Many Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio supporters have been left stunned by the two Republican’s support of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), also called Obamatrade, and its massive expansion of Obama’s executive authority and the authority of foreign bodies over the data of U.S. citizens. Rubio even channeled Nancy Pelosi’s comments on Obamacare with himself saying that the Obamatrade bill had to first be passed in order for us to know what is in it. Rand Paul was quick to respond by saying, “We should read legislation before we vote on it.”

Senator Jeff Sessions, who stands with Rand Paul in opposition said:

“Promoters of fast-track executive authority have relied on semantic obfuscation in an effort to deny the obvious: the President’s top priority is obtaining fast-track authority because he knows it will expand his powers and allow him to cement his legacy through the formation of a new political and economic union. By contrast, without fast-track, Congress retains all of its legislative powers, individual members retain all of their procedural tools, and every single line, jot, and tittle of trade text is publicly available before any congressional action is taken.”

Based on some current polling and obvious sentiment, Rand Paul seems to be gaining from the betrayal by Cruz and Rubio. In a recent interview, when asked about the revelation that Rubio, Cruz, and others in the Republican Party voted to fast-track the TPP in the Senate—and many in the House GOP leadership have been pushing it—without reading the text of the TPP in the secret room inside the Capitol, Paul went ballistic.

“The American people are frustrated by Congress—Congress has about a 10 percent approval rating,” Paul said. “I think part of that is that they don’t think we’re taking the amount of time to do an adequate job to read the legislation. It’s sort of twofold: They don’t give us enough time, and they also make the bills too long. I have a bill called Read The Bills Act, and in it there’s a requirement that you have to wait one day for every 20 pages of legislation. So 800-page legislation [like Obamatrade] would wait 40 days. You’d wait 40 days so we’d have adequate time to read it. Yeah, I’m a believer that we should read legislation before we vote on it.”

In Paul’s interview with Breitbart News Paul said that “absolutely” President Barack Obama should immediately release the TPP text, instead of keeping it hidden from the public.

“It kind of boggles the mind,” Paul said “Who’s in charge of the administration that decides to keep a trade treaty secret? To keep it classified makes no sense at all. To me, it’s kind of you put the cart before the horse to give the permission to do something you haven’t seen. They claim you’ll get to see it, again but you’ll only get an up-or-down vote with no amendments. Also, they get rid of some of the rules on—I guess it’s not, you can’t filibuster it either. It passes with a simple majority.”

Obamatrade has been infuriating Republican primary voters nationwide, and Paul’s been riding his opposition to the proposal and his big victory against the National Security Agency (NSA) spying program on the campaign trail.

Last week, Breitbart News reported that Rubio is refusing to answer whether he’s gone to the secret room inside the Capitol to read the text of Obamatrade. What’s perhaps most shocking about Rubio’s decision to vote for such sweeping trade legislation is that he is not answering whether he read it at all, choosing to give off the public impression that he didn’t. In perhaps one of the worst political gambles of recent history, Rubio decided to make Obamatrade a foreign policy centerpiece of his presidential campaign. He touted his support for it and why he thinks such a deal would help America in a speech last month to the Council on Foreign Relations. That decision seems to be coming back to bite him more and more, just like his support for the “Gang of Eight” amnesty bill last Congress.

Serious observers can’t help but note the oddity of the situation in that even Democrats realized that extremely secretive TPP gave too much authority to one person, the President, and yet leading Republicans such as Cruz and Rubio, who say they support shrinking the size of the government, shockingly chose and even fought to give it to him.

Rand Paul now sits alone in being the only presidential candidate to vote against the renewal of the so-called Patriot Act which continued illegal government spying on the phone records of U.S. citizens and in opposing Obamatrade. His consistent opposition to expanding government power puts him on the people’s side and leaves the likes of Cruz and Rubio squarely with the establishment. Whether voters have paid attention enough to see who is on their side and how many betrayals they are willing to tolerate before they lift Rand Paul on their shoulders as the true hero of the people will be seen when the primary votes start coming in, but reality in this case is a matter of public record.

It is worth noting that Rick Perry recently announced that he is running for president and after the publication of this article stated publically that he, too, is against Obamatrade.

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