By Zaid Jilani / AlterNet
Republican presidential candidate Kentucky Senator Rand Paul has done more outreach to the minority community than anyone in his party, denouncing the drug war and mass incarceration.
Yet this week he was apparently in full GOP primary mode as he put all of that aside to instead blame the whole thing on “lack of fathers”: “I came through the train on Baltimore (sic) last night, I’m glad the train didn’t stop,” he said, laughing, during an interview with conservative radio host Laura Ingraham.
Railing against what he repeatedly called “thuggery and thievery” in the streets of Baltimore, Paul told Ingraham that talking about “root causes” was not appropriate in the middle of a riot.
“The police have to do what they have to do, and I am very sympathetic to the plight of the police in this,” he said.
As for root causes, Paul listed some ideas of his own. “There are so many things we can talk about,” the senator said, “the breakdown of the family structure, the lack of fathers, the lack of a moral code in our society.”
It’s a pretty interesting explanation, given what happened with Paul’s own son earlier this month. Young William Hilton Paul, 22, crashed his car into an occupied car after driving drunk, “the third time that William Paul has had a run-in with the law involving alcohol.” Perhaps the Senator shouldn’t throw rocks while living in a glass house?
