WASHINGTON – There once was a pretty good ballplayer named Steve Kemp, an all-star outfielder for the Detroit Tigers back in the late ‘70s, early ‘80s, whose career sadly experienced a fairly precipitous decline, eventually forcing him to ride the pines for the then-moribund Pittsburgh Pirates for a short period.
Questioned about his waning abilities with the bat, Kemp told a reporter that moving from the American to the National League may have had something to do with it, and the rotator cuff injury he suffered might also have had an impact.
“Or,’’ Kemp said, “maybe I just stink.’’
Apparently the thought that he may just stink at the job of running for president hasn’t quite dawned on Sen. Rand Paul, R-Bowling Green, the quasi-libertarian whose performance in what turned out to be a cavalry charge for the GOP nomination was, to put it kindly, a disaster, and not a cheap one at that.
Paul, for the uninitiated, entered the campaign with, like Philip Pirrip, great expectations. He was one of the favorites coming out of the gate but stumbled early, pulling up just after the first turn, more familiarly known as the Iowa caucuses.
Now there are plenty of theories revolving around why Paul bombed. He was counting on truth-seeking American youth to line up behind his bid, attracted by his small government philosophy and wariness about foreign entanglements. Instead those cats went running in the opposite direction, embracing Democratic Socialist Bernie Sanders, who offers similar sentiments about global affairs but longs to grow the federal government to the size of Jupiter.
Regardless, Paul couldn’t make the sale, didn’t even reach the front door to knock on it, as a matter of fact. And now he’s telling us why.
Appearing on “Morning Joe’’ on MSNBC, a sort of early morning catch-all for political types, Paul proclaimed that the Republican primary process is “biased’’ in favor of everybody’s favorite hoodoo, “the establishment.’’
“I don’t think they’re rigged, but they are biased,’’ Paul said. “And intentionally so.’’
The process he voluntarily participated in is not “rigged,’’ exactly, Paul noted, because that would indicate a certain degree of illegality.
“No, it’s done somewhat in the open,’’ Paul said. “But they are biased in favor of the establishment.”
Now you may recall Paul was one of the 17 candidates in the early GOP field who promoted himself as anti-establishment, preaching the libertarian sermon, leaving the Hollywood casting call slots to the likes of former Florida Gov. Jeb! Bush, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-FL, and about a dozen others who warmed the cockles – whatever a cockle might be – of your everyday, Chamber of Commerce, GOP regular.
But it didn’t take long for Bush, Rubio and about a dozen others to follow Paul into oblivion. And then there were three. One of them, Ohio Gov. John Kasich, is as close as you’re going to get to an establishment figure among those still standing, and he has about as much of a chance of grabbing the nomination at this juncture as Haystacks Calhoun has of riding the winning horse in the Kentucky Derby.
That leaves billionaire blowhard Donald Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-TX, battling for the crown, and you simply don’t get more anti-Republican establishment than those two unless Vito Marcantonio has been resurrected.
The establishment is so anti-Trump that party regulars are openly plotting to deny him the nomination if he fails to magically round up the 1,237 delegates required to grab the title at the party’s national convention in Cleveland. Cruz, it’s fair to say, was behind only Trump as the contender most despised by the establishment but a lot of those folks are grudgingly getting behind Tailgunner Ted as the lone hope for fending off a Trumpian disaster.
Talk about taking a lemon and making lemonade.
So, one must ask Sen. Rand Paul: If the Republican presidential primary system is so biased in favor of establishment candidates and against anti-establishment contenders such as yourself, how did these two jamokes wind up as the survivors?
Get ready for it…you know it’s coming.
THE PRESS!
Well, duh.
“I think virtually everybody got trumped in the sense that I mean, he was getting 25 times more coverage than all of the other candidates combined,’’ Paul said. “It was overwhelming. And Cruz was able to stick around and make his way through that, and that’s a good strategy. But I’m not so sure it necessarily worked for me, either, because our coalition was a little bit different than others’, and but I do think that on an intellectual plane, our ideas are winning, whether or not we should always intervene in civil war. I think we’re winning some of those battles, at least among the public.”
Paul simply lacked the dynamism to successfully conduct a national campaign, sought to sell a bunch of goods to a market that wasn’t buying and failed to grasp the priorities of the party’s white male constituency
Now back in the olden days, say late 2015, a lot of folks were quite pleased that the press was quoting Trump quite liberally. The Donald already had taken off on Mexicans, Muslims and women, not even trying to hide the fact that he is a bigot and misogynist. And people in the opposing GOP camps, and the Republican establishment, were quite pleased, secure in the theory that the terrible things Trump was saying would ultimately blow up in his face and voters would quickly drop him like a bad habit.
But the theory backfired. In overwhelming fashion, white men constitute the largest portion of the Republican base and a substantial number of them harbor the same suspicions of African-Americans, Latinos and women that Trump rather openly displayed. Faced with the prospect of being knocked from their vaunted and traditional position in the nation’s catbird seat, white men rallied behind him and a substantial but waning number remain there.
So those who at one time backed the strategy of permitting Trump to hang himself on his proverbial own petard under the pretense that you don’t step in when an opponent is in the process of committing suicide, now find themselves, like Paul, on the outside looking in. And Trump is receiving more coverage than ever – that’s what happens when you’re the party’s frontrunner.
No. If Paul were honest with himself, he would come to the same conclusion as Cassius, who famously told Brutus that the fault “is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.’’ Paul simply lacked the dynamism to successfully conduct a national campaign, sought to sell a bunch of goods to a market that wasn’t buying and failed to grasp the priorities of the party’s white male constituency.
The heck with small government, build the damn wall!
Claims that “our ideas are winning’’ are about as empty as his campaign coffers. Now Paul has vowed to support the GOP nominee regardless of who it might turn out to be, even Trump, the man he formerly vowed to dispatch down the same path as the passenger pigeon and the dodo bird.
Talk about going establishment.
Washington correspondent Bill Straub served 11 years as the Frankfort Bureau chief for The Kentucky Post. He also is the former White House/political correspondent for Scripps Howard News Service. He currently resides in Silver Spring, Maryland, and writes frequently about the federal government and politics. Email him at williamgstraub@gmail.com.
I think Rand Paul has always viewed his Senate seat as just a stepping stone to the Presidency. Can you name anything he has done for Kentucky; I can’t. He’s now getting around the state in an attempt to shore up his Senate reelection. I would really like to see the Lexington Mayor win the seat but I have to admit that’s pretty unlikely. The President’s “War on Coal” attack ads will resonate from hill to holler and Kentucky voters will fall in line and vote for anybody with an “R” behind their name. I’m afraid Paul will be that name.