SLAPBACK MOUNTAIN, NEW HAMPSHIRE — Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) learned how to run a presidential campaign watching his father, Rep. Ron “Which One Of You Young’ns Stole My Corn Pone?” Paul (R-TX) try and fail to garner the Republican nomination twice. In 2008 Ron, the favorite of young, college-aged libertarians with about a semester and a half’s worth of political science classes under their belt, wound-up losing to Sen. John McCain, failing to make much of an impact on the primaries. In 2012, despite a slightly improved showing, the Republican base wasn’t attracted to his platform of “government is bad, but if the same people running the government are running businesses instead they are saintly, good people” quite enough and he wound-up not really challenging eventual nominee Gov. Mitt Romney (R-Skynet).
If current polling trends continue, the Junior Paul will wind-up having the same amount of success in 2016 as his father did in the previous two elections. According to anonymous staffers on Rand’s campaign, the Kentuckian knows he’s in hot water and needs to make a big splash. That’s why he’s recently come out swinging against current front runner Donald Trump, and that’s why, according to the same staffers, Rand has decided to ratchet up his traditional, fiscal conservative rhetoric.
When asked about whether his flat-tax plan would improve or exacerbate income and wealth inequality, Sen. Paul told Fox News host Chris Wallace last weekend that “income inequality is due to some people working harder and selling more things.” Rand would add that “we all end up working for people who are more successful than us and that’s a good thing, that more money will be back in the economy.”
Paul staffers say that they are aware how dangerously close to Mitt Romney’s now infamous “47 percent” speech — in which he told a closed-door group of rich campaign donors that nearly half the country wouldn’t ever vote for a Republican because they are too enamored with the “free stuff” that President Obama and the Democrats offer. The term “free stuff” has become a sort of derogatory term used by conservatives to chide liberal Americans for believing their tax dollars could and should be spent in other places, not that things will be magically cost-free because they say they’re free. However, the Paul campaign acknowledges that they can’t “move up in the polls unless [Sen. Paul] starts throwing red meat at the people who have been blaming the working poor for their problems all their lives.”
At a campaign stop in Slapback Mountain, New Hampshire, Rand told an assembled crowd that he “did a lot of thinking last year” about income inequality. “I had so much time to think about it, because we only worked 112 days total last year,” Paul told the crowd, “and that led me to have some pretty big revelations about how to fix this economy of ours. And by ‘fix,’ I mean of course give more power to the corporations that have corrupted our government — which of course is only the government’s fault and not the fault of the greedy, misanthropic oligarchs who have bought us all off.”
“When you have so much time off during the year to raise funds for your campaign, you get a chance to talk to the people who matter most,” Paul said continuing, “no, not the voters. The donors. The sweet, sweet, donors. They assured me that working roughly a hundred days fewer than the average American while simultaneously insinuating that the only reason anyone is poor in this country is because they don’t work hard enough isn’t hypocrisy, it’s just good old fashioned Republican policy.”
Paul said that “no one should be offended by my stating the plain and obvious fact that if you find yourself broke in America, it’s for two reasons.” The first reason he said is that “you’re probably not looking hard enough for your magic, Made in the U.S.A. boot straps to pull yourself up by.” The second reason is that “you’re a lazy poor and you don’t have the work ethic of a good, strong, rock-ribbed conservative, like me, the guy who worked fewer days than most college interns do.”
Senator Paul also told the crowd that “just because you work two jobs” and those jobs “require you to work 35 hours a week each,” that doesn’t entitle them to any assistance. “Pretty much if you find yourself in line to take a hand-out, no matter how many shitty jobs you’ve had to take to pay off your for-profit college’s useless degree, you are a mooching loser taker.”
“Just remember folks,” Paul said as he was ending his speech, “the liberal agenda is to convince you that people who have more money than God are doing well enough to where we don’t have to shelter and protect them so much, and they can afford a few more pennies on their dollar.” Paul took a deep breath. “That is crazy talk of course. All real, God fearing, ammo hoarding, red, white and blue Members Only Jacket wearing, firework humping American knows that only through hard work and/or corporate kickbacks is the only way to get ahead in America. God Bless America, God Bless the Free Markets, and God Bless this rat-looking thing on my head!”
