Rand Paul won't answer Civil Rights Act question

Moving from the Republican Primary to the general election means, for Rand Paul, addressing a broader set of issues than the anti-tax, anti-spending focus of his campaign.

And while he's answered this question before, I'm not sure he's going to be able to get away with an evasive response to a question today on whether he would have voted for the Americans with Disabilities Act and the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which outlawed discrimination in public places and in the workplace.

Paul has suggested in the past -- and been attacked for suggesting -- that the federal government has no place regulating private business decisions, even on issues like race and accomodations for the disabled, and was pressed on the question -- three times -- on NPR just now:



"What I’ve always said is, I’m opposed to institutional racism, and I would have -- if I was alive at the time, I think -- had the courage to march with Martin Luther King to overturn institutional racism, and I see no place in our society for institutional racism," he said in response to a first question about the act.

"You would have marched with Martin Luther King but voted with Barry Goldwater?" asked an interviewer.

"I think it's confusing in a lot of cases in what’s actually in the Civil Rights Case (sic)," Paul replied. "A lot of things that were actually in the bill I’m actually in favor of. I’m in favor of -- everything with regards to ending institutional racism. So I think there’s a lot to be desired in the Civil Rights -- and indeed the truth is, I haven’t read all through it, because it was passed 40 years ago and hadn’t been a real pressing issue on the campaign on whether I’m going to vote for the Civil Rights Act."

Asked for a third time about that and the Americans with Disabilities Act, he explained his objections to the latter.

UPDATE: A reader notes that Paul articulated his view on the Civil Rights Act in an interview with the editorial board of the Louisville Courier-Journal (which called his answer (at around 1:00) "repulsive").

Paul explained that he backed the portion of the Civil Rights Act banning discrimination in public places and institutions, but that he thinks private businesses should be permitted to discriminate by race.

"I like the Civil Rights Act in the sense that it ended discrimination in all public domains, and I’m all in favor of that," he said. "I don’t like the idea of teling private business owners...."