Rand Paul

Far less enthusiastic were the sclerotic mainstays of the neoconosphere. The ancient squirrel-jowled failed presidential candidate John McCain quoted a Wall Street Journal article that said Paul’s speech was designed to “fire up impressionable libertarian kids in college dorms” and lamented that it’s “the wacko birds on right and left that get the media megaphone.” An unidentified McCain aide allegedly said, “€œJumping on the Rand Paul black helicopters crazy-train isn’t good for our party.” Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said Paul was “ill-informed” and that his complaints were “ridiculous.” Neither McCain nor Graham attended the filibuster, as they were busy having dinner with Barack Obama.

Charles Krauthammer, whose face, indeed, resembles sauerkraut that has been smashed with a hammer, derided the idea that the feds would authorize the killing of American citizens on US soil without trial as “ridiculous and absurd.” William Kristol, who cleans his fingernails with the dried bones of Muslim infants, dismissed Paul’s speech as “fearmongering” and “kookiness.” David Frum, who I imagine masturbates to footage of Middle Eastern drone strikes, said that Paul “emerges from a milieu in which far-fetched scenarios don’t seem far-fetched at all.”

On the left side of the Holy Church of Left/Right Binary Thinking, MSNBC’s Krystal Ball (who expects people not to laugh at her name) and the eternally smirking Touré (who, when it comes to smarminess, is the equal of any white man) mocked the idea that a nice black man such as Barack Obama would ever abuse his executive power. A writer at Mother Jones, who apparently possesses the mystical ability to read his enemies’ souls, said that Paul didn’t mean a word of it and only pulled this stunt so he could release a fundraising letter the following day. Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center, who won an award as the homeliest and least charming anti-racist witch-hunter in world history, said that Paul had stirred up the paranoid and utterly baseless delusions of leftist nutjobs as well as “the black helicopter crowd of the folks on the far right.” And a blogger for AlterNet wondered why Paul never expressed such concern that the USA was drone-bombing “innocent brown people abroad.”

Miraculously, Paul was able to at least temporarily win the approval of leftists such as bullet-headed commie Van Jones. The wacky and disruptive antiwar group Code Pink even delivered chocolates and flowers to Paul’s Senate office. And during the filibuster, Oregon’s Democratic Senator Ron Wyden summed up in 26 words what it took Rand Paul 13 hours to say:

Mr. President, what it comes down to is every American has the right to know when their government believes that it is allowed to kill them.

But even though Rand Paul was able to impress people across the arbitrary and ultimately nonexistent left/right spectrum, he has often had trouble appeasing his own tiny core base. Hardcore acolytes of his father have repeatedly slammed him for endorsing Mitt Romney and kowtowing to Israel.

On Thursday, Eric Holder yielded to pressure and sent Paul a terse letter conceding that the government does not have the right to kill its own citizens on US soil without trial, and it’s refreshing to see Eric Holder concede to anything.

Only time will tell whether Rand Paul emerges as a formidable presidential contender in 2016 or whether he threw all his lightning bolts in one shot and will slowly fade away. For now he remains a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma swaddled in the Constitution.