Rand Paul’s Daddy Issues

[DonViejo]

Olivia Nuzzi

The man that led the Kentucky senator to Washington could prevent him from entering the White House.

Just a few months into his campaign for the Republican nomination for the United States Senate in 2009, Kentucky’s Rand Paul was interviewed by Alex Jones, a noted conspiracy theorist who spreads his message on his syndicated radio show and on his website, Infowars.com. Jones is a moon landing denier who believes the government acted as a guiding hand for the September 11 attacks and the Oklahoma City bombing, buys into the New World Order—the theory that a group of so-called elites are conspiring to form a singular, totalitarian global government—has accused American pop stars of being purveyors of Illuminati mind control—and that’s not even the half of it. Paul, his eyes wide, offered, “I think it’s a little scary in our country that we’re doing what's called ‘political profiling.’ People are worried about profiling people for the color of their skin. Now we’re profiling people for the color of their thought.” For any candidate laboring to gain admittance to America’s most exclusive club, the interview would have seemed an unlikely pit stop—but Rand Paul was not just any candidate.

Jones has recalled encountering Paul for the first time nearly two decades ago, when he heard him on Republic Radio, with personality Mark “Mark from Michigan” Koernke, another conspiracy theorist and part of the militia movement in the 1990s. Paul was on the air, Jones remembered, speaking on behalf of Ron Paul, his father, who was running a tough campaign for reelection to Congress in Texas. “It’s just weird how time flies. [Rand will] probably end up being president if we’re able to turn this country around. He’s got a real shot at it, except for the electronic voting machine fraud. I can read the tea leaves as anyone can,” Jones told his listeners.

Jones was right—about the tea leaves. Paul has secured his status as the early frontrunner for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. He is being baited daily to say, definitively, that he is running. The younger Paul is the successor to the Ron Paul throne. He inherited his fans, his donors, his staff, and his friends in the media. But to continue on the path to the nomination that he is on, he will have to prove that he is mainstream enough to win—which will mean, in part, emancipating himself from the very person who gave him literal and—not so long ago—political life, and from the fringe allies, like Jones, he was handed.

All the while, his father continues to make headlines with his every eyebrow-raising utterance.

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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/07/28/rand-paul-s-daddy-issues.html