First Jeb Bush sided with one of the most dwindling minorities in politics by saying he would have invaded Iraq if he’d been president in 2003. Then he spent the next three days convulsing on the floor until he finally admitted that he wouldn’t have invaded Iraq back in 2003. Meanwhile all the other Republican candidates and some conservative commentators were falling like dominoes onto the same Iraq position that Rand Paul has consistently taken.

As if things weren’t going swimmingly enough, Paul got to appear on Meet the Press and rub Jeb’s nose in it. Actually, the hardest-hit target in his interview was Rubio, who he dinged indirectly by mentioning that other dictator who was roughhoused aside by the United States only to produce Mad Max-style chaos:

“So you have this radical brand of jihad, this radical brand of Islam, that is now strong and growing stronger because of sort of the failed state that Iraq is,” Paul added. “You have the same thing going on in Libya. So this is a valid debate and we’re gonna have to have this debate, not only in the Republican primary but in the general, as to whether or not it’s a good idea. Is intervention always a good idea? Or sometimes does it lead to unintended consequences?”

Translation: Don’t think this is going away any time soon.

Seriously, Paul must have spent the weekend sipping piña coladas and tanning on the beach while father Ron laughed all the way to the gold bank. After weeks of baseless speculation about whether Paul was too loopy to win the nomination, the tables were turned with such brutal force that even Jennifer Rubin is fulminating about Jeb.

The only thing that could make this better is if a leading Republican candidate were to continue fumbling on Iraq, thus guaranteeing that the issue will remain in the headlines. But these are seasoned political heavyweights we’re talking about. Surely none of them will be clumsy enough to—

Last week, Rubio was asked whether he would have still authorized a war, knowing what is known now about Iraq and its lack of weapons of mass destruction. He unequivocally said no. … On Sunday, however, Rubio rejected the rationale behind host Chris Wallace’s question about whether the senator and 2016 presidential contender had flip-flopped on the issue, since he had said in March that it was not a mistake to invade the country. Wallace and Rubio spoke over each other as they attempted to sort out the semantics of the question. “Those are two different questions; it was not a mistake,” Rubio said. “The question was whether it was a mistake, and my answer was it was not a mistake.”

It’s like a dream, except Paul keeps pinching himself and doesn’t seem to be waking up. Add to that the most recent poll out of New Hampshire, which has Paul tied for first, and the most recent poll out of Iowa, which has Paul tied for second, and it’s difficult not to imagine Sheldon Adelson and Lindsey Graham looking askew at the Xanax bottle right now.

Weeks in politics are ephemeral things, of course, and the heavily breathed ups and downs of the news cycle can quickly realign. But to have the entire Republican field faceplanting over Iraq, an issue that by virtue of public opinion is a specialty for Paul, may be more than just a fleeting trend. How do you put Iraq behind you when Libya so closely mirrors what happened there? How do you bury the issue when its lessons also apply to Yemen?

Even if Paul was throwing back piña coladas, it’s his vision on foreign policy that seems clearest right now. We’ll see whether it stays that way for another week.