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A few months ago, we mused about whether Rand Paul'salmost-ceaseless media-seeking strategy was sustainable. After this week, we're leaning strongly toward 'no.'

And Paul, in large part, has himself to blame.

After vaccines suddenly became the political topic du jour, the Kentucky GOP senatortook to Laura Ingraham's radio show and CNBC on Monday and weighed in on the topic. The latter interview is the one that blew up. Appearing on the show to talk about something else, the host instead started with a fewquestions about vaccines. It didn't go well.

Paul soon ventured into conspiracy-theory territory, saying, "I have heard of many tragic cases of walking, talking, normal children who wound up with profound mental disorders after vaccines." He also said that, while he vaccinates his children, he spaces out the vaccines to cut down on potential harmful effects.

The problem with this, in case you've been under a rock for three days, is that there's absolutely no evidence that vaccines cause "mental disorders." The one study that connected them to an increase in autism has been retracted and thoroughly discredited. What's more, the effectiveness of vaccines for diseases, such as measles, relies on near-universal participation -- something that becomes much harder to achieve if people think they might cause "profound mental disorders."

Amidplenty of criticism,Paul assured us all that he's not anti-vaccine. On Tuesday afternoon, he tweeted a photo of himself getting a conveniently timed booster shot and issued a statement:

I did not say vaccines caused disorders, just that they were temporally related I did not allege causation. I support vaccines, I receive them myself and I had all of my children vaccinated.

The vaccine controversyis the subject of a great story looking at Paul's 2016 presidential prospectsin Thursday's Post by David A. Fahrenthold and Matea Gold. Everyone should read it.

To give Paul the benefit of the doubt here, it's true that some have incorrectly characterizedhis CNBC comments as saying vaccines *in fact* causedmental disorders. He didn't say this. What he did do was strongly suggest it was possible.

But that, in and of itself, is a no-no. As a politician, your job is to be careful with your words. By even bringing up the "temporally related" vaccines and "profound mental disorders," you are suggesting that it's quite possible there is a link between them. If you don't think it's a distinct possibility, you just don't say something like that. Anybody watching him say what he said would draw a line between those two things.

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The Fix: Rand Paul has a victim complex

A few months ago, we mused about whether Rand Paul'salmost-ceaseless media-seeking strategy was sustainable. After this week, we're leaning strongly toward 'no.'

And Paul, in large part, has himself to blame.

After vaccines suddenly became the political topic du jour, the Kentucky GOP senatortook to Laura Ingraham's radio show and CNBC on Monday and weighed in on the topic. The latter interview is the one that blew up. Appearing on the show to talk about something else, the host instead started with a fewquestions about vaccines. It didn't go well.

Paul soon ventured into conspiracy-theory territory, saying, "I have heard of many tragic cases of walking, talking, normal children who wound up with profound mental disorders after vaccines." He also said that, while he vaccinates his children, he spaces out the vaccines to cut down on potential harmful effects.

The problem with this, in case you've been under a rock for three days, is that there's absolutely no evidence that vaccines cause "mental disorders." The one study that connected them to an increase in autism has been retracted and thoroughly discredited. What's more, the effectiveness of vaccines for diseases, such as measles, relies on near-universal participation -- something that becomes much harder to achieve if people think they might cause "profound mental disorders."

Amidplenty of criticism,Paul assured us all that he's not anti-vaccine. On Tuesday afternoon, he tweeted a photo of himself getting a conveniently timed booster shot and issued a statement:

I did not say vaccines caused disorders, just that they were temporally related I did not allege causation. I support vaccines, I receive them myself and I had all of my children vaccinated.

The vaccine controversyis the subject of a great story looking at Paul's 2016 presidential prospectsin Thursday's Post by David A. Fahrenthold and Matea Gold. Everyone should read it.

To give Paul the benefit of the doubt here, it's true that some have incorrectly characterizedhis CNBC comments as saying vaccines *in fact* causedmental disorders. He didn't say this. What he did do was strongly suggest it was possible.

But that, in and of itself, is a no-no. As a politician, your job is to be careful with your words. By even bringing up the "temporally related" vaccines and "profound mental disorders," you are suggesting that it's quite possible there is a link between them. If you don't think it's a distinct possibility, you just don't say something like that. Anybody watching him say what he said would draw a line between those two things.

