Has officially announced he's running for President.  Thoughts?

People that followed his father love him. Libertarians love him. The Tea Party loves him. I donated to his Senate run.

If he can gather enough support to compete in the Rebublican primary... yep, he will have the support of my family.

 

I would like to see what would happen if we had a President with true Libertarian beliefs... my guess is a fresh government.

Heared his wife is less then thrilled, something about politician campaighns focussing more on personal life then actual policy >_>

Nate Silver & Co. are not convinced that Rand Paul will be able to retain his father's followers while simultaneously expanding his appear to other segments of the GOP primary electorate as would actually be required to win the nomination:

 

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/rand-paul-is-losing-his-fathers-base/

Ron Paul's support came largely from colleges with thousands of zealot Libertarians that infiltrate, dominate, overtake, and attempt to control the outcome of Republican conventions and conservative gatherings. This works with straw polls, and gets some press, but does not turn into the votes needed to carry a primary, or bring the dollars in that's needed for a campaign. His tactics failed, made a lot of people angry, and he was never considered a serious candidate that could win an election. It does Rand good to avoid his father's failed path, but they still do for him what they did for his daddy. Rand is something his father was not... he's a U.S. Senator, and much more is expected from him than his Representative father.

 

Nate Silver is pretty much the smartest Liberal I know. His buddy Harry Enten does not nearly impress me as much, and he wrote that piece. Harry tends to reach too far outside the box to come up with wild explainations for any number of predictions. He's wrong often. I'll stick with Nate when it comes to information about elections. He's not only smart... he's honest, and that's hard to find. He left the New York Times, and that should tell you something. I've been following 538 since it was built, I'm impressed Niels.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/08/jon-stewart-rand-paul_n_7022916.html

lol, I always love Stewart

Nate Silver is pretty much the smartest Liberal I know. His buddy Harry Enten does not nearly impress me as much, and he wrote that piece.

 

True that Nate was not the author.  Nate himself has however written a related piece on the prevalence of self-identified libertarians and those who, without using that label, hold libertarian thoughts.

 

http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/there-are-few-libertarians-but-many-americans-have-libertarian-views/

 

He is however, like Harry, skeptical of Sen. Paul's chances, saying:

So does that mean Paul has running room after all? No — we’re not that optimistic about his chances here at FiveThirtyEight. Part of that is because the hard-core partisans who vote in presidential primaries are much more likely to take consistently liberal or conservative positions than the broader American population, ...

I liked his fathers approach on FA. That man was right on the money there. I'd be pissed too if frankly my government uses my money to fight someone else's war and make someones else enemy my enemy just because someone else paid a whole bunch of lawmakers to bend over for someone else and not me, who voted.