Bob Franken

Feb 13, 20150

I’m about to be very right or very wrong. I’m glad it doesn’t matter in newsbiz, because no one remembers what any of us writes or says; but for what it’s worth, I believe that Rand Paul has a decent shot at becoming not only the Republican nominee, but taking all the marbles in the general election next year.

Speaking of marbles, did you see and hear Sarah Palin completely losing hers when she spoke at that hard-right Iowa political event? Her disjointed comments left her exposed to a lot of ridicule, including from people in her own party.

And Hillary Clinton is probably trembling after this line: “Now the press asks, the press asks, ‘Can anyone stop Hillary?’ Again, this is to forego a conclusion, right? It’s to scare us off, to convince us that — a pantsuit can crush patriots.”

Before you forego a conclusion that I don’t take Sarah Palin seriously, you should know that I once predicted she would be elected president in 2012. I also worried once that happened that there would be a massive flow of Americans fleeing to warmer climes south of the border. I imagined the irony if suddenly Mexico had the illegal north-of-the-border immigrant problem.

So factor that in when you decide how astute my Rand Paul forecast is. But here’s my reasoning: Actually, he said it himself when asked about the lineup of so-called moderates in his party itching to take the plunge: “I think that the more, the merrier as far as I’m concerned,” he told Fox News. “I think we have <a> place in the party for moderates like Christie and Bush and Romney, and then there will also be conservatives.”

Well, obviously Mitt Romney did the math, but with Chris Christie and Jeb Bush duking it out, Rand Paul is still correct about all that, and more so when it comes to the conservatives. There are a bunch of them — Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum and, of course, Sarah Palin — but too many to count on both right hands. So Paul’s strategy is to let them chew up each other on both sides and position himself in the middle.

Some of his views may sound a little out there, but they hold quite a bit of appeal for a restless younger generation turned off not only by fuddy-duddy politics, but also by institutions in general. That’s fertile ground for the ostentatiously libertarian Paul. And he’s the only one who has aggressively courted the demographic groups that have normally skewed Democrat, but now are saying “skew the system.”

Suspend your disbelief for a moment and assume he gets the GOP nomination, and that Hillary Clinton is the Democratic opponent. Obviously Hillary Clinton is not entirely the same old, same old, because she is a she. But Hillary is a Clinton, after all, and that brings with it a “been there, done that” label that might be hard to shake.

So you heard it here first: Rand Paul needs to be taken seriously. I’m not confident about this prediction, but I know one thing for sure if he does go all the way: His vice president will not be Sarah Palin.

(Bob Franken is a syndicated columnist.)

Distributed by King Features Synd.