{"id":57398,"date":"2016-02-03T11:30:04","date_gmt":"2016-02-03T17:30:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=57398"},"modified":"2016-02-03T09:58:06","modified_gmt":"2016-02-03T15:58:06","slug":"a-high-floor-and-a-low-ceiling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=57398","title":{"rendered":"A High Floor And A Low Ceiling"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rand Paul has been on my short list<\/a> for a long time.<\/p>\n

And like the rest of my presidential short list as of four months ago – Walker and Jindal – Paul is out<\/a>. \u00a0Apparently my short list is a kiss of death.<\/p>\n

Anyway…:<\/p>\n

Paul had become an increasingly marginal figure in the still-sprawling GOP field. He finished fifth in Iowa, with less than 5 percent of the vote, but is projected to do much worse in next week\u2019s New Hampshire primary, with recent polls showing him in ninth place.<\/p>\n

The Kentucky senator was facing a dismal money situation, and ended the fourth quarter with $1.3 million in the bank for his presidential campaign. He raised roughly $2.1 million in the quarter, while spending $2.9 million. His super PACs ended the year with a little more than $4 million in cash on hand.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He’s off to focus on his Senate re-election bid.<\/p>\n

My two cents? \u00a0Paul had two major handicaps:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. He had the above-mentioned “high floor and low ceiling”; a fair number of people, many inherited from his father’s campaigns, others from the Tea Party, who supported him. \u00a0But their idea of ‘working for a candidate” seemed to involve mostly vigorous tweeting and taking online polls (which Paul, like his father, routinely swept).<\/li>\n
  2. His followers shared many of his father’s followers’ worst traits; an almost personality-cultish focus on the candidate rather than the issues, and in all too many cases an entitled arrogance about their candidate’s superiority. \u00a0 If I had a nickel for every Rand supporter I see online this morning claiming that “the electorate is just too stupid for us”, I could buy that Les Paul I’ve been eyeing.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Anyway – it’s a crummy world, where Rand Paul is out but Rick Santorum is still in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Rand Paul has been on my short list for a long time. And like the rest of my presidential short list as of four months ago – Walker and Jindal – Paul is out. \u00a0Apparently my short list is a kiss of death. Anyway…: Paul had become an increasingly marginal figure in the still-sprawling GOP […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[187,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campaign-16","category-republicans"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=57398"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57398\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57399,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57398\/revisions\/57399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}