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Rand Paul has a victim complex

Rand Paul has the most aggressive Twitter feed of the 2016 field, an account that emits a steady stream of snark, rapid response and gimmicks. A recent sampling: Hes suggested Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton are conspiring, charged that Marco Rubio wants to build a moat around Cuba, and joked that Bush and Mitt Romney have exchanged friendship and charm bracelets.

Paul doesnt write the tweets himself: Roughly a half-dozen staffers have access to the account, and they post without getting sign-off from the the senator, according to Doug Stafford, Pauls senior political adviser. But he is deeply involved with his Twitter feed, driven by the sense that he wants to be a different kind of Republican candidate who reaches out to new constituencies and he sees social media as key part of that engagement.

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Its all part of a broader strategy to run a tech-savvy, crowd-sourced presidential campaign, where online communication is the first messaging priority and edginess is essential to cut through the clutter.

Paul frequently fires off emails to his staff with concepts for tweets and social media pushes, and sometimes offers specifics.

He and this organization will continue to be engaging, continue to be creative, continue to use digital almost as a first place of communication, because thats the world we live in, said Vincent Harris, the chief digital strategist of RANDPAC, Pauls political arm. The senator himself believes that content online needs to be unique, needs to be delivered not in long, paragraph form, but in pithy, visual memes and images and games. And if you look at the type of content the senators organization has been pushing out over the last two months, you see thats reflected.

Paul leads most of his Republican rivals in Twitter followers, with the exception of Sen. Marco Rubio, who started tweeting two years before Paul did. But Paul is the most prolific, delivering daily, sometimes hourly missives. So far this year, he has posted around 250 tweets (including retweets), eclipsing New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Sen. Ted Cruz (around 200 each) as well as Bush and Rubio (about 40 tweets each). By that same measure, Clinton has tweeted only eight times this year but she has close to 3 million followers, trouncing all of the Republicans.

Paul is also without question the most aggressive of the White House hopefuls, frequently using 140-character posts to jab his Republican competitors and Clinton.

But other Republicans say that theres a fine line between buzzy and juvenile and Paul at times crosses it. Perhaps his most frequent target of late has been establishment favorite Bush, whom Paul regularly tweaks over his views on Common Core, the educational standards championed by the former Florida governor.

I dont think you want to be troller-in-chief, said one prominent Republican digital strategist who isnt currently working for a 2016 candidate. This might be how they think they separate from the pack, reach out to younger people. I just think its pretty close to trolling, which we think is weird for a regular person, much less someone who wants to be leader of the free world.

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How Rand Paul trolls his rivals

Differences are emerging between Sens. Ted Cruz (L) and Rand Paul

FORT WORTH, TexasRepublican Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Ted Cruz of Texas have appeared, at times, almost inseparablestanding together in filibusters, backing each others bills, weathering an attack from GOP Sen. John McCain, who called them wacko birds.

Now, as they prepare to run for the White House in 2016, Paul and Cruz are competing with each other in the deep pool of presidential politics, and differences are beginning to emerge.

A notable split came this week when, amid a multistate outbreak of measles, Paul said he believed most vaccinations should be voluntary and suggested that some may pose medical risks. Cruz joined most other GOP lawmakers and leaders in insisting that vaccines are safe and in endorsing state vaccination requirements.

Still, given their many similarities, the two senators are finding themselves fishing from the same pond of supporters.

In Texas, Paul hauled in a big one last week when the chairman of Cruzs home state GOP, Steve Munisteri, announced he was going to step down from his post and become a senior adviser to Paul.

An expanded version of this story is available at WSJ.com.

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The Wall Street Journal: Paul and Cruz go from friends to friendly competitors

Rand Paul Tears into CNBC Anchor for Misleading Questions on Vaccines, Taxes
FULL INTERVIEW: Rand Paul Shushes Female CNBC Anchor During Interview [VIDEO] Rand Paul: Vaccines Can Lead to Mental Disorders. Sen. Rand Paul and CNBC anchor Kelly Evans got in a ...

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Rand Paul Tears into CNBC Anchor for Misleading Questions on Vaccines, Taxes - Video