Reuters

Three years ago, the press created the default frame that would be used to cover Rand Paul: Alone among U.S. senators, he would be labeled a "kook" who favors "crazy" policies, disparaging terms that are never applied to establishment Republicans or Democrats, even when they favor an unwinnable drug war or subsidies for sugar and tobacco or a catastrophic war of choice. As I noted after Paul's filibuster, that frame totally failed to anticipate his record thus far in the Senate, his most consequential actions, or the effect of his presence on his colleagues. You'd think that political analysts would see that failure and complicate their coverage.

Yet Frank Bruni* of the New York Times goes straight to the discredited frame in "Rand Paul's Loopy Ascent." The column isn't in the political analysis business. It's in the attitude business, projecting disdain and dismissiveness that permeates the piece. Implying that the Kentucky Republican is a "wacko bird" and stating outright that he is "an albatross" for the GOP, Bruni writes:



Today he's singing the moderate song of immigration reform, and that dirge about drones, which had a valid bass note despite its alarmist melody, struck chords across the political spectrum.

But Paul's greatest hits include a denunciation of Medicare as socialism, a recommendation of stopping foreign aid to a few key allies, and the insistent introduction of Patriot Act amendments so loopy that one of them netted all of 10 votes from the 95 senators present while another garnered a whopping total of 4**.

Bruni is welcome to criticize Paul on Medicare (though it would be best to address the actual position he's taken as a senator). He is free to denounce Paul's aversion to dispersing foreign aid. But he spreads ignorant nonsense by characterizing Paul's Patriot Act amendments as "loopy." The one that garnered just four votes, Amendment 365, would've required "financial institutions to issue suspicious activity reports only in cases in which an appropriate law enforcement agency initiates the request." I'd like Bruni to explain why that amendment was "loopy."