Put this one in your Sour Grapes File. Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul is apparently not pleased with all the publicity his potential rival for the 2006 Republican Presidential nomination Chris Christie has gotten over his landslide re-election win. So he’s doing two things:
1. Indugling in some sour grapes and saying it was due to Christie getting lots of federal money for his state.
2. All but calling Christie what is now apparently the filthiest word in the Republican Party: a moderate (which again underscores why many moderates will be very disinclined to vote for a party if it considers their political position perhaps one step above marrying a goat):
An ongoing feud between potential 2016 contenders bubbled to the surface again Wednesday when Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) took a pointed shot at New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s (R) use of federal funds for Hurricane Sandy relief.
Paul told Philadelphia radio host Dom Giordano that the federal funds helped Christie secure a resounding re-election victory.
“Well, his victory was, in large form, based on that he got a lot of federal money for his state,” Paul said, as quoted by CBS Philly. “The problem is … unlimited spending is sort of – you could call it moderate, or even Liberal, to think that there’s an unlimited amount of money, even for good causes.”
The senator then continued to question Christie’s conservative credentials.
“If you’re a conservative Republican, the federal government will be involved in certain things, but when you spend money, particularly when you’re at trillion dollars in the hole, it shouldn’t be just this, ‘gimme, gimme, gimme all my money’ without any considerations or strings,” Paul said. “It should be, ‘Yes, this is why it’s necessary, but this is also why I’ll cut spending somewhere else.’”
So presumably Rand Paul forgot about the state needed a few cents to fix the damage from Hurricane Sandy. Presumably. (And if you believe this I will sell you THIS for $1.25).
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.