Rand Paul Super PAC Stops Raising Money for “Futile” Campaign

Politico is reporting that one of Rand Paul’s three super PACs, PurplePAC, has stopped raising money for the Kentucky senator. This isn’t helpful to the already cash-strapped campaign, but its head, Ed Crane, a co-founder of the Cato Institute, doesn’t think Paul is doing much to help his own cause, calling it a “futile crusade.”

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It’s clear Paul needs money, as exhibited by is rather lame begging on twitter:

But he’s not going to get it from PurplePAC:

“I have stopped raising money for him until I see the campaign correct its problems,” said Crane. “I wasn’t going to raise money to spend on a futile crusade.”

“I don’t see the point in it right now.”

Politico says that in July, PurplePAC announced it had raised $1.2 million and Crane says it still has $1 million available but that he isn’t asking for more money because “I just don’t want to do that to my friends.”

According to Crane, the once libertarian Rand Paul is nowhere and no longer in evidence.

“I want to grab Rand by the lapels and say, ‘What are you doing?'” Crane is not alone in that. Many of us have wondered at various stances taken by Paul, including his neo-Confederate flirtations. That bus left a long time ago and there is nothing particularly useful in revisiting it.

Crane says, “I’m a big fan of Rand Paul. But whatever motivates his campaign, I don’t get it.”

We don’t get it either. Never have. Never will. But you have to wonder what Crane thought he was getting from a candidate who showed he was no libertarian at all by endorsing Mitt Romney of all people back in 2012.

It’s clear Paul has lost his way, if he was ever on it to begin with. This is the guy who tweeted that Donald Trump isn’t a “true” conservative while he himself is supposedly a libertarian (so why does he care?) unless he feels he himself is more of a conservative than a libertarian? At the same time, he is attacking the status quo on Twitter, calling it on the senate floor a “steaming pile of the same old, same old.” And what is conservatism about if not maintaining the status quo?

We agree that the status quo is a steaming pile. You don’t need to convince liberals and progressives of that. But you can’t blame Republicans for being confused as well. We just have to ask why they weren’t confused earlier.

Rand Paul thought if he threw on some blue jeans he’d be a man of the people and that would be that.

Not so much.

Conservatives and sorta-libertarians like Rand Paul don’t realize you have to be a man of the people, not just look like one while you sell them out to the Mitt Romneys of the world.

And then there was his recent plan to entirely reverse how government works, which leaves you wondering if Paul’s brain is working.

So if you are enjoying the show and want to help Rand Paul to prolong your own pleasure by keeping him squirming awhile longer, treat yourself to a new “don’t drone me, bro” t-shirt today:

Otherwise, sit back and watch a so-called libertarian nightmare squirm and burn like a moth on his way out of the limelight. It shouldn’t be long now.

Robert Drake asked last year in the New York Times Magazine if the libertarian moment had arrived. Apparently it did, it has, and ooops, now it’s gone.

Sorry, gotta be quicker than that.

Donald Trump is taking the credit for Paul’s woes, of course, tweeting,

And,

One by one we are watching Republican candidates begin to fall by the wayside. It was inevitable, always more a matter of who than when, and it was clear from the beginning that Paul was on the waiting list for “who.”

Hrafnkell Haraldsson

Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen’s Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.