One year ago today, we first profiled our original profile of Senator
Rand Paul of Kentucky, the heir apparent to his father, Ron Paul’s political legacy and generally demented views. He’s a board-certified ophthalmologist*, has been repeatedly caught plagiarizing from other sources for speeches (including from Wikipedia articles), and has hired Neo-Confederates to serve on his campaign staff, which shouldn’t be too much of a surprise because Rand also once told Rachel Maddow in an interview that he wouldn’t have voted for the Civil Rights Act. Rand’s also discussed conspiracy theories like the Bilderberg Group, the American Union, and even some 9/11 Trutherism, and experts who analyze the speeches of Congressmen determined he speaks roughly at about the 8th Grade Level. He once
sponsored a Personhood bill that would apply the 14th Amendment to fetuses, as well, showing he’s not exactly the libertartian “smaller government” type he portrays himself as, choosing to still meddle with people's lives on social issues.
(*Rand Paul apparently couldn’t pass an actual board exam, and created an ophthalmology board to certify himself, then disbanded that board once he was elected Senator.)
Like his father, Rand has decided to seek out the presidency of these United States. Unlike his father, he’s been abjectly terrible at doing that, compared to his dad. At least Ron was a spoiler in 2008 and 2012 who people thought was a threat on the debate stage, and had passionate supporters. Rand started out as a presumptive favorite on the Republican ticket, but these days he’s barely cracking the top ten in the GOP Primary in polling right now, and has steadily faded from view, as have the number of people showing up at his campaign events. Luckily for him, the Kentucky GOP found a loophole that will allow him to still run for re-election to his Senate seat so that he doesn’t violate state law by having his name appear on the ballot twice.
Still, under the fold, we'll take a look at a ton of the headlines and votes that are to be added to the wild & wacky saga of Rand Paul in the past calendar year alone:
Sept. 11th, 2014: Rand Paul participates in a GOP filibuster of a proposal for a Constitutional Amendment to amend campaign finance reform for elections, an issue that 84% of Americans, including 80% of Republicans, agree should be moved towards.
October 1st, 2014: Paul is interviewed by Glenn Beck, and blames “political correctness” on people being afraid to declare a travel ban because of the Ebola Virus outbreak. And here I thought it was because medical experts already knew travel bans do more harm than good.
October 2nd, 2014: Sen. Paul is interviewed by conservative pundit Laura Ingraham, and says that the Obama administration put 3,000 American soldiers at risk of contracting Ebola Virus, adding to the GOP fear-mongering about the disease.
February 5th, 2015: Rand Paul is being interviewed on CNBC with Kelly Evans, and after she attempts to ask him his opinion about vaccines, he starts to shush her, and tell her to “calm down a bit”. Eventually, Paul discussed the topic, saying, "I have heard of many tragic cases of walking, talking, normal children who wound up with profound mental disorders after vaccines." (Note: That’s anti-vaccination propaganda that’s long since been debunked.)
February 27th, 2015: Sen. Paul votes against funding the Department of Homeland Security as part of a Republican protest of President Obama’s executive orders on immigration.
March 7th, 2015: Rand Paul’s libertarian views are again cast aside for his Republican ones when he says that same sex marriages “offend” him.
“I think marriage is between a man and a woman. Ultimately, we could have fixed this a long time ago if we just allowed contracts between adults. We didn’t have to call it marriage, which offends myself and a lot of people.”
March 9th, 2015: Paul
joins 46 other Republican senators who sign a letter sent to the leaders or Iran, trying to undermine foreign policy during nuclear negotiations between the U.S. and Iran, and earning them the sobriquet of "
47 traitors", as the move may have been a violation of the Logan Act.
March 27th, 2015: Sen. Paul again
comments on same-sex marriage to a group of pastors, calling it the result of “a moral crisis”, and recommended that they bring about a revival of values with actual “
tent revivals” full of people demanding reform.
April 8th, 2015: Paul is particularly combative in an interview on the Today show with Savannah Guthrie, where
he keeps interrupting her mid-question and accusing her of editorializing. Two weeks later, after several pundits began to note a bit of a pattern of Paul talking down to female journalists in this manner,
he defended himself by saying it was “sexist” to accuse him of sexism.
April 15th, 2015: Sen. Paul gives an interview with WorldNetDaily, and details his position on immigration… not only is he against the DREAM Act,
he wants to repeal the portion of the 14th Amendment that grants birthright citizenship.
April 22nd, 2015: Rand Paul is on Iowa conservative talk radio host Jan Mickelson’s show, and a caller asks Sen. Paul about
the Jade Helm 15 conspiracy theory.
After a moment of sounding surprised and hearing the explanation,
Paul promises the caller he’ll “look into it”.
August 2nd, 2015: Paul
votes for the GOP Senate’s to attempt to defund Planned Parenthood, based off of manufactured outrage over
the heavily edited “sting” videos of Planned Parenthood employees engineered by a Right to Life Group.
At the time of this posting, Rand Paul is polling at an average of about 2.3% in the Republican Primary for president, good enough for 10th place, and placing him behind Chris Christie but ahead of Rick Santorum. And while his poll numbers drop, he’s getting an ass-kicking in the fund-raising department, with Jeb Bush bringing in well over 33 times the amount of cash Sen. Paul has so far.
That’s usually the sort of tea leaves that most campaign advisers would see and tell someone to prepare to fold the tents, but Rand & Company are insisting they’re staying in this for the long haul.
That might not be a good thing, considering he still has a Senate seat he might want to campaign for first. And GOP party insiders are beginning to speak up about Rand putting the cart before the horse, and potentially losing control of the Senate because of his folly. Stay tuned…