Posted on 07/21/2015 3:25:47 PM PDT by Kaslin
This clip would feel so different if Rand was sitting at 15-20 percent in the polls right now, smack dab in the middle of the top tier, with a huge Super PAC haul under his belt. Imagine it. With the media in early panic mode about Republicans nominating a crazed libertarian who’d take a wrecking ball to government as president, here Rand would be, goofing on the hysteria behind that image while also winking at his supporters that he might in fact be the wrecking ball the left fears. The vid would, essentially, be a form of “kidding on the square” by a man confident enough in his chances in Iowa and New Hampshire to tease fans with thoughts of the regulatory woodchipping to come.
As it is, with Rand stuck at six points or so in national polls and having not reached double digits in nearly three months, it feels more like a stunt borne of early desperation to remind people that he’s still in the race. This is, after all, the opposite of Paul’s core appeal. He’s not a rhetorical bombthrower (except when he’s talking about Republican interventionists). He’s a soft-spoken cerebral politician, the rare bird in Washington who actually seems to be thinking when he’s talking. He looks vaguely pained to be there even though this is supposed to be a fun, silly nothing designed for Facebook sharing by fans. I feel bad for him.
Erick Erickson wonders: What the hell happened to this guy?
Paul only raised $6.9 million. Ben Carson raised $10.6. And that is money raised by the candidate, not the Super PAC. The fact that a guy like Rand Paul, Mister Individualist, is having to depend on two outside Super PACs to raise money for him — and neither have released totals yet — is really surprising. I suspect it was a strategic miscalculation for Paul to enter the race when he did because it meant he could no longer coordinate with his Super PAC. Perhaps Ted Cruz’s strategy of jumping in early stroked Paul’s ego in a way that forced a strategic mistake. As long as Paul did not formally declare, he could fundraise with the Super PACs. But the moment Cruz got in, Paul felt compelled to jump in too…
Rand Paul should be doing much better. He actually has a good story. He actually has positions that set him apart from the GOP field. He has a built in base of support from his father. But remarkably it appears Rand Paul will be less a factor on 2016 than his dad was in 2012. I really never expected that. And not only that, if you pay attention to the campaign schedule, Paul is marching to the beat of his own drummer in ways that suggest the drummer isn’t really headed toward the White House. Michigan? Really?
I don’t get it either. Not long ago, you could make a plausible case that Rand Paul was the most likely of any GOP candidate to win both Iowa and New Hampshire. (That designation would fall to Scott Walker now.) In a sense he was can’t-miss: Ron Paul, after all, cracked 20 percent in both states three years ago against Mitt Romney. If, say, half of those voters were strong libertarians, Rand would inherit a loyal base at or near 10 percent, and by reaching out to moderates and conservatives on various other issues, he could presumably double it without much problem. That would put him right in contention for victory in both states given the highly divided field. As it is, he’s struggling early to break into double digits. How come? Did he alienate too many of those strong libertarians by, for instance, opposing Obama’s Iran deal? (Ron endorsed it.) Did he alienate too many mainstream conservatives by being too libertarian on other subjects like criminal justice reform? Or, as Erickson suggests, did Cruz simply gobble up a chunk of right-wing voters whom Rand was counting on? What’s it all about, Alfie?
Update: My mistake: I said Paul hadn’t reached double digits in nearly three months when I meant to say two months. He was at 11 percent in an ABC/WaPo poll taken at the end of May. Also, Team Rand e-mails to say that YouGov’s polling has had him in double digits as recently as earlier this month. Fair enough, although that poll isn’t included in RCP’s poll average. That’s the scorecard I use to follow the race.
How Would You Kill the Tax Code
Poor little Rand.
Is this the best he can do to attract attention to his already dead campaign?
Nice ad...still not gonna vote for him.
“This clip would feel so different if Rand was sitting at 15-20 percent in the polls”
If... If... if...
Posted before on another thread:
Rand Paul is merely a corrupt little weasel:
He’s dead to me.
Is it too late already, or is there anything Rand Paul could do that would make you sit up and take another look?
He wants to build bridges with groups usually overlooked by the GOP.
He’s dead to me.
Oh to me too. He turned me off when instead of concentrating on the mid term elections he announced already in 2013 that he would run for the 2016 presidential election.
