When the Patriot Act ate the GOP

For Rand Paul (and really for all of the GOP chest thumpers), it’s all about him.

At least until he (they) wants to blame something on somebody else. Which happens often. Just pick a somebody else. But, of course, it’s usually President Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton.

Until the blaming starts, however, it is just all about Rand Paul or whichever GOP’r is closest to a microphone and camera.

This weekend, the demagoguery was over the National Security Agency’s authority extension (actually temporary expiration).

This time Paul’s egogasm ran into Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s egogastic political games-playing.

End result? The NSA’s authority to collect reams of bulk telephone metadata under the post-Sept. 11 USA Patriot Act expired at midnight Monday without any appropriate new limits on our privacy and without any appropriate continuations of the country’s ability to find and catch terrorists. Nothing at all — one way or another — was accomplished after the GOP senators managed to tie themselves up in knots.

On Sunday, McConnell watched as his cat-and-mouse game to get the Patriot Act extended as is — no limits, just status quo — crumble with lolly-gagging, non-stop grandstanding from Paul.

In the rare weekend session, the desperate McConnell, seeing time tick away, finally sought a two-week extension of two less controversial provisions of the Patriot Act. But again his effort was blocked by Paul — a fellow Kentucky Republican who is running for president partly on his strong objections to the surveillance programs.

There is, by the way, a bipartisan House bill — the so-called “U.S.A. Freedom Act” — which Senate Republicans blocked from a vote in their own chamber last week. They blocked it largely at the behest of McConnell so that he could, at the last minute, work his alternative plan to extend the status quo, the wholesale warehousing of our phone records.

But the last-minute gamesmanship bit Republicans when McConnell’s time-wasting strategy came up against Paul’s time-wasting strategy.

But enough about Paul’s and McConnell’s egomania. What about the blame game?

Paul said he was targeting surveillance programs started by President Obama.

Can you hear the blare of the “false” buzzer?

At issue are measures in the Patriot Act put in place by the Bush/Cheney administration, and supported for years by Paul’s party. Note: these measures are still supported by Paul’s party — witness McConnell’s push for status quo.

Paul also said over the weekend that the entirety of the Patriot Act was on the line. That’s not quite true, either.

At issue are three provisions within the broader law: Section 215, which has served as the basis for the program; a “lone wolf” provision related to surveillance of terrorist suspects unaffiliated with a larger group; and roving wiretaps.

In coming days, if McConnell and Paul can stop hamming, the Senate is expected to pass the House-backed legislation, the USA Freedom Act that reforms the NSA program, but doesn’t eliminate it entirely.

If we are lucky, the GOP’s eating of itself (Paul is not the favorite son of most Republicans right now) will lead to a real and broader debate about the spying program.

After all, the Washington Post in 2013 reported the NSA is gathering nearly 5 billion records a day on the whereabouts of cellphones around the world, enabling the agency to track the movements of individuals and map their relationships.

Such a massive big-brother system merits real debate. But with this Congress, we probably shouldn’t hold our breath.

Meanwhile, if or when the Senate does pass the Freedom Act bill, it will restore and presumably reform ever so slightly the lapsed law — after a bit of lost time thanks to egos who sucked up all the oxygen in Washington in exchange for a few hours of megaphone time.

Status quo.