When Rand Paul was running against Trey Grayson in the 2010 Republican primary, one of his major campaign pledges was that he would never, NEVER vote for a budget that was not balanced. None of these five-year or 10-year plans like that RINO Trey Grayson, because Rand Paul was the real anarchist conservative deal.

And one of Rand Paul’s first actions when he got to the U.S. Senate, of course, was to introduce his five-year plan to balance the budget. After all, it was a “primary pledge,” and those don’t actually mean anything.

Unfortunately for Paul — and fortunately for America — the Senate has never thought much of Paul’s budget plan. In fact, do you know who really can’t stand it? His fellow Republican colleagues.

Yesterday, the Senate once again overwhelmingly rejected Paul’s budget by a 16-83 vote, with 29 Republicans choosing not to touch it with a 10-foot pole. After all, they may be conservatives — or deathly afraid of Tea Party primaries — but no one in their right mind is going to vote for cutting Social Security benefits by 40 percent, essentially ending Medicare, and gutting federal agencies to the point of anarchy.

Oh, unless you’re Sen. Mitch McConnell. For the second time, McConnell has put his stamp of approval on the Paul plan, which basically means that any Democrat running against him in 2014 who is able to put a good deal of ads onto the air has an endless supply of ammunition to throw McConnell’s record into the woodchipper.

Why would McConnell do this? It remains one of the many mysteries of the McConnell/Paul secret handshake deal, the most fascinating political show in the commonwealth.