Three polls in three states doing trial heats between Hillary Clinton and likely GOP contenders shows Rand Paul doing better against her in all three than the other GOP candidates.
Paul ties her in Iowa, trails by 3 in New Hampshire, and leads by 3 in Colorado. Paul beats the next most viable GOP candidate by 2 in Iowa, 1 in NH, and 5 in Colorado.
Against all other Republican contenders, Clinton leads in those three states.
If that holds up, Rand’s going to have a pretty good case to make that it’s time for the GOP to move in a different direction. I also wonder if his reaching out to minority and young voters is giving him those extra votes.
Asking black students “Hey, did you guys know that Lincoln was Republican”? isn’t much or a reach if you ask me. He isn’t going to get the nomination, the military-industrial complex will see to that. And if by some miracle he beats Romney for the nomination (yes, he will run, mark my words), the has no chance against Hillary. I can’t think of a state that Obama won that Hillary would lose.
Iiandyiii and I agree! But there is a chance. In that scenario though, Christie stays out. Romney can only win if he’s the sole credible moderate in the race running against a bunch of Tea Partiers dividing the far right vote. Jeb probably has to stay out too.
Bob, there’s no question that Rand’s attempts to reach out to minorities has been clumsy. But it’s been backed up with proposed legislation. Things like making states restore the voting rights of felons. Which makes no sense from a libertarian standpoint, but Rand seems to be establishing himself as a “Libertarian except where minority issues are concerned” candidate.
Speaking of that, I can see the mainstream media usual equivalence nonsense with the Washington Post reporting how good Rand Paul is with the check marks, like how nice it is that he talks to Black Organizations, forgetting to remind or to report to their readers that Paul only embarrassed himself in that occasion and it did not leave a good impression.
Romney may not run, but he has to be looking at the roster and thinking he could do better than any of those clowns.
You know the story about any Senator or Governor looking in the mirror and seeing a President. John McCain admits the only cure for the disease is embalming fluid.
I realize that’s what you’d like the media to report, but what actually happened is more nuanced, and the media has to its credit reported that nuance:
THe left-wing media of course has bent over backwards to make sure Paul gets no credit, but that’s because they fear what would happen if Republicans so much as won 20% of the black vote.
That “nuance” is all along the lines of how Paul really did make an effort. Those reports do say the same as the shorter ones, about how totally he failed.
Now, what *are *the Republicans doing to win as much as 20% of the black vote?
What should he get credit for? His condescension and poor assumptions about how much black people actually know about American history?
I suppose he can get credit for showing up, but that’s a pathetically low bar.
To start with, Republicans should not assume that black people support the Democratic party, in general, because they’ve been ‘duped’ or because they don’t understand history. Republicans need to understand that most black people have legitimate and rational reasons for supporting the Democratic party – reasons that do indeed have a lot to do with history.
And why not? There’s nothing actually against that in libertarian ideology so far as I understand it. Disfranchising felons would seem to be an authoritarian thing, not libertarian.
Granted, libertarianism has no commitment whatsoever to democracy as such and some libertarians are openly hostile to it.
It should be, but very few of them cross it. It’s so much easier and more soul-satisfying to tell themselves they can’t do it, the blacks won’t listen to / can’t understand their message, it’s pointless to try, so they simply have to suppress the black vote in the national interest. That’s undoubtedly what gets noticed, not Paul trying to tell them the Southern Strategy never happened.
And most Americans outside of the modern GOP understand that Lincoln’s Republican party was in no way the Conservative party of the time and really has little in common with today’s Republicans beyond the shared name.
There’s more to it than that. He did get applause for addressing issues where the more libertarian Republicans and African-Americans agree, issues that Democrats often neglect because frankly they just don’t need to address them. They have the black vote well in hand, they don’t actually have to do anything beyond preserving what they’ve already done for African-Americans. Their focus is now on Latinos.
Plus, there’s the respect issue. IIandyii and other Democrats like to talk about “history”, but there’s no history of official GOP discrimination against African-Americans. History is on the GOP’s side. IT’s about a) current policies, and b) respect. Paul respects African-Americans enough to reach out to them sincerely. Other Republicans just go through the motions.
And I really love this idea that white Republican politicians are somehow incapable of knowing how to talk to African-American audiences, as if white Democrats have it down pat or something. White Democrats just have it easier because all they have to do is give the exact same speeches white Democrats have given to black organizations for 50 years, and they don’t stray from that script to avoid getting into trouble.
