Who wants him to be president, and who also wants him to be the senator from Kentucky? He can't be both, and his place in the presidential polls suggests that getting to be president is a hard row to hoe. If something spontaneously moved him up like crazy in the presidential poll, yeah, this would justify his staying in. But his poll numbers are basically on the decline. Part of his campaign has definitely suggested he is not a "Happy Warrior".
But he's taken a break to imply he wants to be KY Senator, and he also fundraises for Senate. Then he turns around and puts money from his surer thing Senate campaign to the weirder and more whimsical Presidential campaign. Nah, really:
Rand Paul clinging to his presidential dreams. The Paul campaign spent more last quarter than it raised, bringing in $2.5 million and spending $4.5 million. They’ve only got $2.1 million left. The FEC filing shows Paul moved another $57,000 this past quarter from his Senate reelection fund to his presidential campaign, bringing the total transferred to $1.6 million so far. Federal law only allows one-way transfers. A Paul adviser says that saying the campaign transferred funds is an oversimplistic reading of the FEC report. Paul has a joint fundraising account that lets him raise money for both his presidential and Senate campaigns, called “Rand Paul Victory.” The money transferred from that fund was the presidential campaign’s share of joint events or donations. The Kentucky senator has insisted that he’s not dropping out of the presidential contest anytime soon, even though he continues to seek reelection in the Bluegrass State.I bolded the interesting part. He's moving funds from his plausible Senate Campaign to his less-plausible presidential campaign, and I don't know how "yay, Paul for Senate" people feel about his also trying to be "get into the White House people". If there's a group that likes him pretty well, but don't like the way he's duplicitous and not-staying, there could be issues. I think there certainly should.
2 comments:
You're right. I've been mostly talking about the 'electability' factor in terms of the Bernie Sanders campaign, but it matters a lot in the Republican primaries too, in a really weird way. They essentially have three non-politicians leading the polls - it seems likely that they won't end up with the nomination. But the remaining professional politicians - Bush, Rubio, Cruz and Paul - don't seem to be able to get people even slightly interested, let alone excited. What do you do when NONE of your candidates are electable. I wouldn't be surprised to see them start hollering for Paul Ryan...
The odd thing is--I'm not sure a Rand Paul campaign in theory was supposed to be about electability. He sort of inherited his father's "plucky eccentric underdog with an important message" niche. Ron Paul wasn't a real front-runner, but he injected a certain tone. If we had a race were Bush and Rubio were at the top trading bland nothings at each other, Rand Paul really would look interesting--maybe a little too interesting to be electable, but interesting enough to be listened to.
But even Rand freaking Paul can't out-weird Trump or Carson. It's like he's got no point, except looking more electable than those guys, so when "the crazy" implodes, he's still around. But the crazy hasn't shown any letting up. So I wonder how it feels to have been as talked up as Rand has, and now finding himself playing Old Maid with Huckabee, Santorum, and Jindal.
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