Fox News to Rand Paul: Do you still think Republicans suck?

On Fox News, Bret Baier asked Sen. Rand Paul a bit of an odd question: “What do you say to Republicans who say ‘maybe they don’t suck so bad’?”

The context here are comments Paul made to an African-American audience on Wednesday, saying, “Remember Domino’s Pizza? They admitted, ‘Hey, our pizza crust sucks.’ The Republican Party brand sucks and so people don’t want to be a Republican and for 80 years, African-Americans have had nothing to do with Republicans.” Tonight, Baier asked him whether he still felt the same way.

“I don’t think our policies are bad,” Rand replied. “I like the Republican Party. I’m a Republican.” He went on to argue that it was simply the party’s branding that needed work.

To some degree, Paul is underselling the campaign he’s launched to reform the Republican Party. While it’s true that on economic issues he is, if anything, further right than your average Republican, on civil liberties and national security issues he really is charting a pretty different course than the mainstream of the GOP has followed in recent decades. His recent speech on foreign policy, for instance, was effectively a declaration of war on the dominant foreign policy-philosophy in the GOP.