Posted on 09/27/2015 11:14:51 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
LEXINGTON,Ky. — Rand Paul was right.
In January 2014, the day after The Atlantic anointed Paul, Kentucky’s junior U.S. Senator, as the Republican frontrunner in the 2016 presidential race, Paul told the Herald-Leader “it’s still too early probably to talk about things like that.”
“That sounds unlucky to me,” he said.
Less than two years later, Paul’s luck, it seems, is running out.
Campaigning on Friday in New Hampshire, Paul continues to charge ahead with his struggling presidential campaign, but speculation is growing that he might be the next Republican candidate to drop out of the race.
Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker have already folded, and Paul is one of the hot names in the parlor game of guessing who will exit next.
On Friday, the Washington Post and Politico devoted space to an early draft of Paul’s presidential campaign obituary.
“Walker’s departure from the race means that the senator from Kentucky is no longer the front-runner for the most disappointing campaign of 2016,” the Post wrote. “So, congrats on that. But Paul appears to have dropped entirely off the radar of most Republican voters.”
Politico’s weekly poll of political insiders from early-voting states put Paul right behind Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and former New York Gov. George Pataki as the next to drop out, with 22 percent saying Paul would be next.
One unnamed New Hampshire Republican told the Beltway publication that Paul’s “campaign (reeks) of the same stench of death that surrounded the Perry and Walker efforts before their demise.”
The day after Paul announced his presidential campaign in April, the senator told reporters in New Hampshire that winning the Granite State was crucial to his chances of winning the nomination.
“I will say that I think New Hampshire is incredibly important to me,” Paul said. “We will try very hard. We are going to do everything to win in New Hampshire. I do think we do need to win New Hampshire.”
But the summer months were not kind to Paul, in New Hampshire or elsewhere.
In a poll conducted in June for CNN and WMUR in Manchester, N.H., Paul was polling at 9 percent, with 43 percent of New Hampshire voters holding a favorable opinion of him and 32 percent an unfavorable opinion.
On Thursday, the same poll showed Paul slipping to 3 percent support, with 48 percent of respondents holding an unfavorable view and 31 percent favorable.
He hasn’t fared any better in national polls, with a RealClearPolitics average showing the senator at 2.3 percent.
It has been death by a thousand cuts for Paul’s campaign: reports of staff infighting, the federal indictments of two longtime aides, lackluster fundraising, the improbable and unpredictable rise of Donald Trump, and a Republican Party that appears to be returning to its roots on foreign policy.
Next week, we might just learn how much longer Paul can keep going.
The third-quarter fundraising period ends Wednesday, and one of the biggest questions will be whether Paul has raised enough money to continue his quest.
Paul’s campaign has spent the last few days feverishly sending fundraising emails, begging for contributions to keep Paul’s leaky ship afloat.
“This is the most important deadline I will face as a candidate,” Paul wrote in one recent fundraising plea.
The senator’s first fundraising report this summer fell well short of expectations and the reports of other candidates, and his super PACs have not registered big numbers.
Paul did enjoy one victory recently, winning the straw poll at the Mackinac Island Republican Leadership Conference, but the win was largely obscured by the strong debate performances of former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina and Florida U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio.
Then on Thursday, Paul was embarrassed at home as former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush beat the Kentucky senator to the punch by becoming the first presidential candidate to file his paperwork and deliver his $15,000 filing fee for Kentucky’s 2016 presidential caucuses.
Paul fought long and hard to persuade the state party to adopt the caucus method of selecting a nominee, ponying up $250,000 to help defray the cost.
That Bush made it onto the caucus ballot before Paul again raised questions about the senator’s organizational strengths.
The chatter nationally is that Paul is being pressured to drop out and focus on re-election to his U.S. Senate seat in 2016, but that is hardly a new development. Some Kentucky Republicans have long worried about Paul’s risky plan to pursue both offices at once.
Still, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, facing a daunting 2016 election map to keep his newfound majority, has given zero indication that he is pressuring Paul to drop out of the presidential race.
And even if McConnell did ask Paul to get out of the presidential race, there is no reason to think Paul would heed that advice.
While campaigning in Alaska in late August, Paul told reporters he was broadening his early-state focus to include Western states, declaring that he was in the race for “the long haul.”
But those kinds of declarations can be, as Paul knows, unlucky.
I hope he doesn’t quit. I enjoy watching his eye-rolling, somewhat childish scorn of the other candidates. I would never vote for him, but I certainly like watching his antics.
It’s getting close to the time when all those below a certain percentage, what ever that is, pulls the plug and gets behind one of the leading candidates, remembering the ultimate thing is to WIN the presidency.
“He needs a man’s haircut. Looks like a fool.”
He cuts his own hair. Looks like it, too.
He must use Trafficant’s hairdresser!
He could very likely end up in Sen. Mitch’s position, if what had happened last week in the House repeat itself in the Senate.
