But the “libertarian moment” was lost. It wasn’t necessarily Rand Paul who lost it, but he did not put a halt to the ideology’s fall from grace. Paul’s performance in Wednesday night’s Republican debate exemplifies the extent to which his presidential bid has evolved from a crusade to advance a set of programs into an ego-fueled campaign to sacrifice himself in service to an unpopular and irresponsible set of foreign policy preferences.

On the debate stage in Simi Valley, California, Paul found himself in the midst of a withering and unwarranted set of personal attacks from Donald Trump. Even those who were not predisposed to back Paul from the cast anti-Trump GOP establishmentarians felt a pang of sympathy for the Kentucky senator. That compassion quickly abated when Paul spent the majority of his time making an ill-advised case against foreign interventionism by bizarrely asserting that both Iraq and the world were better off when Saddam Hussein’s authoritarian regime held power in Baghdad.

“Hussein was the great bulwark and counterbalance to the Iranians,” Paul averred. “So when we complain about the Iranians, you need to remember that the Iraq War made it worse.”