Sen. Rand Paul doesn't like plutocrats. That's what he says anyway. And he's saying it because he thinks it’s going to make people like me consider voting for him. Following his logic can be a little tricky, but let me see if I can explain.

When most people discuss the future of the Republican Party, they talk about a contest between the establishment candidates and the tea partiers, with the former trying to appeal to moderates and the latter denouncing moderation at every turn. Whoever wins the battle wins the future of the party, or so the thinking goes.

Rand Paul appears to believe he’s found a third way. His approach? Push so far to the right that you end up coming all the way back around and start picking up people on the left, too. His rationale? The federal government is bad for you. That’s true whether you are a conservative, liberal or somewhere in between, so if Republicans pound away at government in all its many forms, everyone should end up voting Republican.

And so that's what he does. While most Republicans these days focus their anti-government rhetoric on old chestnuts like Obamacare, Paul ventures further in search of touch points that might appeal to a broader demographic. He decries mandatory minimum drug sentences. He inveighs against corporate welfare and plutocrats. He takes pains to aim his ire at government, not the people who partake of its programs. In a sense, he’s challenging small government conservatives to have the courage of their convictions. If you really don’t like big government, then you ought not to like it anywhere it lies, not just in those circumstances where it inconveniencies you. And at the same time he’s making an effort to meet people where they are by, in effect, saying, "hey liberals, this affects things you care about too!"

But here’s the thing. If Paul's campaign platform was something like "we need sentencing reform," then calling my attention to the injustice of mandatory minimums might prove an effective way to win my support. Instead, Paul asks us to make a very different leap: Don't like mandatory minimums? Let's roll back a whole flotilla of programs people of modest means rely on everyday. That's a very different thing.

I suppose it's possible Paul can't really see the difference. He looks out over America and sees the government’s coercive tentacles wrapping themselves around average citizens everywhere and squeezing the life right out of them. The IRS, the NSA, the EPA: they’re all real and present threats in Paul’s world, and if you listen to him speak, you can almost feel their hot breath on your neck.



But most of the rest of us experience government in a different way. We get up and go to work at a job most likely generated by free market forces, and we're deeply grateful for it. But sometimes when we get home at the end of the night, or sit down to pay the bills at the end of the month, we find that our salary alone isn't enough for us to do the things we need to do. Pay the rent. Find quality childcare. Go to the doctor. Help send our kid to college. These are important things to us, and sometimes the market helps us do them and other times simply relying on what the market will bear leaves us short. Government can, and does, help. That's a good thing.



It's against this backdrop that you have to analyze Paul's rhetoric, and it doesn't stand up well. He may have found some government programs worth our animus. But using that as an excuse to wipe out whole social programs that so many people need? That's not moderate, it’s mean-spirited. And wrong.

Unless, you're one of those people who never need government assistance anyway, because your bank account is stock full of cash. There's a word for people like that. It's plutocrats. And if the Koch brothers are any indication, they're loving Rand Paul. One suspects he really doesn't think they're all that bad either.