In a perversely ambivalent way, I admire Rand Paul. He may live in a delusional libertarian world, but he's also rational enough to know he's surrounded by warmongering crackpots who would fearlessly fight WW III from the comfort of their congressional offices or middle-class living rooms. And yet he rises each morning and forges ahead, not only amid but deeply mired in the partisan insanity, protesting it as best he can … such as clapping slooowly during a madman's speech to Congress.
National Review found the senator's less than provocative act more than insufferable, as did the Washington Free Beacon, Hot Air and Red State. Jennifer Rubin — the Washington Post's press agent for Bibi Netanyahu — went bonkers on Twitter. Like Mel Brooks' Gov. William Le Petomane, they all bewailed that they "didn't get a harrumph out of that guy." Once again, Sen. Paul stood alone in his party — a marked and insufficient man.
The day after, Sen. Paul appeared on "Fox & Friends," trying to dismiss the reality of an actively demented base:
You have these gossipy websites who really demean themselves by putting stuff like that out. I gave the prime minister 50 standing ovations, I co-sponsored bringing him here, and on the day that I also decide to co-sponsor the Corker bill saying that any final deal has to be approved, we have gossipy websites looking at, you know, the metric of how fast you clap. I mean, I think they demean themselves by putting that out.
Well, that may be. But in the squalid miasma of right-wing chickenhawkdom, demeaning one's self means authenticating one's ideological chops; no day is complete without at least one demonstration of cognitive collapse.
Still, Sen. Paul forges on — knowing, surely, that he harbors as much of a shot at the presidential nomination in the Republican Party as does Bernie Sanders in the other one. He's a lost cause in a suit jacket and jeans — and yet somehow, he doesn't seem to care. I admire his partial grasp of reality, and his almost stoic indifference to it.