Rand Paul and Ted Cruz have some serious daddy issues

We should care about what Ron Paul and Rafael Cruz believe because, to be frank, young Rand and Ted were not raised like the average voter. Their childhoods and political educations—guided by two fathers of unusually strong opinions and personalities—are mirror images of the Right’s own fantasy about Obama.

Those paranoid fantasies go something like this: Obama was supposedly indoctrinated into virulent anti-colonialism and/or socialism by his father and/or a series of father figures, from the actual Barack Sr. to Frank Marshall Davis to Bill Ayers to Jeremiah Wright. The myth that Obama has a secret ambition to “fundamentally change” the country into a totalitarian dystopia is anchored in the depiction of these men and their dark, conspiratorial theories about the nature of the American project.

Growing up believing there is pervasive threat laying in wait and a scheme by those in power to keep you down would certainly engender a certain attitude toward government and politics. It’s not the attitude Obama has, however, it’s the one shared by the families Rand and Paul.

There are few visions of America darker than Ron Paul’s, whose squeaky doomsaying is the stuff of Internet memes. Just this January, he warned that “the Republic is no more. We now live in a police state,” and both our social security system and foreign policy are “all based on lies and ignorance.”