The Safe Zone

And Rand Paul gets the Fox"News" softball treatment.



Let's look at this from a few angles.

There's a "concerted effort" to make Rand Paul ( and by extension the Tea Baggers ) look bad? Truth-be-told, they do a pretty good job on their own without any assistance. There's this bizarre concept that conservatives ought to look into, considering they preach it on a daily basis - it's called accountability. If Rand Paul is seeking to blame his opposition for his own, well documented, statements, then he'll likely only have a few people on his side come election day in November. The problem is that we are talking about Kentucky Republicans, some of whom really don't care for blacks in America at all.

And you notice how he said he "presents himself" as this kind, gentle, understand person that wants to have thoughtful discussion? It's fairly clear that he really isn't this type of person underneath that facade. This is a common tactic of the conservative movement - create this caricature of a considerate and understanding individual while projecting your own faults and shortcomings on your opponents while offering no verifiable information to back up your statements. It works because most conservatives are willing to buy into the lies, the hype, and the hysteria as they lack the intellectual honesty to move to the "verify" portion of Ronald Reagan's "trust, but verify".

And while Rand is actually being true when he pointed out - though not directly - that he never claimed he would vote against the Civil Rights Act, what he's not admitting any longer and doing he level best to distance himself from is the very real aspects of what he said - that he favors private businesses being able to discriminate on the basis of race, or for any reason for that matter. And yes, Mitch McConnell was quite vocal about his displeasure with Paul's statements and you'll notice that Rand did a little word salad shuffle when pressed on whether or not he was asked to "stay low". Any guess on what McConnell really said to him?

So why is he now in favor of what he had earlier deemed "government intrusion" into private business? Well, to protect his ass for one reason. But the damage is already done, so no amount of back-peddling or revision of the previous weeks statements is going to help him out with people that are legitimately concerned about what he could potentially do if he makes it to Washington. The talking-point about public transportation in Boston is not only redundantly silly, but really doesn't help his cause. He's essentially calling people in the South lazy, racists. He's not far off in that regard, as I've met my fair share her in Western Kentucky throughout my life. And if there's one things racists don't like to be called is a racist.

There was, despite the semantics that Paul is trying to utilize, a shake-up in his campaign after the Rachel Maddow interview. He did hire a former campaign consultant and it was a pretty poor choice, considering his ties to Rand's father's Presidential bid and his sympathy to white supremacists and neo-Nazis. So to state that there wasn't a dramatic shift within the campaign is a blatant lie.

As Paul, again, tries to distance himself from his "that's so un-American" comments regarding BP, I'm reminded again of how conservatives love to tout accountability but rarely, if ever, require that people be held accountable - that is, unless they aren't Republicans. It's a wonderfully transparent little dance that Rand Paul is doing, shift in his seat, swallowing hard, and visibly aching to get his new script out there to all the Fox"News" viewers so they can spit it out at the water-cooler or at Denny's on Sunday morning before church. There should be and there will be villains in every aspect of American life. Right now, Rand Paul is a villain of not only the truth but of progress in America.