Whenever I catch myself thinking Paul is a serious candidate, something like this happens. The anti-vax movement isn’t just full of shit, it’s also pretty small; it’s not a group of people a smart calculating politician would intentionally pander to. Even Republicans usually trust their own pediatricians and family doctors, the vast majority of whom tell all their patients to get vaccines.

Indeed, Paul’s argument against vaccines isn’t really a medical one at all. He’s not questioning the science so much as the right of the govt. to require people to keep their own kids healthy, and in the process, not infect other people’s kids.

He may just have too much of his dad’s rigid and wacky “libertarian” ideas to ever get far in the primaries.