Rand Paul Stands by Jack Hunter

Good for him.  It's nice to see further confirmation that he is just another squishy Republican who runs from a fight:

"I'm not a fan of secession," Paul said. "I think the things he said about John Wilkes Booth are absolutely stupid. I think Lincoln was one of our greatest presidents. Do I think Lincoln was wrong is taking away the freedom of the press and the right of habeas corpus? Yeah.

"There were great people who were for emancipation. Lincoln came to his greatness. One Republican congressman described it as 'on borrowed plumage.' I love the description, because there were some great fighters [for emancipation] and Lincoln had to be pushed. But I'm not an enemy of Lincoln, like some who think he was an awful person."

Paul said that Hunter had never acted in a discriminatory way, and that his earlier work in South Carolina was a form of youthful political showmanship.

"People are calling him a white supremacist," Paul told me in his Senate office. "If I thought he was a white supremacist, he would be fired immediately. If I thought he would treat anybody on the color of their skin different that others, I'd fire him immediately.

"All I can say is, we have a zero tolerance policy for anybody who displays discriminatory behavior or belief in discriminating against people based on the color of their skin, their religion, their sexual orientation, anything like that," Paul told me. "We won't tolerate any of that, and I've seen no evidence of that.

"Are we at a point where nobody can have had a youth or said anything untoward?" the senator asked rhetorically.

...

"Let me put it this way," Paul said. "I'm aware of some of your columns, but not all of them. And some of them I find very unfair, calling me a conspiracy nut, things like that. But I chose to talk to you today. So that means we have a relationship now. But it doesn't mean that I agree with all of your past writings.

"It's the same way any time you meet somebody who's got a large body of work," Paul continued. "So if I hired you to work in my campaign, there would be some things I agreed with, and some things I disagreed with.

"I think it's hard. The thing is, I grapple with this. What am I supposed to do? I'm going to have a lot of people working for me. They've all got writings and opinions."

Hunter, he said, "is incredibly talented."

Behind the flashy and provocative rhetoric, Paul said, Hunter often made thought-provoking arguments. "Look and listen to the actual words and not to the headlines, people," Paul told me.