Rand Paul Has Become a Pathetic Afterthought

After he heard that he was not allowed to participate in the grown-ups debate on the Fox Business Network this week, Rand Paul responded thusly on CNN:

I will protest. It’s a mistake. We have been in the top five or six in most of the recent polls… it’s a mistake to try and exclude me from the national debate.

Sadly for Rand, it’s not a mistake. At all. On average, Rand is in seventh place in Iowa, with a mere 4% of the vote. His numbers in New Hampshire are exactly the same: 7th place, 4%. And he does even worse nationally: again he’s in 7th place but then with only 2.8%. That’s 31.2% behind frontrunner Donald Trump.

A candidate with only 2.8% of the vote nationally and 4% in Iowa and New Hampshire has no business participating in a debate with people who can actually win. He’s totally irrelevant, an afterthought at best.

That’s bad, but what’s worse is that Rand is quickly becoming a bitter afterthought; a man who blames everyone but himself for his own failures. The Fox Business Network isn’t to blame for his low poll numbers, he is. Until now Rand got every opportunity he could wish for; he wasn’t even ejected from the debates when polls showed he had no right to be there (as Donald Trump handily pointed out on Twitter back then). It didn’t help him one bit.

The reason Rand’s campaign hasn’t taken off is simple: he’s not the guy his father was. Ron Paul had many faults, but he was able to stir the passions of thousands if not millions of voters. Not so with Rand: he’s too bitter, too angry, too opportunistic and too fond of the establishment. I mean: he actually endorsed Mitch McConnell, establishment-hack par excellence.

Or, as Trump tweeted in September:

I truly understood the appeal of Ron Paul, but his son, @RandPaul, didn’t get the right gene.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 12, 2015

Rand can still do a lot of good in the Senate, but it’s time for him to end his presidential campaign. He isn’t going to become the Republican Party’s nominee, let alone the next president, but he could seriously endanger his Senate seat if he ends up a national laughing stock — which is what he’s quickly becoming.