And now, Rand of Ron

And now it's Rand Paul. He threw his hat in the circle yesterday in an endless hybrid litany of high church ritual and low church charisma. Rand Paul, like anyone named Bush or Clinton, lugs along familial legacy, although his famous father, Ron, never found a home in the Oval Office. But the Paul legacy is very much alive and especially vigorous right now. 

I don't know why that's true, but libertarian-ism seems mightily attractive to a throng of millennials who apparently believe, like Thoreau, that government is best which governs least. It's an attractive philosophy to some, a delight to those who've spent their lives with their sleeves rolled, red, white, and blue-blooded men and women who have all kinds of trouble tolerating Mitt's mutts, the 47% who leech off the rest of us.

That kind of hearty individualism has a strong foothold in American life and politics, and therefore always has an attraction, as well it should. A welfare state is antithetical to millions of Americans. After all, that which ye sew, ye shall also reap. You know.

The strength and the weakness of libertarian-ism is that it cuts across standard-fare political ideologies. Some conservatives love Rand Paul--as they did his father--because he despises government. He's a bootstraps guy, and America loves bootstraps. You work and you can make it. That's American word made flesh. 

Rand Paul's problem--like his father's--is that you can't really go half-way with this liberty business. If you don't want the government in your pocketbook or your church or your gun room, it makes no sense to want it in your bedroom either. If you just want to be left alone, it's impossible not to think foreign entanglements won't mean more in-your-face government. I mean, who do you think's going to be pay for all that shock and awe?

Rand Paul--like his father--doesn't bow before the idols of what Eisenhower the General called "the military-industrial complex," but how that refusal plays with fellow Republicans who genuflect to Netanyahu is already very clear--it doesn't. The Neo-cons who want to bomb Iran's labs would just as soon that Rand Paul shut the heck up. 

Or convert.

And Ron's son Rand has begun to convert on a couple of issues--like the administration's new Iranian peace proposal and that whole thing about gay wedding cakes. True libertarians would live and let live, right? If not, they're not true libertarians. Rand's starting to fudge, something the old man never did.

Does he have a shot at the roses? Who knows? It's clear he can drum up enthusiasm from a crowd that doesn't just look like me, just more retired white guys with guns in their basements (or in their holsters!), a dying breed. If any Republican is going to beat Hillary--or if any Republican is going to be any Democrat--that Republican is going to have to get more votes than the Chamber of Commerce. Rand Paul could just be that Republican, but he's going to have to depart from some Republican orthodoxy.

It's this simple. He may have to support Obama's peace initiative. How's that workin' out for you?

He'll be fun if he holds on to his dad's determined libertarian-ism, in which case, he'll probably lose. On the other hand, if he walks away from the ideology he touts, he'll be nothing more than just another also-Rand. 

On that question, the jury is still out. I wonder what the old man thinks.