Rand Paul is Being Awkward, isn't He?

Sen. Rand Paul has been bringing up President Clinton's past quite a bit lately, which is...awkward. I'm not really sure that singling out Clinton's misdemeanors really has anything to do with what is popularly called "the War on Women". I don't believe Sen. Paul really thinks it does, either--I admit, at first, I thought he was laying in groundwork for a possible face-off against Hillary Clinton.  But it really is a bit early for that, surely? There's no saying for sure she's even running, or that a swipe taken at her spouse, now, will even reverberate two years from now.That's why it makes sense to me that this has more to do with Clinton's coming to Kentucky in support of Sen. Mitch McConnell's Democratic challenger. That may be why Paul recently called on candidates to reject money raised by President Clinton.

It just seems like a mistake, though, to hit quite so firm a note on the topic of women's issues. For one thing, I don't think we would mistake Clinton's impropriety with actual policies of the Democratic Party. For another, it serves as an opportunity to point out that Sen. Paul (and Sen. McConnell, for that matter), have not been strong supporters of policy issues like the Violence Against Women Act or the Lily Ledbetter Act, and Paul himself has expressed a favorable opinion of the Lochner decision--which favored the ability of employers to exploit worker's for low wages (and would certainly hurt women where unequal pay is still the rule rather than the exception). He's also a hard-liner against reproductive choice in the case of abortion.

In other words, his policy views are pretty much typical of his party. But if he wants to bring personal behavior or guilt-by-association into the conversation, there was that one time he kidnapped a lady. And, well, there was this other thing when his fan club curb stomped a woman's head.  (There's is another female journalist who alleges harassment by Rand Paul supporters, and the Senator has also suggested he might duel Rachel Maddow over her reporting of his plagiarism.) That's an interesting pattern, isn't it?

Awkward.