Wednesday 8 April 2015

The Thing with Rand Paul

Rand Paul is an enigma.  He is unexplainable.

He wants a balanced budget....lower taxes....and control over government spending.....which generally gets people in the heartland all pepped up and enthusiastic.  He's against subsidizing energy companies.....but he's willing to offer them tax breaks for innovation. He hates TSA and says he would eliminate them.....but he never says how.  He says that American's privacy rights are threatened....but never says how he's solve this.  He says he's for plain old-fashion marriage, but it's same type statement that President Obama had before his conversion to being 'open'.  He opposes all possible gun control, period.....which usually gets him support from the NRA crowd.

If you went down the list of twenty-five topics that the normal heartland guy would support and how they would answer a question over issues.....Rand Paul gives the same exact answer.

So, why is Rand Paul considered a 'nut'?

It's when you get to the 2nd twenty-five hot topics of Republican Conservatives and the fringe side of the Republican enthusiasm.....that you start to see Rand Paul angle to get the right spot on each of the next twenty-five topics.   He wants to fit into the perfect square.

For an engineer.....the perfect square is measured and it's absolutely precise.  If you say you are within 1/1,000th of an inch of the perfect specifications to the square.....that's the gimmick of Rand Paul.  He really wants to fit that neat and tidy square.

If someone said that lawn landscaping had now moved to topic number 46 on the Conservative scale of important things.....Rand Paul would come out tomorrow with a three-point agenda on land landscaping....offering up tax incentives for a better lawn, recommended advice on cutting range for the mower, and a government program to offer free grass seed to the needy.   It's that simple.

The heartland candidate?  Yeah.  He's the guy who wants to take around twelve percent of the vote in Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Texas, etc.  He's the all-in-one type candidate that fits the perfect square and people comment on that. The remaining eighty-two percent of voters?  They'd rather not vote for the guy.....there's just something that's not real or convincing about Rand Paul.

Oddly, you can find Democrats in the south who say that they could almost support Rand Paul because he's got the right position on twenty of their top priorities.

The perfect square?  There is such a thing....but it's usually not what people are walking into Home Depot or Lowes to buy.

What Rand Paul is after....is mostly votes.  He ties up an election and makes things a bit more difficult for the top two or three guys in the primary.  He's making them pay attention to him and his fifty-odd topics.  If you want the perfect conservative.....he's the solution.  At some point in the decision process...you make the decision that you don't want the perfect conservative, and then you start to question your whole priority system.

The odds of the top guy wanting Rand Paul for VP or some cabinet post?  Zero chance.  It'll never happen.  So, Rand is mostly there for the theater side of the conservative vote.  He gives the audience the best act possible, and that small group feel that he might actually deliver on these fifty-odd values that they've worked themselves into.

The news media tries to side with this view and get the small crowd all pumped up.  It's fake stories and a comical sort of perception that he might actually deliver what he's talking about.  Then later.....you figure out that the news media lied to you and you go back to reality.

That's the plain and simple truth with Rand Paul.