Since the disaster that was the 2012 election, Republican party bosses have been seized with terror at their own inefficiency, and rightly so. After all, the entire rotten George W. Bush-era theory of the electorate has been thoroughly exploded. No more will passive aggressive, socially intolerant, economic cronyism be able to limp across the finish line with enough support from the corrupt and the ignorant. Now, its entire existence as a major political force threatened, the GOP establishment has come up with any number of competing explanations for what went wrong, and prescriptions for where to go next.
While many of those explanations are badly wrong, and many of those prescriptions are just as badly conceived, a few common factors can be discerned. What the establishment wants, apparently, is someone with appeal to the young, with a willingness to campaign in places and among demographics that the GOP has ignored, with a way to frame the party's core orthodoxy of limited government in such a way that it appeals to a wider population, and plausible deniability regarding previous abuses that the party is still suffering for politically.
The fact is that if the establishment wants a candidate who is socially tolerant, unafraid of politically hostile territory, and a champion of new ideas, then they need look no further than Rand Paul.
The establishment has deluded itself into thinking that this figure will be a moderate, like Mitt Romney but hipper, with one finger perpetually perched in the air, and one hand ever extended to the other party in search of compromise. They conceive of those who oppose this sort of candidate as uniformly extreme, overzealous and politically foolish rubes, who would sooner self-immolate on the pyre of principle than take what little life the political system can offer them.
What many of those making this argument don't seem to realize is that the very people they are imagining oppose them are, in fact, already on their side. It is the apostles of cronyism who would sooner vanish as a political force than see the government teat yanked away, even temporarily. It is the voices of political and social intolerance who would rather offer ineffective, token opposition to the forces of bad governance, so long as those forces keep oppressing the people they hate slightly more than them. It is the emasculated servitors of "civility" who crush out any attempt at a different communications strategy for the simple sin of being more interested in winning than getting along. It is these people who the so-called "moderates" and "establishment" are placating, while imagining that they are excising them from the party. When it comes to the real, legitimate opponents of this strategy, however, nothing could be further from the truth.
The fact is that if the establishment wants a candidate who is socially tolerant, unafraid of politically hostile territory, and a champion of new ideas, then they need look no further than Rand Paul.
It is Rand Paul who has argued for a position that should be received conservative wisdom - the legalization of drugs, which even National Review supports - in spite of opposition from the various scolds and would-be nannies who try and shut down discussion of this issue.
It is Rand Paul who understands that a strong America is not afraid to fight, and win, but that winners know what they are fighting for, whereas losers only sacrifice more dollars, and the lives of more young men and women, to wars without explanation, and without end.
It is Rand Paul who has bucked his own party on unpopular votes, stood for the Constitution even when it was unpopular on both sides of the aisle, and been a persistent voice for fiscal restraint without also acting as a shrill, discrediting one.
It is Rand Paul who has proposed taking the Republican party outside of its current geographical reservation by arguing for a libertarian message even in the Northeast and on the West coast, the former of which produced Bill Buckley and the latter of which produced Ronald Reagan, and can do so again.
It is Rand Paul who came from a movement that rallied young people to a Republican candidate in numbers comparable only to Ronald Reagan.
It is Rand Paul who can stand for modernizing immigration without compromising principle, who can stand for the rule of law without endorsing the laws of every ruler, and who can lead the GOP from an intellectual ghetto even as his philosophy of liberty can lead the least unfortunate from so many literal ghettos.
To the establishment's credit, at least one of their most senior members understands this, and perhaps more will come to understand it as the movement to make Rand Paul the leader of the Republican party, and of this country, grows. That goal can be accomplished with or without them, but if the establishment will help, they will have proven themselves worthy of the leadership they seem to solely exist to maintain. It is an open secret that those in the establishment have no loyalty to the scolds, the bigots, the defenders of the gerontocracy and the people for whom "big government for me, but not for thee" is a rallying cry. In fact, their leaders seem to acknowledge, deep down, that those people are killing the Republican party.
To those leaders looking for a way to excise that cancer, we offer a candidate who can purge those people's ideas while still holding onto the mantle of principle. We offer someone who will give them their dreams of political outreach to the areas with which they are culturally a piece. We offer them a party led by a man who is open, unafraid of new ideas, and willing to have all debates, so long as those debates are marked by the honest competition of a marketplace of ideas.
We offer them Rand Paul for President. If they are honest about their goals for the Republican party, we hope they will join us in making that offer to everyone.