DL GOP Fantasy Pool Update – The Rand Paul Deathwatch is on

When your campaign has to continually assert that you haven’t dropped out, it is a bad sign. That’s where Rand Paul is right now, as he tries to assure donors that he is still running for the GOP nomination… “but also, by the way… donate to my Senatorial campaign, because that is the real campaign.” That’s a paraphrase.

So the GOP isn’t as libertarian as people thought (hoped) it was. That’s the sentiment of Jerry Taylor, president of the Niskanen Center, a Washington based libertarian think-tank.

If there were any significant support for Libertarian ideas in the GOP—any at all—Rand Paul would be near the top of an otherwise crowded, fragmented field that is fighting over every non-libertarian voter in the party. Yet he’s polling at a mere 1 percent among Republican voters nationwide and has a higher unfavorability rating than anyone else in the GOP race.

I tend to disagree. It isn’t that the GOP isn’t Libertarian enough – it is that Rand Paul isn’t Libertarian enough. He ran away from his prior statements about the United States having a more limited role in policing the world as if those views were on fire. Which they were in the overheated world of GOP “bomb them all” primary politics. He also ran away from running away from Jesus. This is perhaps even more disappointing to red blooded Libertarians. All the Jesus stuff on the GOP side is not only tiresome, but for anyone who knows anything about American civics, it is also profoundly anti-American.

So.. with no real libertarian support, and looking for all the word like a newly minted and counterfiet run of the mill conservative, Rand Paul finds himself on the outs. Good Riddance.