President Rand Paul, GOP successor to President Herman Cain

Steve Deace--the Iowa talk radio host whom you've probably seen on cable news, always bewailing and weeping and grieving over his party's utter lack of real conservative direction--reveals his and his party's lack of conservative direction: 

I don’t think you can underestimate how big of a moment this was. If the Iowa Caucuses were tomorrow, [Rand Paul] would win in a landslide.

All because Paul stood for 13 hours on the Senate floor this week and strongly suggested--through that ancient political gag of repeatedly insisting he was not suggesting--that President Obama might drone-whack you tonight as you're sipping a Schlitz in your humble bungaloo, and merely because you once raised a banner at a tea party rally.

Paul both did and did not depict a White House of such creeping despotism and galloping caprice that the Justice department was uncharacteristically reduced to bemused, almost comic brevity.

Here and there, Paul's grandstanding did manage to ask a coherent question or make a valid point. Yet because Paul is a registered lobbyist for the Bluegrass Institute for Demagogic Incoherence, whatever validity he gripped got washed away in his tub-thumping hysteria. Of all the potential paladins of a righteously distrustful movement against growing executive power, Paul is the least plausible candidate because of his irrepressible tendency to reductio ad absurdum.

Despite all this, or rather because of all this, "If the Iowa Caucuses were tomorrow, [Rand Paul] would win in a landslide." And Steve Deace is probably correct, mostly because Sen. Paul has no more intelligible idea of what he's talking about than does the Republican base, which Paul--and this, again, is typical--believes is located "in all the solidly red states throughout the middle of the country." Not the South, mind you, but the middle. It is there, according to Paul, that the GOP has its "good, solid niche."

Put it all together--the muddleheadedness, the stirring but vapid rhetoric, a colossally simplistic worldview and a stunning misapprehension of macroeconomics--and indeed you just might have yourself a GOP frontrunner in every caucus and primary from Iowa to the planet Demento. Then, in 2017, all the Steve Deaces would be back to bewailing and weeping and grieving over their party's utter lack of real conservative direction.

Comments

[Peter G]

Politeness dictates we use the proper honorific. That would be Dr. Demento without, sadly, the entertaining tunes. Rand Paul, the 142'd sharpest intellect in the Republican party. May his fate be the same as Irving. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxUo781x34s

[Robert Lipscomb]

It's all good news. Every civil war needs a clear leader for the rebels. It appears the war will be between the establishment Republicans and the Libertarians. This obviates the need for a fracture between the Libertarians and the establishment Libertarians. I am betting on the Libertarians because well ... Let me quote "The Big Lebowski".

Walter Sobchack, "Nihilists! Fuck me. I mean, say what you like about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it's an ethos."

In this context, I dedmand a pass for using a Nazi reference. :-)

[Marc McKenzie]

What bothers me is to see liberals get moist in the loins over Senator Paul's filibuster, and make excuses for him. Even though the good Senator is diametrically opposed to pretty much everything progressives stand for.

Oh, and his speech on drones? Funny how in all thirteen hours....he never mentioned the one practical solution to solve the problem--repeal of the 2001 AUMF.

[Peter G]

How could I not Robert? You also used a quote from The Big Lebowski which more than compensates for any Nazi reference.