Rand Paul’s sexism will wear thin quickly
Rand Paul has a problem. What’s interesting is that he does not seem to get it. One of the demographics Paul is attracting is a younger crowd. These are citizens that are fairly independent. They support all forms of equal rights. They support marriage equality and most importantly gender equality.
Sadly, Rand Paul behaves just like a few men in his party who have a propensity to demean women and undermine their intelligence. While he has been doing what seemed to be effective triangulation over the last year, his carnal instinct to be condescending with women could make that moot rather quickly.
After Rand Paul announced his presidential run, he started making his media rounds. There is a stark difference in how he addresses similar questions from males versus female journalists.
NBC Today’s Savannah Guthrie pointed out to Rand Paul that he seemed to have changed positions on Iran and other issues. He interrupted her multiple times during the framing of her question. Generally that would be OK if the journalist is editorializing with fallacies (as done every day on Fox News). Worse, he was condescending in the manner in which he interrupted. As shown in the video above, he decided that he had the right to instruct her on how an interview must be conducted.
Ironically, when Sean Hannity asked similar questions, he waited for Hannity to complete his question and never became condescending. In fact he displays much different behavior when interviewed by men irrespective of network.
Rand Paul disrespect of Savannah Guthrie was no accident. It is a pattern. He behaved similarly when CNBC’s Kelly Evans asked him about his support of a tax holiday to repatriate the overseas dollars of American plutocrats. She was pointing out that most of the research indicates that tax holidays actually cost more money over the long term than they save. He was condescending with Ms Evans and at one point he told her to be quiet and to calm down as he gave the standard ‘hush up’ signal.
Rand Paul’s sexism will not endear him to women as more of them see behind the facade. If he does not become sensitive to this issue, his run will end before it has even begun.