Kentucky Senator Rand Paul wants to have it both ways. He wants to be the edgy anti-establishment libertarian in Washington, D.C., while at the same time being buddy buddy with the entire Republican establishment. In his latest grandstanding attempt to show the world that he has the same principles as his dad, Rand took to the airwaves announcing that he was going to stall and block Paul Ryan’s omnibus spending bill.
But his threats to stall the spending bill quickly turned to empty words after a meeting with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Instead of actually being effective and delaying the bill like he said he would, Rand chose to simply vote no, which did exactly zero to hinder the bill, which ended up passing the Senate with 65 votes in the affirmative.
Prior to voting no, Rand spent hours on Twitter posting snarky tweets about all the bad things in the omnibus bill.
It’s easy to be tough on Twitter, and to get attention that way. It’s a lot harder to actually get things done and to stand up to people like Mitch McConnell. This move by Rand proves that he is no longer the anti-establishment hero many of us thought he was.
He is instead just another grandstanding pawn of the establishment.