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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 The one study that connected them to an increase in autism has been retracted and thoroughly discredited.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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Rand Paul has a victim complex