Rand Paul, More Than Just Another Nutcase

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This is gonna be a long day. The interwebs basically have nothing except endless dissections of Tuesday’s primary races, about which I have nothing new to add, so instead let’s take the low road and just gossip a bit. Here’s Josh Marshall on tea party crank Rand Paul, son of ur-crank Ron Paul, who won his race against Trey Grayson in Kentucky yesterday:

I couldn’t help notice something about his brief acceptance speech and I’m curious to hear whether any of you had a similar take. I don’t think I’d ever seen Paul speak at any length. Or if I did I don’t have a clear recollection of it. And he came off to me as arrogant, bellicose and even a little messianic in his demeanor. To put it baldly, he sounded like a jerk.

And a bit later:

News came out overnight that Paul allegedly refused to take Trey Grayson’s concession phone call last night. I think this last charge requires a little caution. The one making the charge is Grayson’s campaign manager, who obviously is far from a neutral observer. And Paul’s campaign manager says it wasn’t a sleight. He was just “in transit and could not take the call.” So who knows?

But I am getting the impression that Paul — aside from just being very unlikeable in personal terms — may be a much more divisive figure than one might from any Tea Party candidate who snatches away a nomination from an establishment party figure….A poll out yesterday showed that Grayson supporters in Kentucky simply hate Rand Paul in a way that goes way beyond the normal aftermath of a contested primary….I get the sense there’s a whole issue of personality (and messianism) that’s going to be in play in that race beyond quite apart from ideology narrowly construed.

That’s what I like to hear: I think it would be great if the tea party cranks lost big in November just because they’re a bunch of stubborn, unlikeable, messianic crackpots. It probably won’t happen, but I can hope. More like this, please.

UPDATE: And before you say, “Hey, at least Rand Paul is good on civil liberties” — well, it turns out he’s not, really.

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We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

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