Medved's Odd Criticism

In a recent column appearing on AOL News, movie critic and social conservative Michael Medved expressed his criticism of those in the national news networks for possibly waiting until Kentucky Senate contender Rand Paul had won his Republican primary before asking him questions that led to some offbeat, controversial, and potentially damaging statements. Statements such as his reservations with the 1964 Civil Rights Act and his strong opinion that President Obama was treating BP, the company responsible for the ongoing catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico (and soon the U.S. east coast) too harshly with his "boots" on them. That Rand, like his quirky father and perennial presidential candidate Texas Representative Ron Paul, entertained some unconventional views based on his libertarian and conspiracist background was already commonly known around the media and political scene. Medved thinks, though, that certain folks may have waited until the GOP was committed to him before "exposing" him nationally and garnering for him some understandably negative attention.

What nonsense! The Republicans in Kentucky and nationwide could easily have brought out Rand Paul's various troubling opinions had they not been sucking up to the tea party movement, taking special care not to offend any of them. They believed then that the important thing was to get voters riled up against the Democrats and they would all then dutifully line up behind them in November like ducks in a pond and vote the Grand Old Party back into power. And the teabaggers were seen as a way to whip up the anger, even though it was often a very irrational, even paranoid anger. For Michael Medved to accuse those in the media, who understandably gave Paul the timely attention and interviews immediately following his remarkable and newsworthy primary victory, of bias in this regard is just a little bit ingenuous.

Besides, Paul's comment taking the side of British Petroleum and his strong denouncing of our president for being too tough on them (which is diametrically the opposite of the prevailing national mood) was made and based on the present situation, not that of the primary period. And it is not exactly as if he is being forced into interviews, either. Paul wants to push his ideology into the mainstream and is using his Senate candidacy as a means to do that. Surely the geniuses in the Republican Party hierarchy could have seen that!

So maybe after all of Rand Paul's different viewpoints are finally out in the open for everyone to see and weigh in on, the voters of Kentucky will still vote the guy into office. However, his Democratic opponent, Jack Conway, already firmly established and known as the state's attorney general, is politically much more in line with the traditional conservatism that prevails in the Bluegrass State. Whoever wins the general election between Paul and Conway is very likely to become a big thorn in the side of his own party during his tenure in the Senate. It should be interesting to see how this campaign develops.