THE PAUL PALL – AT 8:04 A.M. ET:  Anyone reading Urgent Agenda knows that we are not charter members of the Rand Paul Fan Club.  And, true to form, it didn't take long for Paul to get into trouble, after winning the Kentucky GOP nomination for the U.S. Senate.

Paul, with extreme dumbness, appeared on the Rachel Maddow program on MSNBC, a show that has an audience of six.  That was the first mistake.  Why, Rand?  Why?

He then fell into a trap marked TRAP! in big letters by answering a question designed to show that he was a racist.  He discussed his long-standing philosophical objections to parts of the 1964 civil rights law, one of the landmark pieces of legislation in American history, which passed only because Republicans supported it so strongly.

Now Paul has had to backtrack, essentially rejecting the very stand he took on the air.   The Washington Post reports:

"Let me be clear: I support the Civil Rights Act because I overwhelmingly agree with the intent of the legislation, which was to stop discrimination in the public sphere and halt the abhorrent practice of segregation and Jim Crow laws," he said.

That's nice.  But on the show he said:

Paul, who beat an establishment-backed candidate in Tuesday's GOP primary, appeared on MSNBC's "Rachel Maddow Show" and, in a long exchange with the liberal host, repeated his belief in a limited government that should not force private businesses to abide by civil rights law.

In other words, amateur at work.

I wish Republicans, or people who call themselves Republicans, would understand that playing the race card is a standard, almost ritualistic liberal practice.  If you are not with us, you must be a racist.  It's what they learned in college, assuming they went to one of the schools on the "approved" liberal list. 

While Paul will survive this, he is tainted.  Other Republicans immediately distanced themselves from his on-the-air views.  He's already intensely disliked by the GOP establishment.  And the press hasn't even begun to discuss his wacky foreign- and defense-policy views.

The controversy should shock anyone familiar with Rand and his father, Ron Paul.  But it is not helping the GOP cause for November, which requires reasonable unity, not distractions that the liberal media will gladly provide.

May 21, 2010