Rand Paul Endorses Mitt Romney?

Neocons don’t typically oppose the Patriot Act, the NDAA, SOPA/CISPA, undeclared wars and unchecked spending.   Rand may not be perfect but he’s no neocon.  Perhaps the Paul clan has learned the hard lesson that in order to change the system from the inside you need first gain access and do to that you must appear to the establishment, at least to an acceptable extent, to be a “team player.”  That means that sometimes, as in the case of his vote for sanctions against Iran (or the pro-Romney comments) when you’re not in a position to effect policy change with your vote it is better to use that vote strategically to “cloak yourself with “themness” rather than voting on principle.  A dissenting vote on sanctions would have been pointless because the resolution still would have passed by an overwhelming majority and his dissension would only serve to isolate Rand from the rest of the party thereby making his election that much more difficult.
Being principled is great but *appearing* to be rigidly principled is a handicap in this political climate. Ron’s unyielding principle earned him the full weight of the establishment and his own party roadblocking his election. We won’t really know whether Rand is acting strategically or whether his actions honestly represent his views unless and until he succeeds in becoming POTUS.
Thing is, even if Rand’s comments and votes DO represent his true beliefs he is still better than 99% of the scumbags who rule the roost. Sometimes you have to be willing to accept successive approximations of the target in order to get there.  Refusal to support candidates who fail to adhere 100% to our preferred ideology is a losing proposition because *someone* is going to fill those positions. If we won’t support candidates with whom we agree on 90% of the issues we’ll only end up with more with whom we disagree on 90% of the issues.