I had not heard his "accidents happen" put in the context of the West Virginia mine collapse. But, man, did his opponent take that ball and run with it.
KY Attorney General, Jack Conway, a tall, goodlooking, well-spoken man, with an affable, relaxed personality, makes Rand Paul look like a pipsqueek, to start with. And then here's what he had to say today about Paul's comments:
What did he say this morning? 'Sometimes accidents happen' in the context of miners? We have families right now in Western Kentucky grieving over their relatives that were lost in a mine collapse. We have families in West Virginia still grieving in that terrible mine tragedy over there. And he says 'sometimes accidents happen?' That's not only an empathy gap, that's cold and callous. And I think that's a real problem for his campaign."Conway will have to close the gap in the polls, but with Paul self-destructing every day in trying to explain his positions -- and now that Rachel Maddow has forced the other news hounds to confront him with the consequences of his ideology -- Conway may be able to pull it off.
Look, Rand Paul seems to want to be the prince of some national ideology. I want to be a senator for Kentucky, for the Kentuckians who are hurting right now.
As Mickey Nardo says, the real loser here may be Libertarianism. It's an attractive ideology, if you're one of the "haves" and think the "have nots" are just turned into lazy bums by government assistance. But start looking at the consequences of no government regulation of the private sphere -- whether it's for workplace safety, protection of our food supply, the environment, civil rights, or godhelpus greed run amok in the financial world -- and it looks callous, elitist, greedy, cruel, and just plain stupid for a modern nation. It's all about "I've got mine, Jack" and never mind about everybody else.
We're better than that.
Ralph
A poll taken Wednesday night -- 24 hours after the election but prior to the national controversy that erupted -- Paul led Conway by 59% to 34%.
ReplyDeletePaul also has 82% of the GOP faithful and 72% of unaffilliated voters -- both reflecting a big post-election bounce. Paul made a big splash and won big over his primary opponent.
On the other side, Conway just edged out his opponent by a 1% margin, so he got less bounce. Only 59% of Democrats support Conway, while conservative Dems favor Paul. ConservaDems are 15% of the electorate in KY.
So the statistics look grim for Conway. But (1) it's a Rasmussen poll, which tends to over-rate the conservative vote; (2) it doesn't reflect the post-election controversy over Paul's positions; (3) the campaign is just beginning, with indications that Conway will have a very appealing message to all reasonable people and will make effective use of painting Paul as a radical whose ideas take away too much that affects people's lives in the state.
But it has to be seen as a long shot at this point -- but one worth watching, if just for the excitement of watching it play out.
Now the next fun chapter in the Rand Paul story is to see the Republican establishment figures try to reign in and "help" this young upstart whom they worked against. I'd love to be a fly on the wall in the "unity" meeting between Paul and Mitch McConnell this weekend.
ReplyDeletePaul is said to be fiercely confident and independent, so he's not likely to take kindly to "help" from those he defeated. But he must realize that he can't keep letting himself spout off like he did for two days following the election.
Interesting quote from William F. Buckley, intellectual guru of the modern conservative movement, who also objected to the parts of the 1964 Civil Rights laws that regulated private businesses.
ReplyDeleteBut in 2004, he said: "I once believed we could evolve our way up from Jim Crow. I was wrong: federal interference was necessary."
The Dems should run one ad and one ad only. Paul's quote saying Obama is 'unamerican' for coming down on BP, alternating in a slide show with photos of the oil disaster and the mine disaster.
ReplyDeleteAt the end a silent screen with the question - Is this really the man who will represent you in Washington?
richard