Good Rand, Maverick Rand

The senator from Kentucky is a renegade.  Countless times Rand Paul has thrown a monkey wrench into the gears of the Senate with his parliamentary mischief of filibusters, talk-a-thons, placing holds on nominations and objections to unanimous consents.

My chief complaint with Paul stems from the time he said he could not in good conscience vote to confirm Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State.  “I could not support appointing him as CIA Director in 2017, and for the same reasons, I will oppose his nomination to be our chief diplomat now.”

In a series of tweets, Paul revealed he had spoken repeatedly with the President and Pompeo noting, “President Trump believes that Iraq was a mistake, that regime change has destabilized the region and that we must end our involvement with Afghanistan.”

He continued, “Having received assurances from President Trump and Director Pompeo that he agrees with the President on these important issues, I have decided to support his nomination to be our next Secretary of State.”

Most recently, Paul criticized the President’s decision to kill IRGC madman Qassem Soleimani saying, “You’d have to be brain-dead to believe that we tear up the [JCPOA] agreement, we put an embargo on you and we kill your major general, and they’re just going to crawl back to the table and say, ‘What do you want, America?'”

If Jekyll and Hyde had a problem separating his good self from his bad impulses, good Rand Paul stepped forward yesterday to say he will force a vote on subpoenaing Hunter Biden and the whistleblower if Democrats insist on hearing from senior Trump Administration officials John Bolton and Mick Mulvaney.  He explained, “If you vote against Hunter Biden, you’re voting to lose your election, basically.  If you don’t want to vote and you think you’re going to have to vote against Hunter Biden, you should just vote against witnesses, period.”

He was warning Murkowski (R-AK), Romney (R-UT) and Collins (R-ME) they would be torpedoing their re-election chances by crossing party lines making Schmuck Schumer’s job of winning the Senate for Democrats in 2020 easier and guaranteeing an impeachment that will never end.