If you pay any attention to politics, I’m sure you’ve seen a few articles floating around with headlines like “Hillary Was Afraid of Rand Paul.” The articles talk about the leaked emails and how the Hillary campaign analyzed the different candidates they would have to face. They wanted to face people like Trump, and Cruz. The last person they wanted to put Hillary up against was the Senator from Kentucky. Many of my friends and I supported Rand Paul from the beginning, and now I’m happy to see that we were correct in our assumptions.

According to the leaked Clinton campaign emails, Paul was terrifying because he appealed to everyone Hillary goes to for easy votes. Her campaign’s strategy was to attempt to make him seem like someone whom those groups would not have voted for, but that would have been a very tall order.

“What to undermine: the idea he is a “different” kind of Republican,” said the email. “His stance on the military and his appeal to millennials and communities of color.” Hillary was already up against the wall with the black vote, seeing as how she and her husband championed measures that put so many young black men in jail, tearing apart families, and destroying lives. Paul, on the other hand, champions criminal justice reform, which lowers crime, saves money, and keeps the black community from becoming a place where you eventually go to jail from. The Clinton campaign wouldn’t have stood a chance. Furthermore, the millennial vote more or less vacated the two parties and fled to Johnson. The young voters want little to do with the corruption of Hillary, or the asininity of Trump. Rand Paul was the perfect balance between a Libertarian and a Republican. Willing to rely more on Federalism than anything. He was socially flexible, but fiscally rock solid. His stances on the military were realistic, and his respect for religious liberty standing firm. Trending Trump Responds to Susan Collins Statement, Trolls Barack Obama in Response to Garland Whataboutism Jennifer Van Laar This is a man keeping his seat due to being reelected in Kentucky by both Democrats and Republicans. But instead, Republicans were in a state of anger. For the last 7 years, they had been subjected to unfair treatment by the government, leftist finger wagging, and invasive social justice. They had been inundated with the hypocritical, racist, and economically destructive tactics of the Democratic party for nearly a decade, so that when someone came along that spoke irreverently enough about them, they were drawn like moths to a flame. Trump was fun to listen to, and his extreme promises sounded like just the measures needed to fix things. The problem is, the Democrats saw that too.

As was noted particularly by this site, the emails from the Clinton campaign showed that she wanted to face Trump more than anybody. She knew his extreme stances and godawful personality would force him into so many corners and scandals that even someone like Hillary – one of the most disliked and scandal ridden candidates the Democrats have ever mustered – could win. They knew he would be divisive, and the house divided wouldn’t stand.

And snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, as the GOP is wont to do, they obliged. Republicans walked right into the trap laid for them, and even when the trap was revealed through WikiLeaks, Reince and the RNC doubled down. They’ve chosen to hold up a man few believe in, and those that do are being laughed at as fools who won’t accept that they’ve been played.

To sum it up, the GOP chose a man who was never slated to beat Hillary in any poll, who was her friend, donated to her campaign, has many of her same values, and turned out to be the snake everyone thought he was. But that’s nothing I haven’t said before. In fact, many in the “Never Trump” crowd have been repeating that ad nauseum.

We could have chosen Paul, who even now would likely be celebrating his upcoming Presidential win. It would have been a new age of the Republican party, when the Libertarians and Republicans would have come together to influence a true party of liberty into being.

Instead, we chose reality tv, bread, and circuses. We chose a man who attracted some of the worst elements of America to him in the form of unabashed, full on racists. We chose a candidate who encouraged people to rise who would rather shock and disgust, because they felt it the best way to combat a long ruling left. They chose a man who would rather divide his own party, than attempt to unite it and win. They chose a pig. A man proud of sleeping around with married women as he lusted after others while his wife was pregnant.

We could have chosen individuality, but we chose populism, and cult-like blindness and adherence. We chose to play a game the other party is far better at.

Understand, this election ours to win. Hillary shouldn’t have been much more than a bump in the road, on the way to a better future for our country, and for the cause of Liberty. Defeating Hillary was supposed to be a breeze. All we had to do was select a candidate worth a damn. That’s it. Paul would have been a perfect choice. The combined weight of the Republicans and Libertarians united in force, his team’s online savvy, his liberty oriented ideas, and his fiscal conservatism would have taken care of the rest.

Instead, we chose something bordering on madness, and gave way to the trashiest, most nonsensical display of lunacy that this country is going to suffer from for years to come. It breaks my heart to think of what might have been, and how many friendships would have been saved, and how much stronger our nation could have become.

The GOP is burning to the ground because of this choice, and it deserves it.