Not to many defenders of Rand Paul...where did all the Paulistas go????
His appeal has always been greatly exaggerated (iow, manufactured consent). Engineered straw poll results was a method used by his nutjob father before him, but the fact is, most people see through the Paul family line of horse****. Thanks 2ndDivisionVet.
Rand Paul On Shutdown: "Even Though It Appeared I Was Participating In It, It Was A Dumb Idea"I said throughout the whole battle that shutting down the government was a dumb idea. Even though it did appear as if I was participating in it, I said it was a dumb idea. And the reason I voted for it, though, is that it's a conundrum. Here's the conundrum. We have a $17 trillion debt and people at home tell me you can't give the president a blank check. We just can't keep raising the debt ceiling without conditions. So unconditionally raising the debt ceiling, nobody at home wants me to vote for that and I can't vote for that. But the conundrum is if I don't we do approach these deadlines. So there is an impasse. In 2011, though, we had this impasse and the president did negotiate. We got the sequester. If we were to extend the sequester from discretionary spending to all the entitlements we would actually fix our problem within a few years.[Posted on 11/19/2013 12:16:51 PM by Third Person]
Rand Paul: Time for GOP to soften war stance...by softening its edge on some volatile social issues and altering its image as the party always seemingly "eager to go to war... We do need to expand the party and grow the party and that does mean that we don't always all agree on every issue" ... the party needs to become more welcoming to individuals who disagree with basic Republican doctrine on emotional social issues such as gay marriage... "We're going to have to be a little hands off on some of these issues ... and get people into the party," Paul said.[Posted on 01/31/2013 5:08:50 PM PST by xzins]
Rand Paul's immigration speech...The Republican Party must embrace more legal immigration.[Posted on 03/19/2013 7:04:07 AM PDT by Perdogg]
Unfortunately, like many of the major debates in Washington, immigration has become a stalemate-where both sides are imprisoned by their own rhetoric or attachment to sacred cows that prevent the possibility of a balanced solution.
Immigration Reform will not occur until Conservative Republicans, like myself, become part of the solution. I am here today to begin that conversation.
Let's start that conversation by acknowledging we aren't going to deport 12 million illegal immigrants.
If you wish to work, if you wish to live and work in America, then we will find a place for you...
This is where prudence, compassion and thrift all point us toward the same goal: bringing these workers out of the shadows and into being taxpaying members of society.
Imagine 12 million people who are already here coming out of the shadows to become new taxpayers.12 million more people assimilating into society. 12 million more people being productive contributors.
Rand Paul calls on conservatives to embrace immigration reformLatinos, should be a natural constituency for the party, Paul argued, but "Republicans have pushed them away with harsh rhetoric over immigration." ...he would create a bipartisan panel to determine how many visas should be granted for workers already in the United States and those who might follow... [and the buried lead] "Imagine 12 million people who are already here coming out of the shadows to become new taxpayers...[Posted on 04/21/2013 1:52:42 PM PDT by SoConPubbie]
[but he's not in favor of amnesty, snicker, definition of is is]
Rand Slams Congress for Funding Egypt's Generals: 'How Does Your Conscience Feel Now?'Sen. Rand Paul is hammering his fellow senators for keeping billions in financial aid flowing to Egypt's military -- even as Cairo's security forces massacre anti-government activists. [by "anti-government activists" is meant church-burning Christian-murdering jihadists][Posted on 08/15/2013 5:44:10 PM PDT by Hoodat]
I watched some of the garbage on the news today, UN speech. We need to win, we can’t let another liberal democrat in office. If we do, we’re toast.
Kentucky is a weird state.
Rand Paul shouldn’t have won the seat. But his Dem opponent (who is now the Dem nominee for Governor) screwed up at the end of the campaign with some things.
So the race to fill Pauls seat wouldn’t be a sure thing. The Republic would either win big or lose in a squeeker. Hard to tell which.
I like Paul as a Senator. I don’t think he’s cut out for national office. Him going back to KY and focusing on reelection there is a good thing for all involved.
I think Rubio hangs in for a while.
As candidates leave the race their support has to go somewhere. Even negligible support (like for Perry, Walker and Paul) starts to add up. It becomes more of an endurance test than anything else.
Rubio also has nowhere else to go, since he’s foregoing reelection to the Senate for this Presidential run. Having nothing to lose creates a completely different set of motivations for a candidate when it comes to the leave or stay in decision.
I think Rubio hangs in for a while>>>>>>>>>>>>
If Rubio keeps riding The Donald like a Spavined mule, Rubio will have to quit. He needs his own game and quickly.
It all depends on the money. Rubio doesn’t have to quit until he runs out of money.
So the same thing I said earlier applies to the money as well; money that would flow to Perry or Walker or Paul now needs to go somewhere. Rubio should benefit from that, perhaps disproportionately because he occupies an increasingly large space between Trump, Bush and Cruz.
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