Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul’s presidential campaign is less than a day old but already suffers from an identity crisis. Paul wants to win, but he can only do so if he is seen as more mainstream than his father, Ron Paul, who ran for president in 2008 and 2012. At the same time, Paul can’t completely jettison the far-left and far-right positions that have made him a hero to the substantial number of Republican libertarians who made up his father’s base.
In Paul’s dream world, he’ll satisfy everyone. In the most likely real world, he’ll end up satisfying no one.
The most obvious path for Paul to win the GOP nomination is to build on the 21 percent of the vote his father earned in Iowa in 2012, and the 23 percent Paul Sr. picked up in New Hampshire that year. In a divided primary field, that might not seem so difficult; 25 percent might be enough to win both states. And with wins in the first two contests, Paul might be able to ride the Big Mo’ to the nomination.
But right now, Paul isn’t anywhere close to where his father ended up in either state in 2012. Paul is polling at a little less than 9 percent in Iowa and nearly 11 percent in New Hampshire. That’s far closer to the percentage of the vote earned by Paul Sr. in both states during his 2008 bid for the presidency, which was far less relevant than his 2012 run.
In fact, Paul is losing support across the board. While he was initially able to outpace his father’s 2012 success, his national numbers have been dropping over the last year.
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