The real reason Rand lost Iowa (the power of the news cycle)

[Cabal]

The litany of excuses grows.

 

[CPUd]

I've got no problem with how he ran his campaign. I think they could have improved their fundraising practices, like letting the grassroots have more time to organize money bombs before launching their own a week early. They made some good calls and some bad ones, they were willing to fight for their candidate when they needed to, things just didn't break their way in this run.

 

[LibertyEagle]

I didn't have a problem with Rand's purity or his team. He just wasn't loud enough.

This. And his first couple of debates were horrible.

 

[CPUd]

you guys can blame the fact that it was the political environment, etc... but I know first hand many people who just did not have the same enthusiasm they did for Ron than they did for Rand. It was the purity element that attracted many to Ron Paul. I knew people that simply supported him because he was the most consistent politician. They would even disagree with him on certain key issues but the fact that you knew where he stood and would not all of a sudden sell out made people flock. You just didn't have that with Rand. People didn't trust him, simple as that. I don't know how many times I had to explain to people that he was 'playing the game".

I think you raise a legitimate point here about trust issues; Rand is a first-term Senator, just like our current POTUS, a relatively short time to be in the public eye. Ron had about 20 years in the public with the voting record to back up his core philosophies.

 

[Umad]

This board must be made up of largely children under 25. Filled with self pity wanting to blame everyone else for failure.

 

[Krugminator2]

I posted a number of times in 2014 when he was leading in the polls that he was big underdog to perform anywhere near as well as Ron Paul. I think I remember saying he had a 10 or 15% chance to perform as well as Ron.

Structurally having a Democrat in the race and stronger candidates like Cruz were going to make outperforming highly unlikely. That was before huge structural impediments like Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. That is the biggest reason he underperformed by far. Everything else about him as a candidate or strategic decisions is secondary.

I still think Ron would have outperformed Rand, but it is more likely that he would have had high single digits in Iowa and mid to high single digits in New Hampshire. the people who think Ron would have done BETTER than 2012 are inbred retards. That is clearly wrong.

 

[mello]

I believe that the main factor was Trump running. Prior to that, there were multiple stories of Rand being the most interesting politician running. Trump entering the race essentially took all the air from his sails. He essentially co-opted Rand's outsider status when it came to the media and unfortunately, the voters. Rand got a lot more airtime compared to his father but when Trump jumped into the pile, it was all Trump all the time when it came to the mainstream media. They were showing Trump campaign stops in their entirety. Trump was getting 25 times more face time by the msm than all the other candidates combined.

 

[CPUd]

Cable news was named most helpful by 24 percent of those who learned about the election in the past week. Survey conducted Jan. 18-27, 2016

http://www.journalism.org/2016/02/04/the-2016-presidential-campaign-a-news-event-thats-hard-to-miss/

 

[djinwa]

Do we care if we win if it requires all this crap to get elected? Have to be the right part of the cycle, have to have the right tone of voice, this trick and that trick.

If that is what is required to protect our liberty, forget it. If this is just some stupid game in which you have to have the right strategy, it isn't going to work for any length of time.

Only thing that will work is a sizable portion of the population understanding and wanting liberty.

Which means the primary goal should be education, not stupid elections.

 

[CPUd]

Do we care if we win if it requires all this crap to get elected? Have to be the right part of the cycle, have to have the right tone of voice, this trick and that trick.

If that is what is required to protect our liberty, forget it. If this is just some stupid game in which you have to have the right strategy, it isn't going to work for any length of time.

Only thing that will work is a sizable portion of the population understanding and wanting liberty.

Which means the primary goal should be education, not stupid elections.

One does not simply go and get elected POTUS. It has to be a perfect storm of the right campaign at the right time in the right political climate. Or you could have a brother who is governor in a key swing state who knows what to do with pregnant chads.

 

[parocks]

In 2008 and 2012, there weren't any pissed of GOP candidates besides Ron Paul. So, all the pissed off GOP voters went to Ron Paul. Sure, there was Bachmann in 2012, and there's some overlap between Socon and pissed off GOP, but, generally not.
In 2016, there were a lot of pissed off GOP candidates. Trump, Cruz, Carson and Paul all appealed to the pissed off GOP base. The folks in charge would prefer that there were NO candidates for the pissed off GOP base to vote for. They'd like it if all the choices were RINOs. This year, though, they pretty much recognized that Rand Paul - who they really don't like - would have a good chance to win if there were no other candidates for the pissed off GOP voters to vote for. And, voila, there were 4 candidates for pissed off GOP, and there was even a candidate on the D side who could take votes from Rand.

