Rand Paul goes to Howard University in peace, receives quiet

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dana-milbank-rand-paul-goes-to-howard-u-in-peace-receives-quiet/2013/04/10/f60bec46-a217-11e2-82bc-511538ae90a4_story.html

Tea party titan Rand Paul, visiting Howard University on Wednesday, told students that he had been called “either brave or crazy to be here” at the historically black college.

Probably some of each: brave, because he’s trying to sell himself and fellow Republicans to African Americans, a singularly resistant demographic; and crazy, because he based his pitch on revised history and airbrushed facts — and the Howard kids weren’t fooled.

“No Republican questions or disputes civil rights,” the senator from Kentucky proclaimed. “I’ve never wavered in my support for civil rights or the Civil Rights Act.”

Howzat?

As a candidate in 2010, Paul questioned the constitutionality of the Civil Rights Act’s Title II, which prohibits private discrimination. “I don’t want to be associated with those people,” he said when MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow asked him about private businesses that refuse to serve black customers, “but I also don’t want to limit their speech in any way in the sense that we tolerate boorish and uncivilized behavior because that’s one of the things freedom requires.”