Opinion – Bill Straub: Rand Paul is the same ol’ — always against and never for

Sen. Rand Paul is yet again going about the task that he isn’t particularly easy to get along with.

The Bowling Green Republican offended so many folks at Kentucky Wesleyan University a few days ago that the school’s president felt compelled to issue an apology. He has infamously harassed Dr. Anthony Fauci, the retired director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, to the point where he might want to consider filing a complaint.

Paul maintains an ongoing feud with his one-time sorta friend, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, of Louisville, and now it appears he’s not overly excited about the prospect of sending Trump, his erstwhile golfing buddy, back to the White House.

Paul has over the years proudly cultivated a reputation for being a nasty, little piece of work, standing out in a in a modern Republican Party that also offers the likes of Trump and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, of Georgia. If there are any legislative accomplishments resulting from his disdain for the American government he seemingly abhors they remain well hidden.

Those jackassery tendencies were apparently on display in Owensboro on Aug. 17 when our boy Rand delivered a political address concerning COVID-19 and what he perceives as the resulting repression of free speech during a convocation at Kentucky Wesleyan University. It was expected to be an optimistic, inspirational address keeping with the ceremony. Instead, numerous attendees walked out and university president James Cousins issued an apology.

According to Kentucky Today, Cousins assumed responsibility for inviting the infamous misanthrope, saying he assumed Paul’s speech would focus on “leadership and civic participation,” which has been the traditional focus of the school’s convocation for incoming students.”

Good luck with that.

It was the government’s reaction to the COVID crisis, you might recall, that placed Paul at odds with Fauci, the noted immunologist who worked for presidents of both parties, claiming that he was responsible for millions of deaths resulting from gain-of-function research at a lab in Wuhan, China, that he asserts Fauci funded. Fauci, for some odd reason, took offense. (Permit me a quick note here: I have wrestled for years now on how to describe gain-of-function. I’ve settled on the shorthand of researchers messing around with various dangerous viruses. Paul says such research escaped from the lab causing the pandemic. Fauci insists he never funded such research and believes the plague spread in a different manner).

Paul even wrote a book about the issue that few seemed to read.

To Paul’s credit, if that’s the appropriate way to put it, he is actually a non-partisan offender, targeting Republicans almost as frequently as Democrats for sins both real and imagined. One of his primary targets over the past many months is his fellow Kentuckian, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, of Louisville, who spent the first 13 years of Paul’s tenure in the upper chamber trying to convince doubters that he and ol’ Rand were really palsy-walsy, despite having supported Paul’s opponent in the 2010 Republican senate primary.

That façade has come crashing down with Paul seething over playing second-fiddle to McConnell on state and federal matters. It initially surfaced in July 2022 when McConnell convinced President Biden, without Paul’s input, to nominate a right-winger, Chad Meredith, to the federal bench in the Commonwealth. Rand proceeded to upend the deal, not because he was politically at odds with Meredith but because McConnell failed to consult with him about it.

There has been a decided chill between the two men since, and Paul hasn’t been shy about casting shade on his former ally to the extent that it’s an open question whether he voted for him to return as GOP leader in 2023. He has castigated McConnell for his earnest support for Ukraine. He questioned a physician’s assessment that McConnell was in good health after he experienced a couple of mysterious breakdowns during press availabilities. He even suggested that McConnell would lose to Gov. Andy Beshear if the two faced off for McConnell’s Senate seat if Mitch decided to seek re-election.

Then there is his bizarre, hot-and-cold relationship with Trump, kind of like Bennifer.

Now, with a little more than eight weeks until the presidential election, Paul, according to reports, still hasn’t officially endorsed Trump, his party’s once and future standard bearer.

Suffice to say Paul’s reluctance to endorse Trump may ultimately cost the Lord of Mar-a-Lago, oh, at most, two or three votes out of the 140 million or so likely to be caste. Even McConnell, who, along with his wife, former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, has suffered the slings and arrows of Trump’s big mouth, has provided his blessing. So, what gives?

Back in June, Paul told Spectrum News 1, “I’m looking for a little bit more before I make a final decision. I’m supportive of Donald Trump, but whether or not I take an active role, endorse, and go out and campaign for him is something that’s yet to be determined.

“I think that it’s important if he wants to get my vote and my support and wants me to be more active in this, that he’s going to have to be more vocal on things like the lockdowns that I opposed, like the civil liberties abuses that I opposed, like the debt, which frankly has been bad under Republicans and Democrats.”

Trump bowing to any deficit demands – it currently sits at $35.3 trillion — is probably a non-starter. A study from the University of Pennsylvania, using the Penn Wharton Budget Model, found that Trump’s economic plans would increase federal deficits by $5.8 trillion over the next decade. The Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, would add about $1.2 trillion, meaning Trump’s proposals are about five times greater.

So nix that.

Paul is concerned about a zillion things but recently he has expressed distress about the so-called surveillance state and efforts to “censor” social media, which he maintains stifles the internet, asserting market forces should do the job, not the government. He might have a better shot influencing those platforms.

Trump and Paul have long maintained a weird relationship, using a word currently in vogue. They hated each other, trading insults during the 2016 GOP presidential primary when they both ran. They subsequently buried those differences and competed in a round of golf. When Trump lost his re-election bid to President Biden, Paul asserted the election was “in many ways stolen.” He defended Trump in both impeachment efforts, going so far as to offer a motion declaring that impeachment 2.0 was unconstitutional since Trump had already left office. It failed but Trump, once again, got off scot-free.

Thus far, the only thing he has done in the 2024 campaign is deliver an anti-endorsement of South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who ran against Trump in the primary, opposing what he viewed as her interventionist foreign policy.

That’s Rand for you – always against, never for.

The post Opinion – Bill Straub: Rand Paul is the same ol’ — always against and never for appeared first on NKyTribune .