A One Way Ticket to Palookaville

Rand Paul opposes the deal with Iran.  I won’t explode his publicly offered reasons (Justin Raimondo does an admirable job of this).  I will speculate about his private ones: he thinks that by holding to mainstream positions he will out mainstream the mainstream candidates.  I can’t say if he believes these positions or not; I comment only on what is observable.

I will touch on three aspects of this event.  First, from a list of five political consequences regarding the Iran deal, David Frum  (and you know he hates the deal, just because it is a deal with Iran) lists the consequences to Rand:

Paul will either find himself isolated with the old Ron Paul constituency—or he’ll have to find some nimble way to jump to the “anti” side of the Iran deal. (Perhaps he will emphasize the slight to Congress it represents?) If he opts for the latter approach, however, he becomes just another Republican voice among many competing to voice their opposition, and one less powerful and credible than, for example, Ted Cruz will be.

There are now 15 (I believe) individuals running for the Republican nomination.  Wouldn’t it make sense to be “isolated”?  After all, Rand can’t out-neocon fourteen other neocons and he will never be believed by the neocons anyway. 

Second, Obama mentions Rand:

“I think it’s doubtful that we get a lot of current Republican elected officials supporting this deal,” Mr. Obama said. “I think there’s a certain party line that has to be toed, within their primaries and among many sitting members of Congress. But that’s not across the board. It’ll be interesting to see what somebody like a Rand Paul has to say about this.”

Frum lists Rand first; Obama puts the spotlight on Rand.  Think about this – no matter all of the self-destructive behavior Rand has exhibited, beginning with his endorsement of Romney, Rand is still the one candidate the neocons fear; not because of Rand’s positions, but because of what he represents…his father.  Imagine if he stuck to principle!

Third, from the aforementioned Raimondo piece:

While Frum is wrong that supporting the deal would’ve confined Paul to his father’s constituency – polls show 65 percent of Republicans supported the negotiations, and a third support a deal – he is dead right about the consequences of Paul opposing the deal. The “libertarian-ish” Senator from Kentucky is just another Ted Cruz, albeit less loud (and with less book sales) than the Canadian performance artist-cum-politician.

Yeah, he could’ve been a contender….

Look, right at the bottom of this blog, I write: “Permission to copy fully granted as long as a link is provided back to this site.”

Raimondo offers a link, as follows, but it isn’t to this blog:

Yeah, he could’ve been a contender….

It is the clip from “On the Waterfront.”

Why would I point this out?  Three years ago at the time when Rand endorsed Romney while his father was still running, I published a post entitled: “Rand Paul: On the Waterfront.”

You don't understand, I could have had class!

I could have been a contender.

I could have been somebody.

Instead of a bum...

...which is what I am. Let's face it.

Raimondo should have linked back to my blog!

I only want to make two points about this: first, to Raimondo, I want to gloat!  Second, if it isn’t clear to every single Rand Paul supporter who hung on despite all of the obvious clues – hoping against hope that he would continue in his father’s footsteps, I offer the following which represents what will be the outcome of Rand’s candidacy, also from Marlon Brando:

A one way ticket to Palookaville.