Rand Paul and the Myth about Radical Berkeley

Michael Tomasky writes at the Daily Beast:

I don’t know how many Berkeleyites Rand Paul really and truly impressed last week with his visit there. If he’s the GOP nominee in 2016 and ends up with more than 23 percent of the vote in Alameda County (Mitt Romney notched 18 percent), I’ll eat my copy of The Post-Modern Aura in Moe’s bookstore window.

But it’s clear that he charmed a different group, the one that might in fact have been the real target audience of the visit: The Washington media taste-makers and “thinkfluencers” loved it. All the signs of 2016 swoonfest are clear already. This insider media group is going to build this guy up, find him “interesting” and “fresh,” and they’ll promote him over that old hecate (as they see it) Hillary Clinton in much the way they once promoted George W. Bush over Al Gore as the superior person to have a beer with.

I believe Tomasky is correct about MSM, as I reported after attending Rand's speech:

 The reporters covering Rand seemed to be genuinely enthusiastic about him.

Rand is going to get good coverage, which is not to say that this type of coverage would go on if the MSM bosses, who write the checks that MSM reporters receive, didn't approve of Rand. Rand has been cleared by the real behind the scenes players that have to be confident that Rand will come down on their side when the goals of the crony Empire are on the line, or the reporters wouldn't be allowed to stretch their leaches this far.

As far as Berkeley being a bastion of far left thinking, that may be the case with the faculty, but if you spend more than 10 minutes on campus, you will realize that the students far from fit that profile. The student population appears to be about 30% non-political  (when it comes to U.S. politics)  Asians and most of the other students  appear to be more focused on their education than desirous of promoting radical agendas. To be sure, the overwhelming majority of student body members probably hold a lot of mainstream politically correct views, but the campus is far from the radical campus that MSM tries to portray it as. Spend time on campus and it is not difficult to see how Rand could fill an auditorium with 350 students on a campus of  35,000 students--with none of the 350 coming close to being left radicals. It's just 1% of a mainstream population.