Rand Paul: State's Rights Vs. Civil Rights

Rand Paul had his first serious gaffe of his campaign with this appearance on a Louisiana radio station.

REPORTER: Would you have voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964?

PAUL: I like the Civil Rights Act in the sense that it ended discrimination in all public domains and I`m all in favor of that.

REPORTER: But?

PAUL: You had to ask me the "but." I don't like the idea of telling private business owners. I abhor racism. I think it's a bad business decision to ever exclude anybody from your restaurant. But at the same time, I do believe in private ownership. But I think there should be absolutely no discrimination in anything that gets any public funding, and that's mostly what the Civil Rights Act was about, to my mind.

While this will throw Paul off message for a few days, I don't believe this will cost him the election. Paul is a true blue libertarian and he doesn't believe that the government should be telling a private business what to do. Before anyone thinks this is out of the mainstream, remember that the principle to free speech is to protect speech we also abhor.