Matters Of Opinion

What Does a Rand Paul Win Mean?

Probably not very much.

I’m more than willing to be fair here. I know very little about Rand. However if he tows the exact same lines as his dad, I’ll tell you right now, I’m probably not going to be a fan. The fact that he won so big over the establishments pick is largely a combination of the fact that he had a large TEA Party support group and ran against the, well, establishment, in a year when anti-establishment sentiments ran high.

Kudos to Rand Paul, for what it’s worth, the Republican voters in Kentucky chose you to represent them in the general election, and so it is what it is.

However, there were two separate aspects to this story that burn straight through to the front, for me at least.

First, there can no longer be any argument of the overwhelming libertarian presence in the TEA Parties. Some have argued that this isn’t the case at all, and that it is about traditionalism, more than anything, but if you look at two primaries where TEA Party groups either openly endorsed or had a large amount of people endorsing a certain candidate over others, you’ll see those candidates are the libertarian picks: Hostettler here in Indiana, and Paul in Kentucky. If that’s the case, that’s fine. Don’t misunderstand this point to come across as condescending. If the TEA Party is going to be an arm for the libertarian party or the Liberty Caucus of the Republican Party, so be it. It will at least establish where the groups stand on candidates and issues instead of claiming to be all things to everyone.

The second aspect of this story is that Paul had a great promotional backer in Sarah Palin.

Now, anybody that has libertarian friends on Facebook will note the numerous links by libertarian groups who despise her because they believe her to be a “neo-con” (which , according to her rhetoric, is probably the case). So, in order for Sarah Palin to support a libertarian candidate, one of a couple of things would have to be true.

1)Sarah Palin doesn’t know ANYTHING and vetting people she supports because she’s a populist at heart. If Palin were to have properly looked into Paul’s background regarding his families foreign policy and the conflicts that arise with her own foriegn policy rhetoric, she would have backed away from supporting him.

2)Sarah Palin has consistently lied, through her rhetoric on foriegn policy, and is actually much more in line with libertarian isolationism. This makes Sarah Palin just another lieing politician, which she claims to despise.

3)Rand Paul is actually more of a hawk than his father. This is a possibility, and would be the most rational explanation of why Palin would throw her name behind Paul in the first place. Perhaps he is a bit more of a realist than his father is, regarding foreign policy? If he were to be a hawkish, social conservative, economic libertarian, then hell, I’d probably start supporting him myself.

4)The last possibility would be that Sarah Palin may have made a political play, weighed the odds, and wanted to have her name behind the winning candidate for future political endeavors. This may be the most realistic of the four possible scenarios, and perhaps the least perplexing as well, since it would be worse than her lying about where Palin stood on issues: it would show that she would be willing to sell herself out to make the appearance that she can make winners.

So which of these four outcomes is the most likely?