Getty Rand Paul's all-too-familiar campaign The Kentucky senator was supposed to create a new GOP coalition. Instead, he's running a campaign that looks a lot like his father's.

The 2016 Republican presidential race was supposed to go something like this for Rand Paul: He would assume the mantle of his father's libertarian movement, broaden it by bringing in new constituencies and compete on an expanded map. He would be the candidate to take the liberty message to the mainstream, something Ron Paul could never achieve.

Things haven't gone as planned.


Six months after announcing for president, Paul's campaign is buried in the polls, unable to break single digits, and subject to calls that it’s time for him to leave the race. While he’s raking in dollars from small donors, he’s not raising nearly enough to compete with the top tier candidates. What's worse, Paul's map is contracting, not expanding – his best prospects for victory appear to be in low-turnout caucus states where a small core of committed supporters can carry the day.

In other words, Rand Paul is running a campaign that looks a lot like his father’s.

Yet even that isn’t going so well – within the liberty movement, there is considerable grumbling that Rand Paul’s upgraded version of his father's message has only muddled it.

"Rand's slump in the polls just underscores questions about the efficacy of his whole campaign's strategy: what's the point of trying to inch a party in a more libertarian direction if, in the process, you're tarring the trending libertarian label by association with a diminished GOP brand and its unpopular and un-libertarian positions on social issues and immigration?" said John Vaught LaBeaume, a Libertarian campaign strategist who served as an adviser to Gov. Gary Johnson’s 2012 presidential bid.





Paul’s predicament is a far cry from just a year ago, when the Kentucky senator seemed poised to build a new coalition that could change the face of the GOP: His campaign website still sports an October 2014 Time magazine cover dubbing Paul "The Most Interesting Man In Politics." Now, Paul is on the bubble for qualifying for the next Republican presidential debate because of his low poll numbers and trying to make due with less after his campaign reported raising a paltry $2.5 million in the third quarter. His team explains it will stay afloat by running a "lean" operation until the senator catches fire.

Paul’s expectations have been scaled back, taking a page from his father's playbook and looking to pick off delegates in smaller caucus states rather than compete for victories in the most delegate-rich primaries. In August, Paul swung through a series of caucus states out west, acknowledging that it was part of his long term game plan.

"Some have asked why here versus one of the other primary states," Paul, speaking on the phone from Washington state in August, said. "Frankly because we're organizing everywhere and we plan on being in for the long haul."

The Paul campaign’s goals in Iowa -- where his father finished third with 21 percent in 2012 -- are also modest.

"The similarity [to the Ron Paul campaign] is we certainly are focusing on Iowa, we certainly have a big team there. and we think that we can identify 20,000-plus Rand Paul supporters which can give us a top five finish and maybe give us a chance to do better and maybe beat expectations," Paul senior adviser Steve Munisteri said.





Over the last three months, Paul's visits to caucus states have taken him to Iowa, Nevada, Washington, Alaska, Kentucky, Maine, Idaho, Utah, and Wyoming a total of 27 times. By comparison, Sen. Ted Cruz, who is taking steps to eat into Paul's base, has visited three caucus states -- Iowa, Nevada, Wyoming -- a total of 16 times. That’s in addition to Cruz’s ambitious tour of the South, where more than a half-dozen states will hold primaries on March 1.

The move to build a broader base by mainstreaming the movement simply hasn't worked, said Drew Ivers, Ron Paul's 2012 Iowa presidential campaign chairman said.

"Ron, from the beginning, did not attempt – his strategy did not include moving to the middle and attempting to attract from both directions. From the very beginning, that was not his strategy. Whereas from the beginning of Rand's campaign strategy, it was," Ivers said. "A huge foundational, initial, fundamental strategic difference."

The elder Paul, Ivers said, would never give ground on his small government beliefs just to win over Republican support.



Rand Paul hasn't exactly moved away from his libertarian positioning. In August, for instance, Paul got into a heated exchange with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie over national security and data collection. Putting on his civil libertarian hat, Paul took the anti-data collection position while Christie made the hawkish argument.

But he's made some politically expedient moves that have alienated allies, and the issue set that serves as a backdrop for 2016 has changed in important ways that have worked to Paul’s disadvantage. The rise of ISIS has made the GOP environment much less receptive to a non-interventionist-oriented candidate like Paul. The senator has struggled to respond, at different points expressing his opposition to bombing ISIS and then months later implying support for airstrikes. Most recently, he said if the U.S. had bombed Bashar al-Assad's regime, ISIS would be in power in Syria today.

Paul still retains considerable support within the liberty movement -- on Saturday, he won a contested straw poll held at the Republican Liberty Caucus convention in New Hampshire. But it may not be enough to realize the goal of taking the movement to the next level, and it may leave him with a campaign that ultimately isn't very different than the ones his father ran, with a small core of devoted supporters rather than a coalition broad enough to capture the nomination.

"I can't really speak to the things the campaign has or hasn't done. I mean I know campaigning for president is a tough job and there were high expectations initially and for lots of different reasons this summer wasn't the greatest for the campaign," Jeff Shipley, the chairman of the Jefferson County Republican party in Iowa and a member of Paul's newly announced Iowa leadership team said. "But I'm still optimistic, I believe in the message, I believe in empowering individuals and to me it's always been much more than one election. So Rand Paul could drop out for president of the United States, he could lose his Senate campaign, he could do whatever he wants , it doesn't matter to me. I'm still going to support politicians and candidates who support individual liberty and these ideas."