Don't ever let it be said that Kentucky Senator Rand Paul isn't willing to play the game, because here he is
obediently parroting Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's absurd claim that Kynect, Kentucky's new health insurance marketplace, has nothing to do with repealing Obamacare:
Saying he favors a full repeal of "Obamacare" but citing a "technical question," U.S. Sen. Rand Paul on Friday gave cover to U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell a week after McConnell said Kynect and the federal law are not connected.
Paul, talking to reporters after speaking at an event in Frankfort, said he wasn't sure whether Kynect, Kentucky's implementation of President Barack Obama's health care law, should be dismantled, saying there were far bigger questions that make a simple answer impossible. [...] Like McConnell last week, Paul expressed a desire to turn back the clock and address health care in a different way, but when asked if the state exchange, subsidized under the federal law, should be dismantled, Paul said, "You know I'm not sure," suggesting a great deal of complexity to how "we unravel or how we change things."
So after spending the past five years saying Obamacare is one of the greatest evils in American history, now Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell are on the fence about whether Kentucky should continue with it, but they are sure that Obamacare should still be repealed?
Obviously, that doesn't make any sense. They are saying 1+1=3. And the reason is equally obvious: They don't want to deal with the political ramifications of coming out for repealing Kynect because it delivers insurance to 1 in 10 Kentuckians.
But here's the thing: As absurd as their claim is, it's not going to rebut itself. Whether she likes it or not, that task falls to McConnell's Democratic opponent, Alison Lundergan Grimes. Nobody else is in a position to do it. Clearly, McConnell is trying to get out of the Obamacare trap he's set for himself, and if he manages to wriggle free, he's going to be extremely tough—if not impossible—to beat. The good news is that it's not up to him whether he gets away with telling a lie this big: If Grimes wants to hold him accountable, she can.