He didn’t seem to be displaying any of the crazy notions that made it impossible for a serious conservative to support him. I was even entertaining the idea of supporting him for president in 2016.

Not anymore.

This interview posted today with Vocativ.com removed any question of whether I can support him.

There was a consensus among young people at the recent Conservative Political Action Conference that the GOP needs to get out of social issues. Do you agree?

I think it’s partly that. But I also think young people are very concerned with privacy. I think most young people’s lives revolve around their cellphones. They communicate with their parents by cellphone even when they’re in the house. And I think they are horrified by the idea of the government searching their records and being in possession of their records when they’ve not been suspected of a crime.

Right. But it seems what they’re saying is that the Republican Party should stay out of issues like gay marriage.

I think that the Republican Party, in order to get bigger, will have to agree to disagree on social issues. The Republican Party is not going to give up on having quite a few people who do believe in traditional marriage. But the Republican Party also has to find a place for young people and others who don’t want to be festooned by those issues.

As a libertarian, you believe in the sovereignty of the individual. But when it comes to the right for gays to marry, you said it should be left up to the states. Isn’t that a contradiction?

On issues that are very contentious, that involve social mores—I think that allowing different parts of the country to make their decision based on the local mores and culture is a good idea. But when it comes to taxes and benefits, the [federal] government out to take a neutral position—a way where marriage wouldn’t have an effect, positive or negative, on those things.

So he wants to make the GOP bigger by bringing in people who are enemies of our documented values, while spitting on the people already in the tent who are the most ardent supporters of our documented values?  What kind of moron comes up with that strategy for “success”?

It’s the same strategy that lost us the White House in 2008 and 2012…and apparently “Republican” leaders are chomping at the bit for a third-in-a-row loss. John McCain and Mitt Romney were at least clever enough to pay empty lip service on the campaign trail to the social values they had trampled with their records. Rand Paul apparently doesn’t even want to pay lip service to traditional American social values.

Why is it so many “Republicans” these days can’t seem to grasp the concept of leadership???  They’re big into followership–following the winds of pop culture ideas–but can’t be bothered to exercise leadership.

Our nations’ leaders following the flightly fetishes and preferences of today’s young people makes about as much sense as parents letting their children rule the home–a sure-fire recipe for chaos and disaster.  Thank God my parents stuck to their guns and told me to pull my head out of my *** when I was young; I was smarter than most my age back then, but I was still an idiot, thanks to pop culture influences.

Ronald Reagan didn’t worry about what pop culture thought. Ronald Reagan didn’t concern himself with getting hip with the empty-headed nonsense common to my generation back then.  Reagan articulated the right ideas, he explained the right ideas, he advocated the right ideas, and then he led the nation in pursuit of those right ideas.  And America went from an on-the-ropes has-been country with no confidence…to world leader once again, with a revived economy and the power to break a 70-year-old evil empire that had terrorized the world.

Real conservatives understand that the social issues form the foundation, the bedrock of all other issues.  You can’t have limited government and fiscal conservatism without social conservatism. When you have sexual anarchy in the culture resulting in the degradation of marriage and family, you have a host of societal ills which make it impossible to be fiscally conservative and limited in our government because government will be called on to deal with the mess created from a lack of social conservatism.  Those ills come from broken homes, poor academic performance from our nation’s children, juvenile delinquency, rising crime rates, poverty, the welfare state, and so on.

The men who created our country and set up its government understood this very well; they wouldn’t be caught dead abandoning social issues for the vultures of the Left to rip to shreds:

I lament that we waste so much time and money in punishing crimes and take so little pains to prevent them. We profess to be republicans, and yet we neglect the only means of establishing and perpetuating our republican forms of government; that is, the universal education of our youth in the principles of Christianity by means of the Bible; for this divine book, above all others, favors that equality among mankind, that respect for just laws, and all those sober and frugal virtues which constitute the soul of republicanism. – Benjamin Rush, signer of the Declaration of Independence

Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become more corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters. – Benjamin Franklin

We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. – John Adams

It is absolute insanity for a so-called “conservative” (not to mention for a Godless liberal) to surrender on social issues.

As for this business about “let the states decide?”  That might be acceptable…if the Leftist federal government hadn’t already declared all-out war on marriage, family, morality and normality. The Leftist-controlled federal government, through the executive branch and the activist judicial branch if not the legislative branch have already carpet-bombed American society and state governments with their heavy-handed social rot.

For conservatives to give up on fighting social issues would be unilateral disarmament on December 8, 1941.  Insanity!

I was already starting to get cautious about Rand Paul even before he said this, because I already knew Paul was backing RINO sellout Mitch McConnell. Paul sealed it in this interview:

You said you endorsed Mitch McConnell in Kentucky’s Republican senatorial primary because “there was nobody else in the race.” Would you have preferred to endorse someone else?

No, I’m happy with my endorsement, and I think Mitch McConnell is a good conservative.

If “conservative” is measured by the tone of the BS you can spin, sure McConnell is a conservative.

If conservative is measured by the ideology of the policies you support and oppose…McConnell is revealed as a pro-ObamaCare, pro-amnesty, anti-limited government, anti-Tea Party liberal.

And as always for rational people, actions speak infinitely louder than empty BS words.

It would be funny if it wasn’t so tragic: how “Republicans” today are so willing to urinate on the values of their most ardent supporters in the vain hope of getting the support of people who aren’t likely to support them anyway and would be lukewarm supporters at best.

Too bad. Rand Paul was looking so good on so many issues. But there is no way in Hades I’m supporting a “Republican” who calls for surrender on the most important issues our nation faces. A “conservative” who surrenders on social issues isn’t a conservative and a “Republican” who surrenders on social issues isn’t a Republican.

*** Bob Ellis *** Is a conservative writer and Life and Liberty News contributor

More commentary from Bob Ellis can be seen daily on the American Clarion