Rand Paul is not a Republican and he's not a conservative. He's a cultist libertarian who claims to be for limited government while opposing any achievable progress toward it. In other words, he's a fraud.
McCain is detestable, but let's not let another Republican protector of ObamaCare off the hook
Conservatives are well aware of what John McCain is: A media suckup who long ago abandoned any commitment to conservative policy ideas, and who - if he has any loyalty to anything these days - is loyal to the Beltway establishment and its norms and traditions, not to the needs of the American people and certainly not to conservative principles.
Conservatives are well aware of what Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowskis are: Liberals who masquerade as Republicans when they run for re-election.
Why are conservatives so hoodwinked by Rand Paul?
But why are conservatives so hoodwinked by Rand Paul?
The Kentucky senator is one of the four likely to sink Graham-Cassidy if and when a vote is held on it in the coming week, even though Paul is rherotically in favor of the things Graham-Cassidy does, and is in no way wed to Beltway arcanities like "regular order" that make it almost impossible to pass anything worth passing.
Paul is often given credit by pliable conservatives who believe him to be "principled" and think his opposition to bills that make things a little better is out of some laudable commitment to making things a lot better, and refusing to accept anything less.
None of that is true. Rand Paul is a fraud.
Let's start here: Libertarians are not conservatives. They are not friends of conservatives. They are not our ideological allies. Libertarians are cultists who don't want "limited government" but in fact are paranoid opponents of everything from law enforcement to cooperation with foreign allies. Libertarians and conservatives sometimes arrive at the same positions on issues, but we get there from very different directions and for very different reasons.
Libertarians believe government should be virtually nonexistent
Conservatives believe government should be limited because
that protects liberty;
government is more effective when it sticks to what it needs to do and can do well;
prosperity is always better driven by the private sector,
So the less we confiscate from the productive players in the economy, the better.
Libertarians believe government should be virtually nonexistent because they think "the nanny state" is constantly looking for ways to control their lives.
Now, understand: Rand Paul is not really a Republican. He runs as a Republican because you can't get elected when you run as the nominee of the Libertarian Party. But he's a libertarian through and through, and libertarians have a vested interest in opposing anything that makes government more effective or efficient. Graham-Cassidy would do that by block-granting to the states the money necessary to implement health care policy, and by letting the states decide how to use that money. This is federalism - decentralizing power from Washington D.C. and giving it back to the states as the 10th Amendment says. It also eliminates the individual mandate, which is an unconsitutional power grab by Congress that depletes individual liberty.
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He just wants to "take stands" that can never become policy, but that will make you think he's a hero
This is what libertarians claim to be for.
But what libertarians really want to do is # endlessly about how horrible everything in government is. They don't want any part of a change that makes government better, because that might demonstrate that limited government can actually be a good thing. So whenever a change is in the offing that would in fact make things better, and would in fact make government more limited and more effective, Rand Paul will find an excuse to oppose it, usually one that claims the improvement doesn't go far enough.
There's another reason Rand Paul is a fraud:
ObamaCare is relatively popular in Kentucky, where the law's formulas tend to work in favor of health consumers even as the underlying economics remain unsustainable. Paul knows that if something like Graham-Cassidy were to pass, he would have to deal with political blowback in his own state. It's safer for him to oppose the bill on the grounds that it "doesn't really repeal ObamaCare" and insist he's holding out for something better, while in fact never allowing anything about ObamaCare to change at all.
Kentucky may indeed feel that way about ObamaCare, but that mistake is correctible and probably will correct itself over time, which is why Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin - a real conservative - supports Graham-Cassidy. The bigger problem with Kentucky voters is that so many of them are still fooled by Rand Paul, who pretends to be conservative and preens with his supposedly high-minded philosophical principles, all while never actually accomplishing any of what he says he wants.
Because he doesn't really want it. He just wants to "take stands" that can never become policy, but that will make you think he's a hero.
