It is a bit comical to see some level of split among high-level Republican officeholders over something like whether people should all get vaccinated for serious communicable diseases. It’s nice to see various Republicans, even fringier ones like Ben Carson, saying yes, please people, get vaccinated! Mitch McConnell says he’s a “big fan” of vaccinations because … well, he had polio. (Perhaps polio is a vaccine against derp). Bobby Jindal is full on pro-vaccination. But quite apart from vaccines themselves, this flareup is again illustrating what should be obvious. Rand Paul has no future as a presidential candidate.
Lots of people don’t know a lot about Paul’s background. They don’t know about his father’s background. Or they’re reporters who get too bound up in horserace nonsense to look into Paul’s background and what it suggests about the future.
Yesterday, first Paul tried to get to the right (or perhaps just to the crazy) of Chris Christie by going further than Christie on Vaccine Choice. Then he came out a bit later in the day with his claim that vaccines can cause “profound mental disorders.” Now it comes out that back in 2009 Paul told InfoWars channel ‘Prison Planet TV’ that mandatory vaccines could lead to “martial law”.
So here we’ve galloped right past vague libertarian sensibilities and perhaps some ignorance about epidemiology to full blown martial law black helicopter crazy. And for anyone familiar with Paul’s history, it isn’t remotely surprising. Over the course of his life Paul hasn’t just dipped his toe into various conspiracy theories he’s done the full triple somersault dive into virtually everyone. Whether it’s about drones taking you out at McDonalds or the Federal Reserve or various quack medicine ideas or FEMA concentration camps – not to mention a lot of noxious racial stuff – Paul has gone in for all of them. And all of this stuff will come up the closer Paul gets to the gravitational field of presidential politics and all the scrutiny it brings with it.
Let’s set aside the fact that someone who believes this stuff really should not be president, people who get the rep of believing weird stuff and going in for fringe nonsense do not become president. Doesn’t happen.
So yeah, yeah, yeah Paul 2016. He’ll be a factor in the primaries. He’ll probably win some in a divided field. But elected president? Not happening.
