Rand Paul Threatens to Quit Politics In What Maddow Calls a 'Meltdown'

In a Tuesday interview with the New York Times, Senator Rand Paul finally admitted that he sort of fucked up with this whole plagiarism controversy. Until now, the Kentucky Junior Senator has been defensive and downright hostile when confronted with the fact that his staff has repeatedly taken portions of articles (from Wikipedia and various right-wing think tanks) and used them without attribution in Paul’s speeches and op-eds. Now, he’s admitted the error, but don’t get to excited — he’s still acting like a big fucking baby about it.

From the New York Times:

“What we are going to do from here forward, if it will make people leave me the hell alone, is we’re going to do them like college papers,” he said. “We’re going to try to put out footnotes.” He said that “we have made mistakes,” but that they had “never been intentional.”

Sorry, Senator Paul. The point of holding office is answering to a constituency, not being left “the hell alone.”

But on the topic of Paul holding office, the Senator has more flouncing to do!

“It’s also what people hate about politics, and it’s why, frankly, members of my family are not too interested in politics, period, or wanting me to do more of this,” he said. “To tell you the truth, people can think what they want, I can go back to being a doctor anytime, if they’re tired of me. I’ll go back to being a doctor, and I’ll be perfectly content.”

Okay, great. Byyyyyye! Don’t let the door hit you on the way out!

Oy. If only it could be so peaceful. Instead, it looks like Rand Paul is actually not so eager to go and is still hoping to run for President in 2016.

Last night on her show, Rachel Maddow — who’s been duking it out with the Senator for weeks now — pointed out why this might not be such a good idea. Paul can barely handle the public pressure he’s facing now in light of a fairly minor scandal so how will he be able to handle the pressure of the presidency?

“If this is the way he handles pressure, that is probably a good thing to know about him now,” the host said. “It is probably better that we learn that fact about him now, rather than some time in the future.”

And that’s the thing. Some people don’t see why this is such a story or why plagiarizing a few lines of a speech is all that bad. Well, first of all, plagiarism is wrong, but that’s not what makes this scandal notable. What makes it notable is Rand Paul’s reaction and inability to face his own mistakes without throwing a complete tantrum.