President Rand Paul? ROTFLMAO

It's no secret that Blue America is as excited about the Shenna Bellows race in Maine this cycle, as we were about the Elizabeth Warren race in Massachusetts last cycle. The two women are different in many ways, of course, but both are strong, independent-minded, brilliant and focused on breaking through the same-ole/same-ole that has made Washington so utterly dysfunctional. Bellows raised some eyebrows among progressives in the last few weeks by asserting that she is looking forward to working across the aisle, not to compromise away the economic interests of working families the way conservative Democrats always do, but on issues of civil liberties and national security. She singled out Michigan Congressman Justin Amash and Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, both of whom have been trying to lead their party away from the warpath and away from a willingness to gut the Constitution in the name of self-selving Chicken Little squawking from the Military Industrial Complex. Others focused on how Paul and Amash are anti-Choice and economic neanderthals. We focused on creating a coalition across party boundaries to get some movement on crucial issues. One of my friends, however, chastised me for giving props-- by backing Bellows' approach-- to Rand Paul, a possible presidential opponent to the far more Establishment-oriented Hillary Clinton. I don't think he really has too much to worry about. Yes, ole Establishment Hillary is bound to be the Democratic nominee… but Rand Paul will never, ever, ever be the Republican nominee.

Paul has been polling well in the 2016 presidential sweepstakes among Republicans-- far better, in fact than the eventual nominee-- human sacrifice-- Ted Cruz. A CNN poll last week showed Paul as the top pick among Republican and Republican-leaning independent voters:

• Rand Paul- 16%
• Paul Ryan- 15%
• Rick Perry- 11%
• Mike Huckabee- 10%
• Jeb Bush- 9%
• Chris Christie- 8%
• Ted Cruz- 8%
• Marco Rubio- 5%
• Rick Santorum- 3%

David Corn dug up an old Western Kentucky University video from 2009 when Paul was running for Senate in which he is pretty clear that Cheney pushed the invasion and occupation of Iraq on George W. Bush-- something he had opposed when he worked for Bush's father-- because he was serving the interests of Halliburton. He even went so far as to admit that Cheney used 9/11, which had nothing whatsoever to do with Iraq, as an excuse for the attack. "It became an excuse. 9/11 became an excuse for a war they already wanted in Iraq." Rand Paul wasn't spouting standard Republican Party fare when he told the audience about Cheney's change of heart:

"He's being interviewed (in 1995), I think, by the American Enterprise Institute, and and he says it would be a disaster, it would be vastly expensive, it would be civil war, we'd have no exit strategy. He goes on and on for five minutes-- Dick Cheney saying it would be a bad idea. And that's why the first Bush didn’t go into Baghdad. Dick Cheney then goes to work for Halliburton. Makes hundreds of millions of dollars-- their CEO. Next thing you know, he's back in government, it's a good idea to go into Iraq."

The anti-establishmentarianism of a Rand Paul-- or a Justin Amash-- will always have some adherents in the GOP, but the Republican Party is a top-down authoritarian operation and those ideas will never become serious party doctrine. And it's not just what Corn called a "intra-party feud between Republican hawks and GOPers skeptical of foreign interventions." That's just a part of it, but not the whole story of what's going to make Ted Cruz the Barry Goldwater of 2016. Digby, writing for Salon today went right to the heart of it with her Tea Party Dunce-Off post: How Ted Is Quietly Kicking Rand Paul's Butt. "Ted Cruz," she wrote, "traveled to Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University and gave what everyone considered to be a fiery sermon about the gathering threat to religious liberty in America."

[I]t must be noted that the right wing of American politics is inherently reactionary and always animated by certain impulses, however they might be identified at a particular time. As sociologist Theda Skocpol, author (with Vanessa Williamson) of the book The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism, described them:

They are overwhelmingly older, white, conservative-minded men and women who fear that “their country” is about to be lost to mass immigration and new extensions of taxpayer-funded social programs (like the Affordable Care Act) for low- and moderate-income working-aged people, many of whom are black or brown. Fiscal conservatism is often said to be the top grassroots Tea Party priority, but Williamson and I did not find this to be true.

(They could have called themselves the “Get Off My Lawn Coalition,” but Tea Party has a nicer ring to it.) That description goes to the far right’s motives and those don’t change much. And one can see how both Rand Paul and Ted Cruz might feel they have a claim to these voters. But only one of them really does.

When Rand Paul won his Senate election, he famously proclaimed there was “a Tea Party tidal wave” and they had “come to take their government back.” And he can certainly appeal to the right’s ongoing antipathy to our black and brown brothers. His history and rhetoric has proved his solidarity with those particular Tea Party/conservative movement values time and again.

But Paul has a hard time speaking the language of the Christian Right even if he is largely sympathetic to their beliefs. For instance, here’s how Paul spoke about Christian values at Liberty U:

My hope, though, is that we don’t lose our appreciation of the miracle that springs forth from tiny strands of DNA. Einstein said there are two ways we can look at the world: we can either look at life as if there are no miracles or look at life and see miracles everywhere. I choose the latter.

Rand Paul would have been better off saving that speech for some New Age conference, not that he’d ever be invited to one. (I do have to give him some credit, though. Quoting Einstein at Liberty University takes some brass.) Cruz, on the other hand, hit the right-wing sweet spot. He managed to wrap alleged Christian persecution in the Constitution and tie it up with a red, white and blue bow.

These are troubled times and religious liberty, the very first liberty in the Bill of Rights, the very first protection we have, has never been more in peril than it is right now.

Which brings us to the until-recently-avoided third leg of the conservative stool: foreign policy. One gets the sense that enough time and distance from the Iraq debacle has finally passed that the hawks feel they can once more engage. And here is where the problem for Rand Paul really lies. He likes to portray himself as a man of principle in these matters, but his recent comments about the Ukraine and Russia crisis show how difficult it’s going to be to thread the needle as a presidential candidate. He sounds nearly incoherent as he tries to use the traditional GOP rhetoric of “strength” and “will” while staying true to his isolationist beliefs-- and succeeds at neither.

As for his stand on civil liberties, it’s been noted that the Tea Party had a very recent miraculous awakening on this issue. If Rand Paul can turn a bunch of elderly white conservatives into permanent civil liberties activists, it really will be a miracle.

By contrast, Cruz has come out swinging. He’s taken a very hard line on nearly every foreign policy and national security issue that’s come up in recent months and seems to be making a play for hawk of the walk. Last week he was among the first to call Iran’s new Ambassador to the UN a “slap in the face” to America and use it to criticize President Obama for being “naive,” the right wing’s favorite descriptive term after “feckless” when talking about Democratic foreign policy.

He knows what the Tea Party really wants, and isolationism isn’t it. They are mainstream Republicans on these issues:

And what about those billionaires? You’d think Rand Paul would at least have the backing of that constituency. After all, he promises to give them everything their little Randroid hearts desire. But they don’t like his foreign policy either and are promising to spend whatever it takes to stop him. In fact, the only real friends Paul has in the GOP are the measly 7 percent of young, white males who call themselves libertarians.

Cruz might not be able to get a GOP majority to vote for him when it comes down to it. But he’s bellied up to the Tea Party and pulled up the three-legged stool of traditional conservatism to make his appeal. Paul is teetering on a pogo stick.