Typically, the GOP primary boils down to the RINO vs the notRINO. Typically, the RINO wins. Almost always. This time, maybe not. They want Bush v Clinton. They know they'll get 100% of what they want with either of them. With the others, they might not be so sure. But they were able to knock out Paul with the other candidates who appeal to the pissed off GOP base.

 

[parocks]

Aside from the obvious TRUMP factor~

No it had much less to do with his not being pure like his dad and had much more to do with the news cycle and the timing of how long the media takes to bring up a candidate and take them down.

For so many people who have personally experienced so many GOP candidates rise and fall in the 2012 cycle and again in 2016, you would think that there would be some common understanding that there is a huge block of voters that fluctuate from candidate to candidate.

WAKE UP CALL : There aren't nearly enough libertarian voters to take on the GOP electorate.

The only reason why Ron got 21k votes and 3rd place in Iowa, wasn't because Libertarians suddenly decided to come out of the shadows and back him, it didn't have to do with his libertarian purity, he did well because he was next in line for Republicans to support. Ron was FORTUNATE enough to be toward the end of the candidate fluctuation cycle. If Iowa 2012 took place just a few days earlier, Ron might've been the winner. If Rand did well in Iowa, I don't think anyone would be complaining about Rand's version of libertarianism.

Have any of you wondered if Iowa 2016 took place a few days or a week later, what might've happened? The press loves airing dirty laundry like the Ted Cruz voter shaming tactic and maybe just a few days of a NORMAL news cycle covering that would've brought Ted down.

Look, if you're a purist and you want Rand to be a purist, thats fine but to think that libertarian purity of issues means success in the GOP, well then you're simply just not being realistic.

That's largely right, you have the timing in 2012 great. We peaked a little bit too early.

However, it didn't work the same way this time around. They've been on Trump for months. The other stuff about GOP voters weren't voting for Ron Paul in Iowa in 2012 because Libertarian is entirely right.

 

[parocks]

The real reason is that he did nothing to claim attention so he faded out of the conversation. And the reason he did nothing to gain attention is that he has been so busy sucking establishment wang that he was afraid to rock the boat as much as was needed to get that attention.

To consider that the same man that forcefully gripped the nation's attention in his famous filibuster went from that to invisible while running a Presidential campaign is mind-bending.

This campaign was an epic failure on so many levels it's hard to even enumerate them all.

The media talked about Trump non-stop. The media does not like Rand Paul, does not want him to win. Cruz and Carson were also both candidates popular with the Tea Party - pissed off GOP voters.

You basically had 4 candidates going for the same basic voter, and Sanders with the Dems.

In 2012 - Ron Paul and Bachmann (and Herman Cain, who dropped before the primaries)
In 2008 - just Ron Paul (also, maybe, Duncan Hunter, Alan Keyes, Tom Tancredo - but none of them did well at all)

Simply, too much competition. Trump has been famous for 30+ years.

 

[parocks]

I posted a number of times in 2014 when he was leading in the polls that he was big underdog to perform anywhere near as well as Ron Paul. I think I remember saying he had a 10 or 15% chance to perform as well as Ron.

Structurally having a Democrat in the race and stronger candidates like Cruz were going to make outperforming highly unlikely. That was before huge structural impediments like Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. That is the biggest reason he underperformed by far. Everything else about him as a candidate or strategic decisions is secondary.

I still think Ron would have outperformed Rand, but it is more likely that he would have had high single digits in Iowa and mid to high single digits in New Hampshire. the people who think Ron would have done BETTER than 2012 are inbred retards. That is clearly wrong.

The fact that Trump was talked about pretty much constantly from the summer to now was a surprise.

If everyone had tried to knock down Trump in Oct, Nov, Dec, it just would've been a waste of money with limited utility. What really could be done? The media has been planning around Trump for a while. Paul was situated acceptably well, but how to do plan for Trump. He can say whatever he wants, he can be handed a script written by a focus group of pissed off GOP, and he can be as blunt as he wants to be. He'll never have to worry about voters ever again.

Were Trump voters going to go to Bush or Rubio? No. But they might've gone to Rand Paul. If Trump wasn't there, Rand would've been battling it out with Cruz and Carson for that pissed off segment, and Rand would've had time to make the case that he was the superior candidate to represent the pissed off GOP voters, not Cruz or Carson. There would likely be no shortage of Cruz is Goldman Sachs ads. Those ads did run, but within the context of Trump taking a huge percent of pissed off voters.

 

[CPUd]

Trump can get front page everywhere whenever he wants with just a single tweet.