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Title: Four Reasons Rand Paul Won't Win
Source:
Weekly Standard
URL Source: https://www.weeklystandard.com/blog ... rand-paul-wont-win_934126.html
Published: May 5, 2015
Author: JONATHAN V. LAST
Post Date: 2015-05-06 02:40:45 by Gatlin
Keywords: None
Views: 1307
Comments: 4
If you went only by the media, you'd think that Rand Paul was a legitimate contender to win the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. Time magazine put him on its cover, calling him "The Most Interesting Man in Politics." Politico magazine said --literally--the same thing. Top Obama aides agree. In fact, huge swaths of the media concur that Sen. Paul is "interesting." But it's not clear why, as an electoral proposition, there's anything interesting about him at all. Here are four reasons Paul is likely to underperform in 2016 and almost certainly won't win the GOP nomination. (1) Rand Paul is a conventional political dynasty candidate. People seem bothered by having Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton as dynasty candidates, but for some reason Paul gets a pass on this-no one complains that he'd never be a senator running for president if his name was "Rand Johnson." But unlike Bush and Clinton, who are trying to forge new political identities distinct from their names, Paul is not. Paul is trying to modify, but only slightly, his political identity from his father's-he wants to be thought of as "libertarian-ish." But this amounts to merely a tweak to his father's brand. The essentials of the Paul electoral proposition--withdrawal from foreign entanglements, state's rights, criminal justice reform--are virtually identical for both father and son. For all intents and purposes, Rand Paul is running the third iteration of the Paul presidential campaign. (2) Paul 1.0 was a niche product. At this point in the 2008 cycle, Ron Paul did not exist as a political commodity. Rudy Giuliani led in the polls with support in the high-20s to the low-30s. John McCain was a comfortable second, in the mid- to low-20s. Mike Huckabee, who would be the last man standing when McCain clinched the nomination, barely registered. When Paul made the polls, he was at 1 percent. Paul didn't take off until October of 2007, when he began polling around 3 percent nationally. By the eve of the January Iowa caucuses, Paul was polling between 7 percent and 9 percent in Iowa. He finished the actual caucus just shy of 10 percent. It was good enough for fifth place and it would be his best showing in a contested race for the duration of the campaign. After Iowa, the Ron Paul Revolution was polling around 9 percent in New Hampshire before the primary vote; in the primary he took home 7.8 percent. And that's pretty much how it went for Paul for the rest of 2008. Polling around 5 percent in South Carolina, he finished the primary there with 3.6 percent. He was able to make decent showings in a handful of small-state caucuses after the race was mostly decided, but that was largely an effort to amass delegates for the sake of having some say at the convention. He was never a threat to win any primary vote in which there was substantial opposition. In the RealClear Politics polling average, Paul never went above 7.4 percent. Historically, fringe candidates sometimes come out of nowhere to briefly shock the field before fading into obscurity--think Pat Robertson in '88, or Pat Buchanan in '92. Ron Paul's 2008 campaign was not even as formidable as either of those instances. He was a boutique operation who never presented even a momentary challenge to the top tier of candidates. (3) Paul 2.0 largely underperformed. At this point in the 2012 cycle, Ron Paul was already around 7.5 percent in the RealClearPolitics average, and expectations for his campaign were reasonably high: Just before Iowa held its caucus, Paul had surged to second place in the final Des Moines Register poll, with 22 percent. He finished the actual caucus in third with 21.4 percent. This raised expectations further for New Hampshire, where he was polling in the high teens before the primary. When the votes were counted, Paul actually exceeded his polling, finishing with 23 percent of the vote, his best showing ever in a major, contested primary. This would be the high-water mark of his 2012 effort. After New Hampshire, Paul shrank back to scale: 13 percent in South Carolina, 7 percent in Florida, and 19 percent in Nevada. Even within a historically weak field, as other candidates dropped out of the race, Paul's support remained stagnant. As in 2008, he did well in a handful of non-binding, small-state caucuses. But also as with 2008, this effort was not made in an attempt to win the nomination, but merely to nab some delegates for the convention. Nationally, his support never topped 15 percent, and he consistently underperformed his poll numbers. In South Carolina, for example, he polled between 15 percent and 18 percent before finishing with 13 percent. In Florida, he polled around 10 percent, but finished with 7 percent. Overall, Paul could say that he'd grown his movement. He went from 1.2 million votes in 2008 to 2.1 million in 2012. And his percentage of the total vote moved from 6 percent in 2008 to 11 percent in 2012. But both times he finished fourth in the field. And in neither effort did his candidacy break out, or over- perform with voters. Even judged on its own modest terms, Paul's support was hollow. (4) Paul 3.0 is the last election for the Paul dynasty before Naderism sets in. So how does Rand Paul compare with his father? At this point in 2012, Ron Paul was around 7.5 percent in the RealClearPolitics average, and no one thought he had the slightest chance to win the nomination. Today Rand Paul sits in nearly the same place--9 percent--despite inheriting a campaign infrastructure, organization, and message that's had 12 years to grow. It's a mystery as to why he's being treated as a serious contender. Any rational reading of Paul's numbers suggests that he has the smallest upside of any Republican in the field. Which, contra the media, makes him the least interesting candidate running-because his chances of being the nominee are roughly equivalent to those of Ben Carson or Carly Fiorina. Which is to say that while it's possible that neither of those candidates will reach even 5 percent in a contested vote and it's likely that both will finish behind Paul-at least neither or them have already proven the ceiling of their electoral appeal in two consecutive presidential campaigns. If anything, when it comes to Rand Paul, the smart money should probably take the under on his father's 2012 results in Iowa and New Hampshire: In this cycle, 21 percent and 23 percent of the vote will be much harder to come by in a field crowded with quality, well-funded candidates. And after New Hampshire, Paul has very little to build on, suggesting that his candidacy will likely wane the way both of his father's efforts did. Rand Paul will be a threat in Maine's caucuses and not much else.
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#1. To: Gatlin (#0)
While similar pre-emptive autopsies could be written for all of the GOP candidates (including Bush/Rubio/Walker), this article overlooks many factors. Rand Paul has considerable potential for turning out a youth vote that could steamroll his path. He has some pretty strong support from various minorities that are not typical Republican voters. And he has potential for backing from Silicon Valley that the other GOP candidates do not. He's still a long shot but not so impossible as the writer would like us to believe. Anything about the Pauls written by Weekly Standard should be considered a poison letter. WS loathes the Pauls across the board.
Add to that the first error in the article: Rand is very different from Ron. And of course, referring to the Paul family as a "dynasty" on par with the Bush's and Clinton's is very disingenuous. But such misinfo will please Gatlin.
Gatlin: Ready for Hillary Nah, Gatlin ready for hondo 68 Are we having fun???
#2. To: TooConservative (#1)
#3. To: Gatlin (#0)
The D&R terrorists hate us because we're free, to vote second party
"We (government) need to do a lot less, a lot sooner" ~Ron Paul
#4. To: hondo68 (#3)
Gatlin: Ready for Hillary
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