There is a kind of odd, and apparently endless, fascination with Rand Paul, the junior senator from Kentucky, which manifests itself on those occasions when Senator Aqua Buddha behaves like every other opportunistic omadhaun in his chosen line of work.

Mike Pompeo Getty Images

For example, when Marco Rubio takes a bold and principled stand that lasts approximately 18 minutes until it, and the senator, melt like a snowman in the Sinai, it is because Rubio is an ambitious weathervane who doesn’t have anything for which he would go to the mattresses. When Susan Collins votes for an egregious tax-cut plan because she has been “assured” by the administration* that her concerns about health-care will be addressed, and then the president* treats her like a subcontractor on one of his casino jobs, it is because Collins is a sucker.

However, whenever Aqua Buddha does this, it is a sign of admirable political eccentricity. Nowhere was this more evident than late Monday, when Paul performed a perfect two-and-a-half with a twist into the tank and voted to send Mike Pompeo’s nomination out of committee favorably. Now, any reasonable person would have watched Paul inveigh against this nominee for three weeks only to turtle at the last moment because of “assurances” he got from the White House and see someone who combines Rubio’s invertebrate approach with Collins’s sweet-tooth for magic beans.

But, as this Time account makes clear, Republicans are so desperate for someone who is neither full-on Never Trump nor a liberal lion in a sheep suit that they see Paul’s obvious bow to expedience as a sign of a truly independent spirit. Or something. With John McCain hors de combat, could it be that we have the new…maverick?

Critics were quick to say that Paul’s bark is worse than his bite, and this was not the only example. In the fall, he made a similar show of denouncing the Republican tax reform bill before ultimately voting for it in December. Two months ago, he briefly shut down the government by stalling a vote on a spending package in an hours-long speech on the Senate floor. The package passed. But those familiar with Paul’s thinking say that these minor rebellions, even the ones that don’t end up changing the outcome, earn him valuable political capital and almost always ignite a worthy debate, whether that’s about U.S. military policy or government spending. When the dust settles, he holds a prominent seat at the negotiating table. “He’s independent, and that gives him a voice stronger than most,” a Republican on Capitol Hill says. “It drives other Republicans crazy.”

Unless this “Republican on Capitol Hill” wakes up every morning as, you know, Rand Paul, this is all my bollocks. The idea that the “conversation” about Pompeo’s taste for military adventurism wouldn’t be happening without Paul’s flexing for the cameras is just silly. The Democrats certainly would have been conversing about it, but they don’t count, as we know. Among his fellow Republicans, the “conversation” that Paul started might as well have been about the weather, or about the state of the Nationals’ bullpen.

This is a classic example of overthought Beltway strategery. Rand Paul is not playing eleventy-million level chess. He is not influencing anything of substance. He is just an ambitious lug whose vote for Mike Pompeo will be no more or less important than that of Jeff Flake or Deb Fischer. He’s a sheep in sheep’s clothing.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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