Rand Paul Rigs Game In Kentucky And Should Drop Out Of Presidential Race

In case you missed it, Rand Paul won a major state level, insider politics battle on Saturday within the Kentucky Republican Party.
After striking out in his attempt earlier this year to change a Kentucky law that prohibits the same person being on the ballot for two different offices, Dr. Paul changed tactics and staged a campaign of pressure politics to get the Kentucky Republican Party to hold a caucus in March rather than the traditional May primary for the 2016 election.
This will be the first time in Kentucky history that the party has ever done so.
The change over from a primary to a caucus system is expected to cost the state GOP between $400,000 – $600,000. Dealing with obvious concerns over spending the extra funds from many inside the party Rand Paul subsequently promised to raise and deliver at least $250,000 to the Kentucky GOP by September 18th. After a long Saturday of meeting with the special committee organized to decide on whether the change would be approved, a meeting that Rand Paul himself showed up for, the party decided in a 111-36 vote to allow it.
Well, there we go. Pay to Play politics is alive and well in the GOP. While this may not be surprising of the party, it does smack of hypocrisy on Rand Paul’s part, who spends hours going off on the importance of following our laws, but has quite clearly skirted the spirit of the law on the books in Kentucky. And it begs the question, are we a nation of laws or of men? Apparently, the latter in the Bluegrass State.
The law in Kentucky was meant to ensure that the state was never left unrepresented by a candidate winning more than one race and thereby leaving a vacancy. Rand Paul has apparently successfully used the same logic in getting what he wanted to flout that law. Insisting that if he ran for office it would leave Kentucky underrepresented. Well, that’s the choice you make when you decide to run for higher office while holding another one. A decision that someone like Marco Rubio had to make before putting his name in as a candidate for the 2016 presidential race.
In pulling this political stunt Rand Paul is showing his intention to use Kentuckians as the backbone to the presidential prize he really wants, rather than his professed dedication to representing them.
Today, with a more than adequate Republican presidential field for 2016, and Rand Paul’s poll numbers sliding – he won’t be the nominee – one can see clearly why he pushed so hard to get this exception passed. Spending valuable campaign funds that could be used to run ads in states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, seems like an utterly foolish choice.
If Rand Paul wants to continue being a U.S. senator then he should commit to the people of Kentucky. He needs to drop out of the presidential field now, rather than taking up valuable space. He can then contemplate picking it up again in eight years when he wouldn’t be up for re-election.
Lastly, I can’t stand that this has unpardonably made me agree with this guy: