As he pulls together his expected presidential campaign in Iowa and New Hampshire, Sen. Rand Paul is confronted by defections from an unexpected quarter: the die-hard idealists whose energy powered his father’s campaigns.
That network of committed supporters was expected to convey to Paul, the natural successor to Ron Paul’s libertarian movement, providing him with a plug-and-play ground organization in the make-or-break early voting states. But instead of embracing the Kentucky senator, many of those grass-roots activists are turning their backs on him, disillusioned by the younger Paul’s concessions to mainstream politics.
Read More >>Texas Senator Ted Cruz was the first to declare his candidacy for President, and Politico reports that their weekly survey of political insiders in Iowa and New Hampshire finds serious questions about electability.
Insiders Pump the Brakes on Cruz
Ted Cruz is the first Republican presidential candidate out of the starting gate, but GOP insiders in Iowa and New Hampshire are overwhelmingly skeptical of the first-term Texas senator’s chances of being the eventual nominee or succeeding in the general election.
This week’s survey ... Read More >>
When he announced his candidacy for president this week, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, made a strenuous bid for support from Christian conservatives. But one of Cruz’s rivals, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., is taking a different route to court the same constituency – waging an aggressive behind-the-scenes campaign rather than emphasizing a dramatic public appeal, and his aides say it will eventually pay big dividends.
For many months, Paul has been quietly meeting with scores of leaders from the Christian right to gain support for his presidential campaign, which he is expected to officially announce April 7. Some of the meetings have been held during dinner in the Senate dining room; other sessions have been in Paul’s Senate office, and still others have been conducted while he traveled outside Washington.
Read More >>The race for the Republican presidential nomination is shaping up to be one of the most drawn-out in a generation.
The candidate field looks unusually crowded, with more than a dozen contenders appealing to different slices of the GOP. The rise of super PACs allows candidates to stay in the race longer than before. And nominating rules meant to compress the process may complicate a front-runner’s ability to amass the delegates necessary to win.
Read More >>“It was sort of amazing, right?”
Gov. John Kasich beamed, basked, hammed. Whatever you’d call it, he’d had a great day back on the campaign trail.
“When I came here the last time, I couldn’t get anyone to pay attention, and now it’s, like, so totally different,” he told reporters. “You come to something like this and see how people react, and it’s pretty positive. It really does have an impact on the way you think.”
Read More >>The New York Times reports that social conservatives are looking for a single candidate to unite behind as an alternative to former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, seen by some as the frontrunner for the Republican nomination in 2016. Leading contenders for the preferred challenger to Bush include Senator Ted Cruz, Governor Bobby Jindal, and former governors Rick Perry and Mike Huckabee.
Unhappy With a Moderate Jeb Bush, Conservatives Aim to Unite Behind an Alternative
Fearing that Republicans will ultimately nominate an establishment ... Read More >>