Rand Paul, bloviating with Sean Hannity tonight, decided that the whole civil liberties/libertarian thing just isn’t working for him with Republican voters, and dropped any pretense about it.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) suggested Wednesday night that the Black Lives Matter movement should change its name.

“I think they should change their name maybe … if they were ‘All Lives Matter’ or ‘Innocent Lives Matter,'” the GOP presidential candidate said during an appearance on Fox News’s “Hannity.”
“I am about justice and, frankly, I think a lot of poor people in our country, and many African-Americans, are trapped in this war on drugs and I want to change it. But commandeering the microphone and bullying people and pushing people out of the way, I think, really isn’t a way to get their message across,” Paul added.

It’s not really that hard to understand - black people have been subjected to a centuries long history of subjugation and terror, legal and social, that continues in both obvious and not so obvious ways today. So advocating for Black Kives isn’t about leaving anyone else out, but focusing attention where it needs to be directed. If Jews or Irish or Italians still suffered the systematic discrimination and social opprobrium that blacks do, maybe they should be included. But many groups have successfully made the transition from despised nonwhite status to being accepted as white. Blacks, needless to say, have not.

And what’s with this “innocent lives” thing? Do civil liberties and the Constitution only apply when a targeted person is not guilty of some offense? Stupid - that’s when civil liberties and constitutional protections are most needed, to ensure a fair trial and a just outcome. Rand Paul has always been a fraud, and now it’s becoming patently obvious.

And I very much love this comment:

“What I’m finding, when I’m on the south side of Chicago or I’m in Detroit, people are saying, ‘You know what, I’m not sure I’m ready to be a Republican yet, but you know what, the Democrats have taken me for granted, and I’m willing to listen to people who are interested in making my life better,’” Paul said. 

You know who told him that? I’ll bet it was Clarence Thomas and Ben Carson - who both have made it abundantly clear that having succeeded based on affirmative action and government assistance, they are eager to pull up the ladder behind them snd make sure that nobody else ever benefits in the way they have - a psychiatric condition that calls out for a better name than simply narcissism.