Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal referred to GOP Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul as “personally attractive,” but not conservative, adding he thought he had a shot at winning the Republican nomination in 2012, according to an email sent to former President Bill Clinton released by the State Department Friday.
The note, sharing his thoughts on the 2010 primaries, said he believed there was a change happening within the Republican party, with candidates backed by prominent establishment members losing by a landslide.
“Rand Paul is personally attractive, but he is not a ‘conservative.’ He embraces the Tea Party movement and uses his platform to advocate byzantine conspiracy theories about Obama being in league with Castro and Chavez over climate change against capitalism, the Federal Reserve as a socialist plot, and other John Birch Society style nostrums,” he wrote.
The former senior adviser to president Clinton said Paul was more likely than his father, former Texas Rep. Ron Paul, who sought the GOP nomination in 2008 and 2012, to succeed in winning a presidential primary.
“‘He may well run for the Republican presidential nomination-he won the majority at a stacked Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington this Spring-further discombobulating a party without an obvious frontrunner for 2012 and certainly without a Reagan in the wings,” he continued. “Undoubtedly, Paul would do far better than his father did and might even win states, such as New Hampshire. Rand’s victory does not presage the restoration and renaissance of the GOP, but its continuing disintegration. The center of the GOP cannot hold.”
Blumenthal said he divide within the Republican party could be helpful in Clinton’s quest for the presidency.
“In the short-term, post-May 18 primaries, the splits within the GOP need to be highlighted; the takeover by extremist forces emphasized; the rejection of traditional Republicans within their own party stressed; and the economic consequences of the extremists-not least now, the gift of Rand Paul, the Republicans’ new spokesman on the scene-who would shut down Social Seucrity (sic), Medicare, student scholarships, and the interstate highway system-constantly targeted as a threat to economic recovery. Run, Rand, run!”
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