Congratulations Rand: You Have Delivered My Great Fear

The Washington Post's David Weigel, who has tended to give Rand Paul the benefit of the doubt when he can, is out with a story this morning all but burying the idea that Rand is going to do anything good for the libertarian movement.

In a post titled, Is the Libertarian Movement Over?, leading up to a full essay titled, The Libertarian Moment is Over, or Is It?, :Weigel makes these points (my bold):

No one argues with this: The Paul campaign’s struggle has quieted down the “libertarian moment” talk. The dream of Paul as a “frontrunner” in waiting was based on a few polls that showed his support in the high teens. For a brief time, it made sense for libertarians to hitch their wagons to the story of a thriving national politician. That’s happening less now...

Our analytics partner Zignal Labs has some pretty dramatic evidence of Rand’s fall. In April, when he announced his candidacy, Rand was mentioned more than any other GOP candidate by both social and traditional media (and just behind Hillary Clinton)...

But over the last 30 days, eight of Paul’s rivals — including Carly Fiorina, Ben Carson, and John Kasich — got more media love than the Kentucky senator, who received just three percent of the media’s overall attention...

 Paul’s campaign, for all its problems, is still going to be the lens through which everyone else tracks the movement’s success. “Hopefully his father’s endorsement will goad him to become THE libertarian alternative,” says Gillespie, “rather than the seventh or eighth or 10th most conservative candidate in the GOP race.”

Rand's campaign comes off as a the campaign of a constipated man straining much to hard. No one likes to hear the strains of a constipated man, His campaign is now proven a strategic disaster, in addition to its outrageous distortions of libertarian principle. His strains were most loudly heard during the first Republican presidential debate, where apparently viewers watched and listened when Rand first strained and attacked Trump and then stuck their fingers in their ears the next time Rand strained.

There will be more declarations, more vicious, of the death of the libertarian movement, becasue of Rand, but from this short-term pain, perhaps the movement will refocus on intellectual advancement as opposed to supporting in politics the son of a great libertarian. A son who used his father's coattails to gain national notoriety, but simply didn't have the personality or skill set necessary to advance the ideas of liberty.

No the liberty idea has not vanished, Rand has simply been flushed.


 -RW