Posted on 04/07/2015 8:49:00 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
en. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) was first out of the gate in the 2016 presidential horse race, and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) is the underdog everyone suddenly seems to be rooting for. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) is still probably the odds-on favorite to win the Republican presidential nomination, with Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker not too far behind.
But this is the only prediction I'm comfortable making: Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who is announcing his candidacy in Louisville today, won't be America's next president.
That's not because the 52-year-old freshman senator from Kentucky wouldn't make a formidable candidate; it's because he won't get the chance. Republicans won't nominate him as their 2016 standard-bearer — luckily for Democrats.
Paul isn't necessarily a natural candidate — he can be a little unflatteringly churlish with the news media, a candidate's gateway to voters — but he doesn't come across as phony, and campaigning is a skill candidates can and do acquire on the trail. His campaign theme will be the aggressively populist couplet "Defeat the Washington machine. Unleash the American Dream":
(VIDEO-AT-LINK)
Dr. Rand Paul
✔ @RandPaul
Join with us to defeat the Washington machine & unleash the American dream>> http://randpaul.com
7:28 AM - 6 Apr 2015
Paul's teaser video gets a little messianic near the end, but the quotes he includes from various pundits seem pretty accurate: He is the most interesting candidate in the race, he is a "different kind of Republican," he does take some unpopular and principled stands, and he would appeal to more young and minority voters than the typical Republican candidate.
In his pre-announcement buildup, Paul touts himself as someone who "can beat Hillary Clinton" and "will broaden the reach of the Republican Party." That second part may be true. Paul ventures out of the GOP comfort zone to address black audiences, hipsters, the technorati, and other demographics not traditionally associated with the Republican Party, and he addresses substantive issues like prison sentencing reform, voting rights for felons, and curbing drone warfare that won't win him any Tea Party straw polls.
Perhaps most appealingly, Paul is a relative dove in a party that is increasingly returning to its hawkish posture after a brief flirtation with military restraint. On Sunday, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) dropped a superfluous dig at Paul in a critique of the Obama administration's framework nuclear deal with Iran: "I think everybody on our side except maybe Rand Paul could do better." But here's the thing: A sizable majority of Americans support an Iran deal, as The Week's William Falk points out.
Paul isn't anywhere close to being a Democrat, and he throws out his share of red meat, but he seems to understand that the issues that Republican activists and conservative media outlets fixate on don't resonate outside of the roughly third of the country having those conversations. He backs President Obama's Cuba rapprochement, for example, and he uses a Teleprompter, because it is a useful tool for reading speeches in public — and not one Obama was the first to make use of.
The same things that make Paul potentially attractive to independents and certain left-leaning constituencies, though, make him suspect to the only voters that can make him the GOP presidential candidate.
As hard as he's worked to build bridges to the GOP establishment — he all but has the endorsement of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, for instance — lots of Republicans still associate Paul with the more heterodox views of his father, former Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas). On the other hand, Paul's concessions to his party's establishment and base don't sit well with the motivated group of libertarian conservatives who made Ron Paul a force to be reckoned with in the 2008 and 2012 GOP primaries.
Then there's the political culture of the Republican Party, which hasn't shown much appetite to put new or untested faces on the top of its presidential tickets: Mitt Romney, John McCain, George W. Bush, Bob Dole, George H.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford, Richard Nixon. The only outlier there is Ford, a congressman who happened into being the incumbent in 1976. The last real risk the GOP took was Barry Goldwater in 1964, and he lost in a landslide.
Rand Paul will have money to compete, and he will have a grassroots network to tap into, but he won't win the 2016 Republican nomination. Hillary Clinton, or the Democrats' Candidate X, should count her blessings.
You’re on the wrong site. The military is 1/7th of the budget and 1/2 of the Constitutional mandate for the fedgov.
Your priorities are hosed.
Reagan’s Triad - the formula that makes conservatism work, is equal parts economic and social conservatism, and a strong military.
I can accept either of Walker, Cruz, Jindal, Paul or Rubio.
No Bush, No Huckabee, No Santorum. Fiorina as VP candidate could make an excellent attack dog on Hillary without being accused of war on women. Trump is untested, and unpredictable. I scratched off Kasich after learning he is for expanding medicaid, favors common core & seems limited on national issues.
We can’t eliminate aid to poor people unless their are jobs for them.
This is why we need a full employment policy. Not a cheap labor policy.
And yes, I would love to see the wasteful federal spending eliminated.
No thanks, No way, He!! no!
You're obviously more than willing to have this nation vulnerable and easily taken over. No wonder you like Rand the nutcase.
His ideas are pathetically banal and worthless; his understanding of financial matters leave a great deal to be desired.
“Military need to be cut 50%, across the board cuts everywhere is needed”
The US Military is a small part of the US budget, yet is one thing expressly mandated by the Constitution for the government to maintain.
Your comment makes you sound exactly like a leftist who believe that military spending is an affront to their preferred socialistic spending.
Are you sure you're on the right site ?
He will muddy the waters and draw votes from a true conservative.
The same goes for Perry, Santorum and Huckabee, they have no chance.
The only person they help by entering the race is Jebster and that is something we damn sure don't need.
Go Cruz go!!!
Hah!
No.
...”As much as I like Cruz, I prefer Rand. The other GOP candidates don’t understand that US is bankrupt and they all still want to maintain a large military force. US can not afford it. Military need to be cut 50%, across the board cuts everywhere is needed.”
Yes. Continuing to run the national debt up by a million dollars a minute will bring an economic holocaust down upon us, probably sooner rather than later. And, most people do not understand the implications of that.
...”The greatest threat to US are not those countries but the debt.”...
YES!
He does have that Cousin Eddie look.
“The US Military is a small part of the US budget, yet is one thing expressly mandated by the Constitution for the government to maintain.”
You would think that the Ron/Rand Paul so called constitutional experts would remember that little part.
You truncated your last item - I fixed it.
I suspect that they want him to run as a credible Third Party candidate to help Hillary. If we run Jeb, it will almost certainly work. If we run Cruz, the Rand will likely pull as many votes from Hillary as he does from Republicans.
The country is burning itself to the ground. I say if that’s what they want, more power to them. I can always leave.
The military is 1/7 of the budget. There are MANY more places, and MANY more ways, to cut trillions out of the budget, without gutting one of the few actual Constitutional responsibilities. Nice try, though.
Right after Rand announced he was here in soviet Red Hampshire, sniffing the hindquarters of the Free Staters and other Paulbots who don’t realize that Rand is running, not Ron.
What is a full employment policy? I don’t know exactly what you are talking about but people who use buzzwords often frighten me.
Oh Brother, then you must frighten easily.
How about eliminating the H1-B Visa program, enforcing our immigration laws, enacting some reasonable tariff’s, eliminating the ACA and reducing regulations on business. (For a start).
Many people who claim to be for Free Markets want to rig the supply of labor to the cheapest possible rate.
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