That's disappointing. Oh, well... maybe Dennis Kucinich will run again.
(Please, God, don't make me vote Libertarian!)
Yeah, he's hobnobbing w/ all these Iowa pastors on this 3 day tour of Iowa and appears to be stepping in it slightly. His sometimes nuanced positions, in this case, is coming back to bite him since he clearly did call for Israel aid to be finished off yet he said that in his trip to Israel. I know he's trying to balance his foreign policy positions to not have neocons wanting to stick a knife in his back but that may prove impossible. I tend to look the other way when he tries to thread the needle but it does seem like he's not been having that great of a week. However, the main goal of defeating democrats by building his conservatarian box seems to still be on fire since dems have been sending out do or die fundraising pleas based on him.
Rand Paul = Democrats’ Enemy #1
The senator’s broad appeal threatens to weaken Democrats for 2016, and they are going on offense—sending out no less than 10 press releases on his latest trip to Iowa.
Olivia Nuzzi
08.07.14
Democrats fundraise and campaign by exploiting concerns about right-wing extremism. But at least at the moment, what they apparently fear most is the rise of a candidate who could potentially poach enough of their supporters to beat them in 2016.
Rand Paul has not yet formally announced he is running for the Republican nomination. But with a lead in GOP polls and already laying the foundation for the infrastructure of a campaign, the junior senator from Kentucky is considered the early front-runner, one who is transparent about his desire to appeal to a broad range of voters—and that has Democrats worried.
For the 10th time in two years, Paul arrived on Monday in Iowa, where the first presidential caucuses will be held in 17 months, to try out his message on a three-day, multi-city, headline-generating tour.
Over the course of the trip, the Democratic National Committee sent out 10 press releases about Paul’s every move and utterance. “What it can tell you as a political observer is that they recognize what we’re trying to point out, which is Rand is the Republican who has the best chance of keeping and energizing the base while going into their constituencies," a senior aide for Paul told The Daily Beast.
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“He’s working not to get out of the conservative box but to redefine it,” Simon Rosenberg, president of the New Democrat Network, told The Daily Beast. If Paul gets the nomination, he becomes the effective leader of his party—meaning his redefinition of that conservative box could become the definition, a problem for Democrats, as Paul has a tendency to stake out atypical positions for a conservative and reach across party lines.
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More...
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/08/07/rand-paul-democrats-enemy-1.html