Rand Paul is Kentucky’s best presidential hopeful in 2024

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Rand Paul is Kentucky’s best presidential hopeful in 2024
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If any Kentuckian is in the running for the 2024 presidential election, it is Sen. Rand Paul, not Gov. Andy Beshear. It was recently argued that Beshear would be an ideal candidate to step in if President Joe Biden does not run for a second term, thus creating an opening for a new Democratic nominee — but that was a flawed analysis. Simply put, many of the same issues that are causing Biden’s approval ratings to plummet have been wholeheartedly endorsed by Beshear. 

Take the COVID-19 response as an example. While not one of the first to initiate a lockdown order, Beshear kept Kentucky’s lockdown orders in place until June 28th, 2020 — the third-longest in the country, and longer than the states of Michigan, Illinois, and New York, all of which were considered to be among the most extreme in the country. Furthermore, Beshear has been particularly aggressive in limiting constitutionally guaranteed freedoms. On Easter Sunday in 2020, Beshear sent Kentucky State Troopers to record the license numbers of worshippers at in-person services. In April 2021, he said that he would only lift restrictions once enough Kentuckians got vaccinated — essentially conditioning the right to peaceably assemble, among other fundamental rights of citizens, upon enough acquiescing to a then-experimental medical treatment with still unknown long term effects.

On education, Beshear has been little better. He was propelled into office in no small part by fights over the teachers’ pension system, which collapsed when his father, Steve Beshear, was governor and underfunded the pension fund by billions. As Attorney General, he sued to prevent the pension reform act passed under Republican Gov. Matt Bevin, whom he replaced in 2019. Since then, he has been a reliable ally of the teachers’ unions, who unanimously endorsed him, and gave $1.2 million to Beshear-aligned super PACs, in a race where the Beshear campaign itself was unable to raise even eight times that amount. Beshear has dutifully repaid that allegiance, by promising to increase teacher salaries by $2,000 per year, vetoing a school choice bill (while his children attend a private school), and re-imposing mask mandates on all schools in the commonwealth, even private ones.

While his campaign’s interactions with teachers’ unions and the subsequent actions and proposals Beshear has made once taking office are unseemly, they are not isolated incidents. Both he and his father’s administration have been plagued by allegations of corruption. His top deputy while he was attorney general was convicted in federal court for a kickbacks scheme, and as governor, he has made several questionable, no-bid contracts with campaign donors. This tendency was put on particular display in Beshear’s handling of unemployment insurance, which came to the forefront after he ordered the state lockdown, putting hundreds of thousands of Kentuckians out of work. Weeks into the shutdown, he fired the campaign donor and personal friend of the Lt. Gov. he appointed to head the office, despite having zero experience in unemployment matters. The Beshear administration so spectacularly mishandled unemployment that tens of thousands of Kentuckians were unable to receive timely adjudication of their claims, some waiting more than four, five, and even six months.

Beshear has done all of this in a state that he won in an off-off year election (2019) by slightly more than 5,000 votes. Moreover, Beshear would have lost against any other Republican statewide candidate. He has hardly any support even within the commonwealth.

But the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination is not the only one potentially up for grabs in 2024. A great deal depends on whether former President Donald Trump runs in 2024. While many believe it is likely, if he does not, it would leave the Republican field wide open. Kentucky’s Rand Paul would be equipped to step into the fray. Unlike Beshear, Paul has far greater support among Kentuckians, garnering well over one million votes in his last campaign, and winning by a margin of over 200,000.

Also unlike Beshear, Paul has been a forceful and high-profile opponent to the prevailing COVID-19 hysteria. A certified medical doctor, Paul has repeatedly taken Dr. Anthony Fauci to task over his support for gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the likely origin site of COVID-19. In addition, Paul has been a strong advocate against the medical tyranny pushed by bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., and the commonwealth, pushing for the recognition of the protection afforded by natural immunity and against the unnecessary use of masks. Finally, he has been one of the most vocal in opposing attempts to mandate vaccination, demonstrating that one can be both in favor of vaccination and also personal liberty in medical decisions.

Paul’s positions on COVID-19 are typical of his standing on other vital issues. Unlike Beshear, he is in favor of school choice and opposes Critical Race Theory being taught in K-12 schools. Paul has spoken in opposition to Attorney General Merrick General’s attempts to chill the free speech rights of parents by siccing the FBI on them without any predicate for federal involvement. Paul has also railed against the censorship of Big Tech, in part because of his advocacy on COVID-19 issues that at the time was labeled “misinformation,” only for those very stances to be acknowledged as fact later.

The differences between Andy Beshear and Rand Paul preview the choices this country must make in the 2024 presidential election. Beshear represents the top-down, bureaucratic, liberty-stifling path, which believes in the rule of experts over any independence of the people, the path which is currently being blazed by Biden. Paul represents a different path, one that rejects top-down rule by bureaucrats and embraces liberty and self-government. If the response to the Biden administration’s policies on COVID-19 and CRT are any indicator, it is Paul’s path, not that of Beshear, that the American people will choose in 2024.