How does Rand Paul do it? How does he say things that would sink any other politician and get away with it?
Politico’s Sam Youngman is the latest intrepid journalist to explore this baffling mystery, ultimately confessing, like so many before him, that it’s just a damn enigma, but that, surely, surely, wise-guy Rand will get his comeuppance soon enough. And then we’ll all have a good laugh!
The thought that the continuing popularity of the junior senator from Kentucky might somehow be linked to the fact that he is the only politician with a national reputation who dares to suggest that the Bush/Clinton/Bush/Obama “shoot first and then ask questions later and then when we don’t get the answers we like shoot again” policy in the Middle East might be, you know, just a teensy bit self-defeating is simply unable to work itself into Sam’s mind, marinated as it is in the Beltway CW that U.S. Middle Eastern policy must consist of doing whatever it is the Israelis and the Saudis want us to do, however self-contradictory and self-defeating that may be. Oh, and we must also never admit that what we do is governed by those two less than coy mistresses.
It’s true that Rand is less than perfect, which is to say that he’s a practical politician. He’s pretending that he never said that the U.S. should stop handing $3 billion a year to Israel, no questions asked, even though he did say it (and even though it’s a pretty good idea) and he’s also decided that the U.S should declare war on any patch of ground that’s controlled by a gang of terrorists who have beheaded two Americans, because that’s what the American people want, even though it basically makes no sense and even though it basically contradicts his whole previous position on the Middle East. But, hey, that’s politics.
Still, there’s no real mystery to Rand’s continued popularity. The real mystery is why smart, well-informed people like Sam Youngman (and Hillary Clinton) can’t admit that our Disastahs in the Desert Parts I, II, III, IV, and V have been a staggering waste of blood and treasure and have made us less secure than we were before. But I guess that’s a mystery for another time.
