Rand Paul: "Bill Clinton should be considered preferable to Bush"

It's been four whole days since we've had some Rand Paul porn around here, so let's repair to the opening of chapter 3 in the Kentucky senator's interesting new book, The Tea Party Goes to Washington:

Imagine this—what if there had never been a President George W. Bush, and when Bill Clinton left office he was immediately replaced with Barack Obama. Now imagine Obama had governed from 2000 to 2008 exactly as Bush did–doubling the size of government, doubling the debt, expanding federal entitlements and education, starting the Iraq war–the whole works. To make matters worse, imagine that for a portion of that time, the Democrats actually controlled all three branches of government. Would Republicans have given Obama and his party a free pass in carrying out the exact same agenda as Bush? It's hard to imagine this being the case, given the grief Bill Clinton got from Republicans, even though his big government agenda was less ambitious than Bush's. Yet, the last Republican president got very little criticism from his own party for most of his tenure.

For conservatives, there was no excuse for this.

Paul goes on to say stuff like "any self-described conservative who 'misses' the last president and his version of the Republican Party should probably quit subscribing to that label," and "if judgment is based on spending and the budget, then Bill Clinton should be considered preferable to Bush."

Reason on Rand Paul here. Watch this space tomorrow for a Reason.tv interview of Sen. Paul by Withnail Nick Gillespie and I.