Sen. Rand Paul slammed Jeb Bush for "hypocrisy" as both prepare to make the case that conservatives should support their presidential aspirations.
Paul, R-Kentucky, noted that Bush opposes legalizing medical marijuana despite admitting that he smoked marijuana as a prep student at the elite Phillips Academy.
"When Jeb was a very wealthy kid at a very elite school, he used marijuana but didn’t get caught, didn’t have to go to prison." Paul said in a Wednesday night interview on the Fox News show, "The Kelly File." "I think it shows some hypocrisy that’s going to be difficult for young people to understand why we’d put a 65-year-old guy in jail for medical marijuana."
"What I’m talking about is not the hypocrisy of wealth, it’s the hypocrisy of evading the law, because the law seems to target and seems to go after poor people, often people of color," Paul added. "What’s hypocritical is if you’re very wealthy, you’re able to escape the long arm of the law (and) then to really want to throw the long sentences, 15 years, 20 years, 50 years in prison for marijuana at people, and so I think that’s where the hypocrisy comes in."
Both Paul and Bush, the former governor of Florida, will speak to thousands of conservative activists Friday at the Conservative Political Action Conference outside Washington.
Paul, who plans to announce his presidential plans this spring said he’ll do better with the conservative group than Bush.
"We think there will be a lot of friendly faces for us, there is definitely a place for moderates but there may not be quite the same level of enthusiasm for moderates at this conference," he said.
Paul has been a star at the annual conference in the past, easily winning its straw poll the past two years. His father, former presidential candidate Ron Paul, won the straw poll in 2010 and 2011.
Comments