Rand Paul hasn’t helped Kentuckians. Why do they think he’s on their side?

I ask you:

Why would Kentuckians even consider re-electing Rand Paul?

He’s done nothing to help with our legion problems of poverty and failing small industry. He’s tried, without success, to get rid of the ACA — probably the single greatest benefit to the rural and urban poor of Kentucky. And although he calls himself a libertarian he wants to give the government absolute control over women’s most intimate and consequential choices.

How has he managed to convince rural Kentuckians that he has their best interests at heart?

The answer is: he hasn’t. What he — and Mitch McConnell — have convinced Kentuckians is that so long as the Republicans retain control of the Senate, they’ll act as a shield against the “radical left.” You know, those closet socialists who will eviscerate police departments, murder babies “right up to the moment of birth,” and couldn’t give a damn about the problems of rural Kentucky. They’re too busy plotting the demise of the capitalist system.

The GOP has been damned good at getting this nonsense across via the Roger Ailes/Fox TV school of garbage-throwing. Ailes, who was an early mentor to Donald Trump, believed that the best way to develop a devoted following was not necessarily to be informed, experienced, or caring, but to scare the shit out of people about what would happen if they let their guard down against their cultural enemies. It doesn’t matter if lies are required. What matters is discerning the sweet spot of attack, exploiting the crisp potency of catch-phrases, and repetition, repetition, repetition.

So we were barraged, in the last Senatorial race, with McConnell ads describing moderate Amy McGrath as a baby-killing extremist who is “too liberal for Kentucky.” And now it’s Charles Booker, Rand Paul’s competitor for the Senate, who is a member of the socialist cabal. Seems like the only criterion for membership is to be running against a Republican.

Rand Paul hasn’t hesitated to lob some racially charged grenades, too. His most recent ad charges that Booker “doesn’t believe in civil discourse, only violence.” Hmmm. Maybe it’s Paul who “doesn’t believe in civil discourse”; he “declined” to participate in the opportunity to engage in such discourse with Booker last week, in a televised campaign forum during which Booker solidly refuted the notion that he supports violence. How did Rand Paul respond? He didn’t. He was hiding somewhere with Waldo. But he made sure to release his own social media diatribe against Booker shortly before the forum aired.

Since many of you may not have tuned in, let’s clear this up just a bit:

Charles Booker does not want to “defund the police.” He wants to fund the police and other community safety programs, to create a coalition of “law enforcement, faith leaders, business, philanthropists and folks on the ground.”

Unlike the faux libertarian Paul, Charles Booker believes in trusting the judgment of women and families, and is opposed to big brother surveilling our private lives and regulating who should get health care. So much for Booker being a “socialist.”

Booker does not “embrace those who have engaged in or glorified violence,” as a narrator in Paul’s ad states. Rand Paul, in contrast, has dismissed the investigation into the armed assault on our nation’s capital—an assault which struck violently at the police Paul claims to cherish, and included some who had hopes of murdering government officials--as a “partisan witch hunt.”

I also have to add that Charles Booker is not Bernie Sanders. Sanders had to be schooled by Black people and women that the “working class” includes more than white men with their sleeves rolled up. That knowledge comes naturally to Booker, who is the father of three daughters and has a personal background of struggle with racism as well as poverty. That background has made him more, not less, attuned to the problems of rural Kentuckians, whose problems are similar in many ways. That’s what so transformative about his vision: he seeks to represent all of Kentucky “from the hood to the holler,” and he’s been traveling throughout the state demonstrating just that.

I have something to say about some others, too.

I wish the Democratic Party would throw as much support Booker’s way as they did for Amy McGrath. I wish more self-identified “progressives” would help sell Booker’s message of finding the commonalities among all Kentuckians rather than policing language about reproductive and LGBTQ rights. And I wish that the national mass media would give Booker the kind of attention they shower on races that they consider to be more significant. They treat Kentucky as a lost cause for Democrats, and of course this then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

But most of all, I wish the good people of Kentucky would stop believing Rand Paul’s lies. If he wins, Roger Ailes will be smiling from his grave, toasting his success with Maker’s Mark— and we’ll all be the losers.

Susan Bordo is Professor Emerita Otis A. Singletary Chair in the Humanities, University of Kentucky.