Hi, Rand! Say what?

Aww! Our tea-bag throwing blog colleagues are delicately averting their eyes today from Rand Paul’s inevitable, on-cue, post-election meltdown on civil rights. But we love uncomfortable topics and the inbox is filling up with Democratic outrage, so let’s get to it.

After winning the Republican primary battle for Senate in Kentucky, Paul went on NPR to attempt to explain to Robert Siegel his views on how business has the right to refuse service to anyone. Paul thinks the Americans with Disabilities Act and possibly even the Civil Rights Act of 1964 were federal government overkill.

SIEGEL: You’ve said that business should have the right to refuse service to anyone, and that the Americans with Disabilities Act, the ADA, was an overreach by the federal government. Would you say the same by extension of the 1964 Civil Rights Act?

Dr. PAUL: What I’ve always said is that I’m opposed to institutional racism, and I would’ve, had I’ve been alive at the time, I think, had the courage to march with Martin Luther King to overturn institutional racism, and I see no place in our society for institutional racism.

SIEGEL: But are you saying that had you been around at the time, you would have – hoped that you would have marched with Martin Luther King but voted with Barry Goldwater against the 1964 Civil Rights Act?

Dr. PAUL: Well, actually, I think it’s confusing on a lot of cases with what actually was in the civil rights case because, see, a lot of the things that actually were in the bill, I’m in favor of. I’m in favor of everything with regards to ending institutional racism. So I think there’s a lot to be desired in the civil rights. And to tell you the truth, I haven’t really read all through it because it was passed 40 years ago and hadn’t been a real pressing issue in the campaign, on whether we’re going for the Civil Rights Act.

Rand continued making the rounds, worrying on the Rachel Maddow Show about infringing on the free speech rights of racists and continuing his crusade against “institutionalized racism.” For our money, he is starting to sound like Peter Berg’s character in “The Great White Hype.” Anyone? Anyone?

Is Rand Paul a racist? Probably not. His father, Ron Paul is also probably not a racist, although he was similarly ensnared during his 2008 presidential campaign in a minor scandal when newsletters published under his name in Texas surfaced, filled with racist, homophobic and paranoid language. The elder Paul said at the time that someone else published the material when he was busy doing other things.

So far, much of the most heated “Rand Paul must step down” rhetoric is coming from points far left — the Boston Phoenix, Huffington Post. But sober discussion of the issue is already seeping over to more mainstream addresses. And Rand Paul has a point — his campaign is not about civil rights, except to the extent that he lacks the skill of a seasoned politician to deftly sidestep those kinds of questions and just keeps talking and talking.

This post-primary performance will at the very least erode the credibility of Paul’s campaign, and it’s also unhelpful to the tea partiers — as ABC News notes, their critics already think them suspect on the issue of race.