daniel McAdams, who advised Paul in the House from 2001 through last year on foreign affairs and civil liberties, said the Ron Paul Institute will “score” votes on everything from sanctions to resolutions that try to tell another government what to do.

It will not be surprising if the younger Paul receives less than a 100 percent rating from his father’s group.

The elder Paul, for instance, said Guantanamo is “outside the law” and symbolizes torture, secret prisons and an assassination list.

The Kentucky senator, 50, gave a carefully nuanced answer Wednesday when a reporter asked his position on Gitmo during a breakfast sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor. He said Americans should never be sent there, but he is less sympathetic about giving rights to hostile foreigners.

Asked about his son’s divergence, the elder Paul noted that it is a politically difficult issue and acknowledged he is on the wrong side of public opinion. He cited Barack Obama’s own call to close the base during his 2008 campaign and his failure to do so. Then he said that he could not in good faith support keeping the prison open.

“That’s one thing young people like: they like consistency,” Paul said after the event. “They like the honesty. So if I would make this the exception … what’s the difference between that and destroying their lives there and dropping a drone on them?”

“If you’re a non-interventionist, it doesn’t mean you don’t arrest people,” he added. “But there’s nothing wrong with our judicial system.”

Ron Paul decried the Defense Department’s announcement earlier in the day that 200 Army troops are deploying to Jordan.

He said the U.S. should withdraw its troops from South Korea, noting the country first sent troops there when he was a high school freshman.

“We shouldn’t have gone in,” he said. “We have been the obstacle to the unification of Korea … We should just get out of the way” and “let the Koreans take care of their problem.”

This is only the second trip the elder Paul has made to Washington since the start of the year. He said he enjoys living full-time in Texas and visiting college campuses and has no plans to aggressively raise money for the new group.

A central part of the Ron Paul Institute will be a website with features like “Neo-Con Watch” and commentaries from the ex-congressman. They hope to create an annual summer school starting in 2014. They will give awards to college students and newspapers who write articulately against foreign intervention.

A member of the board of advisors, Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.), said he will take his regret for voting to authorize the Iraq war to the grave. He said the new group can help sow the seeds of “outrage” at casualties in Afghanistan that receive little media coverage.

“George Bush should have been impeached, but it didn’t happen,” he said. “I will do anything and everything I can to wake up America before it’s too late.”

Rep. Jimmy Duncan (R-Tenn.), the only Republican still in Congress who voted against the Iraq war, argued that the Ron Paul view of foreign policy is actually the traditional Republican view.

“If we had followed Dr. Paul’s philosophy, this country would be booming beyond belief,” he said.

Duncan said Dwight Eisenhower would be “shocked at how true” his warning about the military-industrial complex would become. He cited the late Sen. Robert Taft (R-Ohio), the main holdout against the internationalist wing of the party in the 1950s.

“Our beliefs are consistent with the foreign policy he advocated during his years in the Senate,” Duncan said.

Former Rep. Dennis Kucinich, who ran for president as a Democrat in 2004, is also joining the Paul Institute’s board. He waved his pocket copy of the Constitution during the hour-long program.

“Even as we speak, we see war and the seeds of war being planted across the globe,” he said.