Rand Paul Bombs on Maddow Show

Rand Paul doesn't believe the government should tell businesses they can't discriminate against black people. That's essentially the takeaway from the newly-minted GOP Senate nominee's painful interview with Rachel Maddow last night, in which he spent 20 minutes trying to dodge questions about his stance on the Civil Rights Act, the Huffington Post reports. Paul essentially reiterated his position that businesses should be allowed to segregate, but called it an “abstract obscure conversation from 1964.”

Paul at one point argued that if the government can tell restaurants to desegregate, you should also be able to carry a gun into any restaurant, even if the owner forbids it. “Does the owner of the restaurant own the restaurant, or does the government own the restaurant?” he asked. “These are important philosophical debates but not a very practical discussion.” Maddow disagreed: “It was pretty practical to the people who had the life nearly beaten out of them trying to desegregate Walgreen's lunch counters.” (More Rand Paul stories.)