Rand Paul’s gaffes offer a glimpse of his worldview

[applegrove]

Rand Paul’s gaffes offer a glimpse of his worldview

By Michael Gerson at the Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/unmasking-rand-paul/2015/02/05/24f5ba9a-ad61-11e4-abe8-e1ef60ca26de_story.html?tid=rssfeed

"SNIP...................



It has become the Rand Paul pattern: A few weeks paddling vigorously in the mainstream, followed by a lapse into authenticity, followed by transparent damage control, followed by churlishness toward anyone in the media who notices. All the signs of a man trying to get comfortable in someone else’s skin.

The latest example is vaccination. “I have heard of many tragic cases,” said Dr. Paul, “of walking, talking normal children who wound up with profound mental disorders after vaccines.” Following the ensuing firestorm, the Republican senator from Kentucky insisted, “I did not say vaccines caused disorders, just that they were temporally related.”

......


When Chris Christie commits a gaffe on vaccination and reverses himself, it indicates a man out of his depth. With Paul, it reveals the unexplored depths of a highly ideological and conspiratorial worldview.

.....

His domestic libertarianism provides no philosophical foundation for most of the federal government. As a practical matter, he can call for the end of Obamacare but not for the abolition of Medicare or Medicaid or the National Institutes of Health. Yet these concessions to reality are fundamentally arbitrary. The only principle guiding Paul’s selectivity is the avoidance of gaffes. Of which he is not always the best judge.


.................SNIP"

[TwilightGardener]

1. Rand would never make it through the primaries.

Not because he's any dumber--they're all dumbfucks, more or less. He won't make it because the GOP is still strongly ruled by neocon ideology, and they will gut him like a deer if he ever got too close to winning because of his heresy on foreign policy.

[Blue Owl]

2. A peek under the rug, if you will

n/t

[applegrove]

4. LOL!

[Rosa Luxemburg]

3. He's kind of weird

[edhopper]

5. So now

Politicians saying what they really think is a gaffe?