Ryan Lizza, Washington correspondent for The New Yorker, claimed that Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) is motivated in his fight against the GOP Establishment by a desire to get revenge for how members of the establishment treated his father on Monday’s broadcast of “The Hugh Hewitt Show.”
After Hewitt said, “You’ve got sort of his Hamlet-like revenge the father thing going here. And I’ve just never, ever thought of Rand Paul in that way,” Lizza expressed his disagreement with Hewitt’s analysis, he cautioned, “you’ve got to be careful about psychoanalyzing these guys,” but continued “you have to remember that he [Rand] was 11 years old when his life changed forever. His dad went from being a widely-respected, small town OBGYN…And then boom, he’s 11 years old in 1974, and his dad is running for Congress, and suddenly is being attacked as a political extremist. He loses that race, he comes back in ’76 in a wild year in politics where he wins election, goes to the convention in Kansas City as a Reagan delegate, and they watch as the Ford delegates pillory the Reagan delegates. Literally, at one point during that convention, the Ford family members throw garbage on the Texas delegates. So he’s growing up in the sort of cradle of the new right, right?” Lizza stated.
Lizza added, “He sees his dad, you know, the victim of the establishment through all of those races…So his whole education through decades is his dad saying one thing, and the Republican establishment saying no, you’re wrong, and you’re too crazy for our party. Fast forward to 2008, right? Same thing happens.” He also claimed Rand’s intense loyalty to his father throughout the elder Paul’s political career was evidence for his claim.
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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