Sen. Rand Paul
Sen. Rand Paul has apparently decided that when one of your aides has to resign because his past as a John Wilkes Booth-loving
"Southern Avenger" comes to light, the best defense is a good offense. A wildly outlandish claims kind of offense.
"I don’t think there’s anyone in Congress who has a stronger belief in minority rights than I do," Paul told Yahoo News. Yes, Rand Paul, who opposes federal laws prohibiting businesses from racial discrimination, says he has a stronger belief in minority rights than, say, Rep. John Lewis, who had his skull fractured marching on Selma.
And, while Paul has a few reasonable ideas about fairer treatment of non-violent drug crimes, most of his thinking about bringing non-white people into the Republican Party appears to be the same old BS:
“There are millions and millions of African Americans who go to church and who are, in many ways, religiously conservative. We need to ask them what would it take to get people in your congregation to consider voting for a Republican? Because one of the ironies is that if you go into any African American church in Chicago or any big city, they’re predominately social conservative,” Paul told Yahoo News. “If you were to poll African Americans just on issues without party, you would find that they are actually sympathetic to Republican issues on many fronts, but aren’t voting Republican. I think some of it is because they sense either hostility or a lack of kinship or a lack of empathy coming from Republicans.”
Let's see: 93 percent of African Americans want to
raise the minimum wage to $10.10 and 69 percent think
abortion should be legal. There's a major economic issue and a major social issue, and black people are not exactly lining up behind the Republican positions.
But maybe they'll change their minds once they realize that no one in Congress has a stronger belief in minority rights than Republican Rand Paul. As long as you don't think eating in restaurants and staying in hotels counts as a right.