The Lexington Herald-Leader reports on the reaction of Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) to President Biden’s Inaugural Speech:
Getting one’s nose out of joint in Minnesota.
Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul quickly criticized President Joe Biden’s inauguration speech on Wednesday, saying Biden was calling Republicans racist.
“If you read his speech and listen to it carefully, much of it is thinly-veiled innuendo calling us white supremacists, calling us racists, calling us every name in the book, calling us people who don’t tell the truth,” Paul said on Fox News Primetime.
Paul said he also thought Biden was calling his political opponents liars.
Steve Benen purports to be puzzled over Paul’s odd reaction, but I think it’s obvious.
Victimhood is the Gorilla Glue of the conservative movement these days, especially between leaders and followers. The movement, with emphasis on the QAnon and Stop The Steal segments, suffered a serious defeat in the Presidential and Senatorial elections, even if it did well in the House, and the humiliation of the insurrection at the US Capitol on 6 January served to underline for independents the moral depravity of the conservative movement at the present time.
Senator Paul is absolutely emblematic of a GOP leadership that has come to the fore by embracing victimhood, and therefore, to keep cohesive a movement that put him in a position of power and prestige, he has to play to it, even when the logical jump is quite thin on the ground. Rand is known as a flake’s flake in the political world for the objections and positions he takes, which can bewilder even his GOP colleagues. He has to have this binding glue, his assurance to his constituents that they are being accused, unjustly, of being racists and insurgents, in order to push his oddball claims.
Even if that accusation didn’t happen.
The Herald-Leader continues:
Paul’s assessment was a sharp contrast to the widespread accolades for Biden’s remarks that predominantly emphasized unity following Trump supporters’ Capitol riot that was set off in part by Trump’s election fraud lies and misinformation. Some Republicans, including Kentucky’s other senator, have called Trump and his acolytes’ comments lies.
Twitter users criticized Paul’s comments, saying that it’s not Biden’s fault if Paul was offended when Biden condemned racism. Some also pointed out Paul’s opposition to an anti-lynching bill last year. Paul said at the time he was worried the bill would “conflate lesser crimes with lynching,” according to Politico. …
Paul was one of the GOP members who repeatedly pushed election fraud claims that had been disproven. During a Senate hearing in December he said “The election in many ways was stolen and the only way it will be fixed is by in the future reinforcing the laws.” His office said Tuesday that he didn’t believe discussing election fraud provoked the mob.
Which is a pile of bullshit. The entire and feeble excuse for ransacking the US Capitol was that the election was fraudulent, which the Courts, time after time, from judges of all stripes, rejected, sometimes with the Court-equivalent of laughter and shouts of Get out of here, you grifters.
It’s important to emphasize that the claims of fraud were emphatically rejected by the ultimate authority, and that the continuing claims are nothing more than attempts to infuriate the mob – again, through victimhood.
Those who continue to try to use concerns about fraud as a reason for being angry or advocating for voting rules changes must be confronted with this circular reasoning – and shamed.
