Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) Richard Ellis/ZUMA Wire
A tea party revolutionary four years ago, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has bucked many of his old supporters by backing Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, in McConnell’s primary against Matt Bevin, a hedge fund executive backed by the Senate Conservatives Fund. Why would Paul do such a thing? He has been cagey, to say the least. “He asked me when there was nobody else in the race, and I said yes,” the junior senator told Glenn Beck in February. Evidently even that was too verbose. Per the Glasgow (Ky.) Daily Times, Paul has now taken his answer off the record:
After addressing about 30 people who turned out to hear him, the senator opened the floor for questions.
One constituent asked him why he came out in support of Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Louisville.
Paul declined to answer the question publicly, saying he would speak with her in private and explain his reason for supporting the senior senator.
Paul family political guru Jesse Benton, who is now managing McConnell’s re-election campaign, told a tea party activist in a secretly-recorded conversation last year that, “between you and me, I’m sort of holdin’ my nose for two years because what we’re doing here is going to be a big benefit to Rand in ’16, so that’s my long vision.”
One reason Paul might decide to keep his explanation private: His answer sounds a lot like Benton’s.
