Rand Paul's candidacy in 2016 will have historic implications on the scale of Barry Goldwater. If others want to miss the train and complain until the end of time, so be it. Rand has been kicked and dragged through the mud by his supposed allies even before he committed to endorsing Romney. Don't be fooled by the sanction barbs and the contention about the Romney endorsement. They never liked Rand to begin with, which was well-documented when he announced his candidacy as a primary challenger in Kentucky. Rand will keep on trucking without them.
Sadly this is another common lie advanced by the Disciples of Rand. Many of us were very supportive of Rand during his initial campaign.
My initial questions about Rand date back to shorty after he won the GOP nomination. I was speaking to a key member of Rand's team when the subject of war funding came up. I was shocked to discover that the same man who said "I will never vote for an unbalanced budget," had made an unsolicited remark that he would have no problem at all voting for spending on unconstitutional wars and in fact saw it as necessary for political reasons. As someone who sees the issue of the American Empire as aparamount I found this very troubling and it's also why the "opposition to undeclared wars" talking point used to advance the Ted Cruz's of the world does little to assure me that they have any interest in actually trimming away at the warfare state.
Still I was not above voting for Rand for President then. The Iran sanctions vote - apparently irrelevant in the case of Rand though it would be widely condemned if any other politician had cast it in opposition to the principles of the movement that he rode into office on - had me starting to seriously doubt whether I could vote for him, but I still wasn't off the wagon entirely. What did it for me was the fanatical devotion of his delusional followers after the Romney endorsement. Instead of correctly noting that Rand had always vowed to endorse the nominee and admitting that Rand's language, location and timing were perhaps not ideal but still ultimately necessary, the vast majority of his supports touted him as a man of unquestionable integrity, who could not have possibly erred in talking up the "mature foreign policy of Mitt Romney," while lambasting all criticism of the endorsement as vile, divisive, anti-liberty, hate mongering. It was at that point that I realized a significant section of the liberty movement sees Rand as a godlike entity, who's inconsistencies and/or lies can not be discussed by mere mortals because he is really only acting for the greater good, something mere mortals are far too stupid to understand.
My fear is that if Rand Paul becomes the standard bearer we will have another Reagan/Contract for America moment, albeit perhaps not as severe an ideological sellout. When a movement starts out radical in nature, it cannot de-radicalize without losing something. But it is especially bad to try and pretend someone is a hard radical, when at best they are a soft one.
It is bad strategy for Rand to be the candidate of the liberty movement in 2016, because if Rand Paul becomes the defining face of the liberty movement, the movement will go the way of the religious right, i.e. a fully integrated part of the GOP apparatus that gets scraps tossed its way on occasion, while gradually becoming more and more mainstream in character.
The grassroots can not push him because Rand and his handlers don't give a god damn about the grassroots at best and actively loathe them at worst. They want a coalition with the nationalist and traditionalist wings of the GOP and generally assume that the average liberty advocate will support them just because there is no better option. Rand will continue to cast mostly good votes, with mixed rhetoric which makes him a solid vehicle for that sort of coalition building. It does not however make him the best figurehead for the liberty movement, particularly when so many people are unwilling to accept any criticism of his record or rhetoric.
