Rand Paul should not have been on the Las Vegas stage Tuesday night for the fifth Republican presidential debate. The network hosting it, CNN, flouted its own rules for participation to squeeze him in on the ninth and final podium—funny enough, at the far right of the stage. The decision was rightfully protested by Rachel Maddow, whom I once worked for at MSNBC and who, five years ago, conducted perhaps the most significant interview of Paul’s political career. But I wonder whether she, like me, ended up happy that he was a part of the conversation after all. While Paul didn’t wholly adhere to the facts and went overboard on some points—as he is wont to do—it is inarguable the senator from Kentucky emerged as a key figure during the debate.

The topic of the night was directly in Paul’s strike zone. Given the other candidates’ rabid Islamophobic fear-mongering since the San Bernardino terrorist shooting earlier this month—coupled with a cable news network’s hunger for ratings—it was likely inevitable that the debate would focus entirely on foreign policy and a very specific kind of terrorism. (Not the foremost domestic terror threat posed by home-grown right-wing extremism, nor the misogynist brand embodied by Robert Dear, the shooter who murdered three people in a November attack on a Planned Parenthood in Colorado Springs.) Nearly all the GOP candidates and CNN moderator Wolf Blitzer discussed on Tuesday night was the kind of terrorism associated with radicals espousing Islam. But that gave Paul a chance to shine during the discussions about military force and surveillance—which, not coincidentally, are virtually the only policy areas where he remains an actual libertarian. Paul stood out in a debate lacking in viable ideas for avoiding another endless cycle of war and the continued infringement of personal liberty.

After warning that regime change in Syria would only exacerbate the challenge presented by ISIS, Paul confronted the reckless and alarming suggestions Republican frontrunner Donald Trump made earlier in the debate that bombing the families of terrorists and closing parts of the Internet might be necessary to alleviate the terrorist threat. “That entails getting rid of the First Amendment, okay? No small feat,” Paul said. “If you are going to kill the families of terrorists, realize that there’s something called the Geneva Convention we’re going to have to pull out of. It would defy every norm that is America.”

He called out Rubio for supporting increased surveillance by law enforcement—an issue that Rubio was using to paint Ted Cruz as insufficiently tough on terror. But the exchange Paul had with fellow also-ran candidate Chris Christie about Russian planes was a pivotal moment in the debate, exposing the paper-thin machismo and proud ignorance of the Republican field during this election cycle.



In an October interview with The Washington Post, Paul had deemed the idea of a no-fly zone over Syria a terrible one. “That’s drawing a red line in the sky,” he told reporter David Weigel. “Once you draw a red line, and people cross it, what happens? Now we’re talking about an incident that could lead to World War III.”