While I hope and expect these words will infuriate the supporters of Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) for president, I predict that they will ultimately be proven true: Rand Paul for president in 2016 bears an eerie resemblance to Barack Obama for president in 2008. Both share a dramatic level of inexperience compared to the historic standards of qualification for the presidency; both present themselves as “conviction politicians” who are different from other politicians. Both are, in fact, calculating politicians, which makes them very much conventional political opportunists.
{mosads}Regarding Obama, remember the candidate of hope and change who promised to change the way Washington works? Candidate Obama became the president who sets the gold standard for revolving doors between his presidency and Wall Street and banks. The civil libertarian Obama of 2008 became the president that even The New York Times recently described as being identified in pop culture as the “Drone Master.”
Regarding Rand Paul, the son of former Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), America’s leading libertarian, he has become the limousine libertarian who courts big-money insider Republican oligarchs and undermines the libertarian candidate for U.S. Senate in Kentucky by his stout support for the reelection of the ultimate old-line insider, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R). Meanwhile, the ultra-libertarian foreign policy of Rand Paul, who once sounded so isolationist that he would have been the preferred candidate of Syrian President Bashar Assad and Russian President Vladimir Putin, now implies on Mondays and Wednesdays that he might support bombing Iran, implies on Tuesdays that Thursdays that it might be OK if Iran gets nuclear weapons, and tells supporters on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays that he won’t tell them what he really would do about Iran, citing President Reagan as his source.
I do not watch soap operas, but if I did, Rand Paul’s changing positions could be titled “As Rand Paul Turns.” Since like Obama, he lacks presidential-caliber experience for 2016 as Obama did in 2008, and like Obama he calls himself a candidate of principle but is really a politician of opportunism, I say the following:
Rand Paul has a heck of a lot in common with Barack Obama.
And I predict the following:
There will come a day when those who support Rand Paul today will want a refund.
American politics misses the principled voice of Ron Paul on the center stage of national politics, and the Tea Party will someday rue the day they believed in Rand Paul. If you don’t believe me, ask Rand Paul’s main man: Mitch McConnell!
Budowsky was an aide to former Sen. Lloyd Bentsen (D-Texas) and former Rep. Bill Alexander (D-Ark.), who was then chief deputy majority whip of the House. He holds an LL.M. degree in international financial law from the London School of Economics. Contact him at brentbbi@webtv.net.