June 10, 2010 09:10 PM UTC

Rand Paul Waffles on Jane Norton's Pledge

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• by: Colorado Pols

Kentucky U.S. Senate candidate Rand Paul, darling of the “Tea Party,” got into much publicized trouble last month after his primary victory gave him the all-clear to start regurgitating some spectacularly immoderate viewpoints: Paul’s troubles after being vaulted to prominence by the right wing could portend trouble all around the country for Republicans this fall.

Not altogether different from what we talked about yesterday evening with Colorado Senate candidate Jane Norton, Paul has had trouble reconciling the red meat sloganeering that endears candidates to the “Tea Party” with the need to appeal to the larger mainstream of voters in the general election. In Norton’s case, she released a TV spot in key GOP primary markets that directly contradicts other (arguably more reasonable) statements she’s made about the possibility of “repealing Obamacare.” As for Rand Paul? He’s waffling back and forth on–sweet irony for Norton–abolishing the Department of Education! Louisville’s WHAS-TV reports:

Rand Paul went back on local radio in Kentucky on Wednesday, on Leland Conway’s WLAP show.

In the interview, Paul appears to have shifted his position again on whether he wants to abolish the Department of Education…

“There are many departments, including the Department of Education, that the founding fathers intended to be handled at the state level,” Paul said.

The reference to the Department of Education appears to be at odds with Paul’s answer to my question several weeks ago when I asked him directly:

“Do you want to abolish the Department of Education?”

“No,” he replied, [Pols emphasis] “I say what we do is take a multi-step look at every department. but you do look at everything across the board and say ‘what  can we downsize? what can we privatize? ‘what can we eliminate?'”

It’s just a slobbering mess of contradiction, isn’t it? Especially since Paul, whatever he and his campaign say now, has called for ‘abolishing’ the Department of Education as daily stump-speech material from the very start of his campaign. As you can see, Jane Norton isn’t the only candidate all over the map on this crazy hodge-podge of slogans “Tea Party” devotees call “issues,” though until August 10th, we don’t expect Norton’s views to shift much further. And Paul can always contradict himself again, one-upping Norton’s 360 degree pirouette on “repealing Obamacare.”

Because it’s clear they’re not targeting voters who even take notes, let alone compare them.