Is Sen. Rand Paul okay? His latest COVID rant seems deranged even by his standards.
Could Sen. Rand Paul possibly be worried about his 2022 Senate campaign?
Not many people think challenger Charles Booker has a chance in the crimson state of Kentucky, but this weekend Rand Paul put out a video on Twitter that seemed desperate and loony even by his standards.
“President Biden: We will not accept your agency’s mandates or your reported moves toward a lockdown,” Paul said. “No one should follow the CDC’s anti-science mask mandates. And if you want to shut down federal agencies again, some of which aren’t even back to work yet, I will stop every bill coming through the Senate with an amendment to cut their funding if they don’t come back to work in-person.”
Does he mean schools? I think he means schools, which he doesn’t have to worry about because it appears most Kentucky public schools aren’t requiring masks anyway.
Resist! declares Rand Paul. Resist as he did when he had COVID-19 and wandered around the Capitol without a mask! Resist as he did when he set up his own ophthalmology licensing board with his wife and father-in-law as the the only board members! Resist as Rand Paul did against a federal anti-lynching law! Resist as Rand Paul would have in 1964 against part of the Civil Rights Act! You know, because it forbade segregation even in private businesses.
(Or you could resist like the Dallas, Texas school district, which is implementing masks in defiance of Gov. Greg Abbott’s order that bans such mandates because there are so many COVID cases in Texas right now.)
Rand Paul, an eye doctor who believes he’s a genius, is bad enough when he’s calm and condescending. But this new, excitable Rand Paul might be even worse. Is the Senate campaign getting to him already? Or was being called an idiot by Dr. Anthony Fauci hurtful to his feelings? How else can we explain his escalating lunacy? Is he worried about his base? Why else would he bring up Nancy Pelosi? Stopping the spread of COVID in the U.S. Capitol is her “drunk with power reign over the Capitol.” Saying the words “Nancy Pelosi” is a sure sign of desperate appeal to the Republican base, you usually save it for when you’re losing, which as far as we know, Paul is not.
And while we’re asking all these questions, what did Kentucky ever do to deserve Paul or his mini-me, Rep. Thomas Massie? Massie recently joined up with another House Republican brain trust, Marjorie Taylor Greene, to sue Pelosi over fines for not wearing a mask. Sure, this kind of political posturing helps Massie and Paul ignore the larger problems at home, like failing infrastructure, poor health outcomes and low educational attainment that makes people think their opinions are better than those of trained public health officials.
That includes Sen. Paul, of course, who has been ranting about his natural immunity from COVID, but has yet to say anything about a new study of Kentuckians that found the vaccine protects you much more from the Delta variant than the immunity from having had it already.
Sometimes Rand Paul is right. Like in 2016, when he was running for president and called Donald Trump “a delusional narcissist and an orange-faced windbag.” But sometimes being a contrarian just for the sake of being a contrarian in the middle of a pandemic that’s resurging because of your party’s bad political messaging over vaccines and masks is the wrong way to go. Even if you’re worried about your re-election campaign.
This story was originally published August 9, 2021 at 2:47 PM.
