Rand Paul: No Cabal Between Ron Paul and Romney

Sen. Rand Paul clarified a remark he made this week that he would be "honored" to be Romney's VP nominee. Some have taken that to substantiate speculation that Ron Paul and Romney have cut some sort of a deal. Ron Paul's attacks on Santorum during the last debate added fuel to the rumor.

Sen. Paul said this on the Ron Paul website:

The media speculation about some supposed cooperation between
the Ron Paul campaign and Mitt Romney has gotten completely out of hand. Ron Paul is running for President of the United States. His son, Sen. Rand Paul, is supporting his father’s run for President of the United States. That’s all that’s going on here. There is no secret “conspiracy.” During a radio interview this morning in Chicago, Sen. Paul said:

“If there’s a secret deal they’re keeping it secret from me, I think that’s mostly internet chatter and fun for people to speculate on…”

Speculative fun is exactly right. Sen. Paul explained his own views on the supposed Romney/Paul connection this morning, including his comments about being “honored” if he were to be considered as the GOP vice presidential nominee:

I think the story kind of got misrepresented, because you know when I was asked, every time I’m asked these kind of questions, these are hypothetical questions, I always say you know what? I still have my first choice in the race and that’s Ron Paul. My first choice would be a Ron Paul presidency and my first choice for a position would be an unofficial adviser to a Ron Paul presidency…

But when they push and push and push, and say ‘What about Romney? Would you do it?’ I mentioned that it would be an honor, and what I meant by that is sort of like if you were nominated for an academy award, what’s your response? You’d say “It’s be an honor to be nominated’ and so I think it would be silly for me not to say that if anybody considered me that I’d be honored by it, but I think it was somewhat overblown, it sort of fits into this sort of cabal that people write about…

That there’s this big strategy between Ron Paul and Romney, really the Ron Paul strategy as far as I’m aware of it is to gather delegates and to try to win, and one of the unwritten stories really is that Ron Paul may have already won a couple of states but people haven’t realized it because the delegates haven’t been allotted in Iowa yet, and we still think there’s an reasonable chance we can win Iowa we they count the delegates, we think there’s a reasonable chance we can win Maine when they count the delegates, and this is sort of an unwritten story that’s out there, and also why I don’t like the story out there that somebody’s trying to angle for some other position other than I’m just trying to help my dad at this point…