Yeah he does. Except those groups are known as libertarians. And that's even more reason why Paul is not an option.
Maybe it’s just me, but I never viewed Rand as having much of a chance.
Oh I don’t either, and since he is also running for his Senate seat, I would probably vote for his reelection if I were a Kentucky resident, as he is a good Senator imho, but since I am a TN resident and not a cheating liberal I won’t even though I only live a little over 4 miles from the KY border
It’s smart that he’s not pulling a Rubio, although I can’t stand Rubio, we do need Rand in the Senate though.
I once had high hopes for Rand when he first came onto the scene, but since then my opinion of him has greatly diminished. Still like his small government and civil liberties stance, but that alone isn’t enough for me to support him for president. Right or wrong his old man was at least principled and unwavering in his convictions, Rand seems a little too willing to become part of the Republican establishment. Like the poster noted above he blocked a subpoena necessary to investigate potential health exchange fraud by other members of congress. I’ve yet to hear his reasoning behind that stunt.
symbolism over substance.
Trump has massive charisma and has been swinging it like a chainsaw right at the Democrats. That's why they (and their GOPe sympathizers) are in such a panic. They don't call you a blowhard and a fool (tow other favorite terms for Ronald Reagan, incidentally) unless you are landing serious jabs on their chins. People who are predicting Trump's decline are in error - what he will probably do is siphon away all the "generic conservative" support from his rivals, setting up a two man, multi-billion dollar race between himself and Jeb Bush before the primaries even start.
It’s not just you.
His dad taught me an important lesson. If a guy sounds good on several topics, don’t get suckered into backing all his agenda. Learn a lot more before you go all in.
I think Ron is very astute on some issues. I think Rand is too.
Overall, they’re like five week old rotting clam chowder.
Rand looked like a cleaned-up version of his Dad, but alas it appears he’s very much like his Old Man. Meaning, he makes some very good points on several issues (including taxation)...but we’re a very very very long ways from trusting him with defense and foreign relations... on which he sounds (at times anyway) as unreliable (a very carefully chosen nice nice word) as his Father. No way, we will not vote for Rand. But we do hope he can make some progress with his tax arguments.... the tax code desperately needs to be replaced with something far, far fairer and simpler... it is a major drag on the US economy and, as we have seen under O, it is an all-too-inviting mechanism for both suppressing political discourse and threatening or eliminating political opposition.
Lol, I wouldn't quite go that far, I actually did like and respect his old man though I disagree with him on certain important issues.
A lot of Libertarians are really smart people but not especially worldly and get carried away with their pie in the sky semi-anarchic utopia just like many liberals do. I'm hardly a war hawk and think our intervention in Iraq was probably one of the worst foreign policy decisions in recent memory with its incredible cost and negative consequences, but total isolationalists like Ron Paul are foolish to think that it unnecessary for us to sometimes flex our muscles to project our power and protect our interests in the world. Reagan was a master at it without ever having to get ourselves mixed up in things we were better off handling otherwise.
But be kind to libertarians, they are Republicans who just haven't quite grown up yet, lol.
Thanks for your nice response.
Early on I liked Ron Paul a lot. Hearing what I had heard, I thought his mind would see other issues as clearly as the ones I had heard him address. And then I learned more about him. I was disappointed, and at times rather angry with the guy. It just seemed his ideas were half-baked.
I found Rand to be equally challenged.
I believe Iraq could have been brilliant, if conducted properly. I won’t get into it now, since it’s off topic, but as decent a job as Bush did, I thought he made some terrible blunders. He went 75% of the way.
Now we’re paying for it. Some wasn’t his fault, but he had time to fix this right. He didn’t.
We know what a problem Obama is, so I’ll simply leave it at that.
Guess I'm just 'old school' when it comes to that topic. Thought Bush became infected with ridiculous libtard ideas when he started chastising people with " who says Arabs can't handle democracy' or somesuch nonsense when the country was obviously strongly religiously divided and would never have remained intact without a strongman of some sort.
In the old days conservatives understood these basics and would have just went to the second in command and said hey you going to ball with us or not until they found a willing ally, then quickly install him. Sorry but breaking up the military and other things that his administration did was the height of folly and something I can only associate with a liberal influence within his administration - a real conservative would have never done something so stupid. No offense just being real about it.
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