Rand Paul had decided two months ago that he wasn’t going to be the Republican nominee, and since then he was looking for an opportunity to get out. Today, two days after a fifth-place finish with four percent in Iowa, Paul called it quits.
Paul had telegraphed his acceptance of defeat as early as December. He came out of Thanksgiving and into Iowa with an approach that wasn’t geared towards winning the caucuses or the New Hampshire primary. He was shedding “Liberty Voters” to Ted Cruz, but he wasn’t fighting Cruz to keep them. He instead was mostly attacking Rubio’s hawkishness on foreign policy and national security.
I wrote in early December that Paul had become little more than a message candidate, trying to steer the party his way on these issues. I said and wrote that Paul was looking for a way to get out as quickly as possible.
When you run for president, you build an operation around you. Volunteers give hours to organize. For staffers, you are literally their employer. Dropping out means making them unemployed.
There’s a case to be made that Paul was staying in the race (a) to spread his message, and (b) not to let down his supporters as badly.
Timothy P. Carney, The Washington Examiner’s senior political columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]. His column appears Tuesday and Thursday nights on washingtonexaminer.com.
