Rand's not playing checkers guys. He's playing chess, and he's a lot more clever than many here give him credit for. He's been banking on Romney losing the whole time, and I've been saying all along that it was the WHOLE POINT. Rand endorsed and campaigned for Romney to get the support of ordinary, Fox News watching Republicans, knowing full well that the vast majority of us wouldn't vote for Romney under any possible circumstances. (We just wouldn't, and he knew that...and we really should have been smart enough to realize he knew that, but we're very mistrustful when it comes to politicians, and for good reason. I think he underestimated our "issues" there.) Since Romney lost, coming across as a "team player" to the Republican base sets him up nicely for 2016. If Romney had won, this would have totally blown up in Rand's face, because then he would have had to wait until 2020 to run, and he'd be tainted with the not-so-distant memory of Romney's completely abysmal 2013-2016 term...and his endorsement of Romney "way back in 2012" would hardly earn him points with even the Republican base that long from now.
If Romney had won, Rand's whole gambit would have been worthless. In the current situation, he has secured the trust of the Fox faithful who feel he's on their side (and he is, "from a certain point of view," just not in the ways they think), and he has four more years of a stellar voting record to prove to the liberty movement that he's still one of us. The whole thing came at a high cost though: The trust of the libertarian base and others who have come to associate Ron's conduct with principle, and anything else with a lack thereof. Despite defending his motives, I strongly disagreed with Rand's endorsement at the time he made it. It's not something I would have done, and it's not something Ron would have done, and a lot of people here saw him (still see him) as some kind of backstabbing traitor for it. I think (or at least thought) that he miscalculated, in the sense that he grossly underestimated our trust issues and how fragile they are after Ron Paul has been such a breath of fresh air. At the same time, over the next four years, Rand will not be doing any campaigning for establishment Republican Presidential candidates. Instead, he will spend the next four years voting just as he has been in the Senate (almost exactly like his father), and it is through his record, not his words, that he will earn the trust of those who are suspicious of him. After all, I'm sure he realizes we're a bit savvier than the Fox crowd, and we tend to pay a bit more attention to actual voting records than they do.
Now that the election is over and my thinking is starting to clear a bit, I'm starting to wonder whether Rand truly misjudged our sore spots, or if he simply knew he'd have time to make up for it and prove himself later. Either way, I'm pretty confident he plans to make up for it, and I hope he succeeds, because he has the capability to unite the liberty movement and the Republican base under a candidate who can actually end the empire starting in 2016...that is, if Ron doesn't surprise us of course.
All that said, even Rand's role is a short-term one. We need the Presidency to end the wars, but no President has the power to make everything better in the long run. If we want to make lasting change, we have a lot of important work to do to take over the state parties and RNC, so we can take Congress and institute fair primary rules (and eventually, election laws) to give future Presidential candidates (not limited to Rand) of ours a fighting chance.
