Rand Paul: Thin-Skinned, Flip-Flopping, Question-Dodging Candidate?

The Weekly Standard
makes the case—implicitly, at least—that Sen. Rand Paul might
not be ready for a presidential campaign in which his every word,
choice, and past statement will be picked apart.

TWK’s John McCormack asked Paul at an event in New Hampshire to
square his previous resistance to attacking ISIS—he didn’t want to
help Iran fight its battles, he said at the time—with his recent
support for aspects of President Obama’s plan. According to
McCormack, Paul responded by ending the Q and A session:

This was the second press conference that Paul had abruptly
ended on Friday. …

So when did the senator decide that he supported bombing
ISIS? “I don’t know if there is an exact time,” Paul told me
Friday.

I asked Paul twice if he was no longer concerned, as he wrote in
June, that bombing ISIS may simply turn the United States into
“Iran’s air force.” He didn’t respond to the
questions and indicated he wasn’t happy with this reporter as well
as a local reporter who repeatedly suggested Paul is an
isolationist.

“All right, thanks guys. Work on that objectivity,” Paul said,
as he walked away.

Agree or disagree that these sorts of questions are fair, Paul
is certainly going to get more of them as his presumed quest for
the Republican presidential nomination continues. Most journalists
he deals with certainly won’t be working on their objectivity
anytime soon.

Additionally, I’m a bit surprised that Paul—who prides himself
on ideological consistency—has been caught so off guard by this
line of questioning. Of course people want to know the specifics of
why and when Paul’s principled opposition to ISIS intervention
morphed into outright support for airstrikes. And of course hostile
reporters want to jump on the
Rand-is-a-thin-skinned-flip-flopping-sell-out narrative. It
certainly looks like Paul is merely hedging earlier
stances (absent any mitigating or clarifying information), and
that’s
why the
media is
writing so many stories about it.

Perhaps most people—and
even some libertarians—will find nothing objectionable about
Paul’s latest opinions. But from a political-imaging standpoint, he
clearly needs to explain his thinking more clearly when
contradictions arise, if only to safeguard against the
proliferation of stories like McCormack’s.