Rand Paul has officially stepped into the republican primary clown car. Believe it or not, I think he’s the most viable candidate among those who have already announced or have made it clear they’re running.
He’s come a long way in his efforts to learn how not to sound like an idiot. I don’t think he’s said anything idiotic in the past (at least) six months. I think he’s going to appeal to millenials with republican parents since they’re predisposed to veer right. His father’s libertarian schtick will appeal to young white men (libertarians are 96% white and 68% men) who aren’t interested in more wars, but love the myth that more freedom will allow the free market to solve all the problems in the world.
I say his father’s schtick because Rand appears to literally have no mind of his own. There is not a single policy position he believes in that didn’t come directly from daddy. I’m always suspicious of people who entirely agree with a parent. It demonstrates a lack of independent thought and in the case of the Paul’s, also critical thinking. My father and I were not politically in agreement in a damned thing. He was an immigrant, blue collar Reagan republican. I thought he was out of his damned mind.
There’s a decent chance that he’s going to win the Koch primary he auditioned for. They haven’t announced a winner yet. But the fact that he auditioned should tell you all you need to know about his "libertarianism". He’s a corporatist, just like the rest of the republican party.
The only question is, how long can he maintain not sounding stupid for? In my opinion, it’s just a matter of time before he says or does something really, really stupid like plagiarize from an unreliable source like Wikipedia.
Rand Paul is a dimwit who has never had an independent thought in his life. That’s not going to change, no matter how many people have worked with him to de-dumb him. You can’t undo a lifetime’s worth of not using one’s brain.
He’s going to run into more racism because he’s a racist. But things like his Southern Avenger associations won’t hurt him with republicans who don’t much mind racists. Rand is racist because his father is racist and, as I pointed out earlier, Rand appears never to have had an independent thought in his life.
His entry into the race will definitely liven things up because he’s a shifty street fighter. We’ve seen him get into kerfuffles with Chris Christie, and Marco Rubio (who’s even dumber than little Rand) and he told us that he fights dirty. Rand Paul will definitely make things more interesting and depending on where the Kochs decide to put their money, he may make the republican primaries an actual race (unlike democrats, who seem to be fine with a coronation).
