When you get an entire state party to change how it nominates a president you know either you have power, or your party can’t find anyone better. This is where today we find the Kentucky Republican Party and never-ending-running-for-president-in-his-DNA Senator Rand Paul.
Up until about 2 hours ago there was a law in Kentucky that prevented Senator Rand Paul from running for both president and his own seat in the Senate. (The former we know he will drop out of anyway because it’s the in his DNA) Paul’s plan was to change how Kentucky votes.
Rather than have a primary to assign its presidential delegates, why not change it to a caucus? Then we’ll sell it that shifting it earlier in the calendar “makes Kentucky more important”. By separating the presidential voting from the regular primary, Senator Rand Paul can participate in both. (For now we’ll ignore that having yet another state move – or create – its caucus earlier in the calendar year only results in even longer election cycles than what we have now… just what we were all hoping for… longer presidential elections.)
The astonishing development is that the Kentucky GOP agreed to it. An entire state has changed how it participates in the presidential primary all because Rand Paul asked them to… and, of course, if Senator / wanna be president Rand Paul pays for it.
I wonder if the people who donated to Paul’s campaign knew all their money would go to a creating a caucus in the great state of Kentucky.
So let’s get this straight: a state-wide party just changed how it operates and, for all intents and purposes, did so by being bribed by the very man who will benefit most from it (we can’t forget that the Paul family always performs better in caucuses than they do in a primary). When it comes to collection of sad moments in American politics, that one will come in very high on the list.
Besides the inherent corruption of the candidate who lobbied and benefits from adding of a caucus just so happening to also the person who is PAYING for the process, this bizarre twist in Kentucky GOP politics tells us one other thing: the Kentucky GOP doesn’t have a very deep bench.
It doesn’t have anyone better to run for Paul’s seat in the Senate besides a guy who pretends that he wants to be president. If they had someone better than Rand Paul, then they wouldn’t have changed the rule and made him choose which job he really wants (as did Marco Rubio in Florida).
The republican presidential primary process (sorry… caucus process) continues to dig itself deeper into the well of corrupt slime. It’s like Chicago in the early 1900’s.
