One can never know other people's motivations, but one can certainly guess, and pretty much everyone agrees that Pai is smart enough to know better.
He says contradictory things. He says he supports an idea but doesn't support the act of enforcing it. His apparent ideology is in direct conflict with his actions. He either fundamentally misunderstands the situation, is majorly corrupt, or is simply malicious (which I doubt).
I support the idea of being faithful in your marriage, but I'm 100% opposed to the federal government enforcing this. How is that contradictory?
The problem is, there isn't another place for the regulation to happen. The FTC simply does not have the expertise or resources and the internet needs broad conforming rules to perform well, so a state-by-state solution would prove disastrous.
When you give a private entity the right to trample on individual rights, the individual's rights are weakened.