Rand Paul is Politically “Divergent” – and So Must be Stopped!

It turns out that Divergent isn’t just the
top movie in America. It’s also playing out in the run-up to the
2016 presidential race, with Sen. Rand Paul, the Kentucky
Republican, in the starring role.

Based on the first volume of a wildly popular young-adult
trilogy, Divergent is set in America of the
near-future, when all people are irrevocably slotted into one of
five “factions” based on temperament and personality type. Those
who refuse to go along with the program are marked
as divergent—and marked for death! “What
Makes You Different, Makes You Dangerous,”reads one of the
story’s taglines.

Which pretty much sums up Rand Paul, whose libertarian-leaning
politics are gaining adherents among the plurality of Americans fed
up with bible-thumping, war-happy, budget-busting Republicans and
promise-breaking, drone-dispatching, budget-busting Democrats.
Professional cheerleaders for Team Red and Team Blue—also known
as journalists—aren’t calling for Paul’s
literal dispatching, but they are rushing to explain exactly why
the opthalmologist has no future in politics.

That’s from my latest
Daily Beast column, which explores why everyone—from
liberals at New York to conservatives at National
Review—are rushing to explain why the rising junior senator
from Kentucky and his brand of libertarian-leaning ideas can’t
possibly be as popular as they are.

Whether or not [Paul] actually wins the Republican nomination,
much less the White House[in 2016], is besides the point. The
question is whether the politics of the future will be the same as
the politics of the present.

Read the whole thing.