Raimondo Rips Rand

Former Rand Paul supporter Justin Raimondo, editorial director of Antiwar.com, is out with an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times that details the problems Rand is going to have with his father's libertarian base. Rand's outrageous flip-flopping on issues, especially foreign policy will leave him zero defenders among the principled libertarian set.

Here are snippets from Raimondo's  'Stand with Rand' Paul? But where, exactly?:

"Stand With Rand"...It's an unfortunate choice of words, because it underscores the chief problem with his candidacy. For the life of me, I can't figure out what he really believes — where he really stands, especially when it comes to foreign policy.
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At a January forum with fellow Republican Sens. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, Paul challenged his colleagues' hawkish showboating on Iran...Two months later, he was "ruining it" by putting his signature on an open letter to the Iranian leadership. Authored by arch-neoconservative Sen. Tom Cotton, the letter basically told Tehran that a Republican in the White House would nullify any deal negotiated by the Obama administration.

His explanation for this complete reversal was baffling. He told Glenn Beck that it is "kind of crazy" for anyone to question his decision to sign: "Do I have any regrets about informing another country of how our Constitution works?"

He told a different story at the SXSW Festival in Austin, Texas. Claiming to support the diplomatic talks, he said: "I want the president to negotiate from a position of strength, which means that he needs to be telling them in Iran, 'I've got Congress to deal with.'"

How is it helpful to tell the Iranians that any agreement they sign may expire in two years?
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As a U.S.-backed movement seized power in Kiev, Paul called for "respectful relations" with the Kremlin...

A few months later he was demanding that President Vladimir Putin be "punished,"
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After the neoconservative wing of his party lashed out at him for being "anti-Israel," Paul started singing a different tune. His revised budget froze foreign aid at present levels. Yet even that modest attempt at fiscal discipline was thrown overboard when he voted to increase aid to Israel — and boasted about it in a statement issued by his office.

The most bizarre part of the story is that the senator's office insists that Paul "has never proposed any legislation that targeted Israel's aid." It's one thing to change one's mind — it's quite another to deny that any change has taken place.
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Read the entire essay here.