"Where does your talking points come from? The Democrat National Committee? Rachel Maddow?"

[Amerigo Vespucci]

Monday, May 24, 2010 07:25 ET
War Room
Rand Paul goes into hiding

By Gabriel Winant

Last Friday, Kentucky Senate candidate Rand Paul went on ABC's "Good Morning, America," and the first words out of his mouth after saying hello were, "When does my honeymoon start? I had a big victory."

It must be thrilling for a political novice like Paul to win such a resounding victory in a Republican primary while maintaining his posture of ideological purity. The guy is clearly not prepared, however, for bridging the difference between a primary and a general election. Talking to George Stephanopoulos on Friday, he complained, "For an entire 24 hours, I’ve suffered from them saying, 'Oh, he wants to repeal the Civil Rights Act.' But that's never been my position." Stephanopoulos tried to clear through Paul’s frenzied deflection, to point out that Paul is obviously lying about his own clearly-stated beliefs. There comes an amazing moment at 1:40 of this video, where Stephanopoulos announces that he's going to read a letter to the editor Paul wrote in 2002, and Paul has to jump in and start filibustering. It's a rare sight: a candidate for federal office flailing to keep his own words off the air.

So the GOP nominee is now banking on people knowing as little about him and his opinions as possible. Paul is a candidate who believes himself to be a daring truth-teller, but refuses to answer substantive questions as "gotcha" attempts, or veers off on non-sequiturs to get away from straightforward interviewing. Obviously, this is a great day for democracy.

Paul's opposition to fairly bedrock pieces of American law, however, raises a whole host of other questions that he really ought to answer before he expects people to vote for him. If he's anything like consistent, it's hard to imagine that he believes in social security or Medicare, the minimum wage -- just to name a few. But how can we be sure? What will he admit to? In other words, he's exactly the kind of candidate who should be going on Meet the Press.

http://www.salon.com/news/rand_paul_kentucky_senate_republican/index.html?story=/politics/war_room/2010/05/24/rand_paul_meet_the_press