Nothing to see here:
The Kentucky GOP’s central committee voted Saturday to adopt a presidential caucus system next year, clearing the way Republican Sen. Rand Paul to run for president and reelection at the same time.
Paul, who is in his first term, had pushed Kentucky Republicans to move from a primary to a caucus system as a way to get around a state law forbidding candidates from appearing twice on the same ballot. He has pledged to pick up the tab for holding the caucuses, which could run $500,000 or more.
Only a half a million- a pretty good bargain.
Oatler.
The talk of the upcoming week will be all GOP all the time, because Comcast demands allegiance of its thralls. I’m looking at you, Chuck and Chris.
Xenos
I would be so thrilled to see him lose his senate seat after all this.
Big ole hound
Kentucky and it’s coal and politicians are have now gained the title of armpit of the nation or maybe something more anal.
Jack the Second
Does he not want to wait till 2020? He’s not that old, it’s not a Senate re-election cycle for him, and they’ll probably need a new Republican candidate in 2020 anyway.
(Or is he worried that by 2020 the bloom will be off the already-wilting rose?)
Amir Khalid
I’m not sure how this works out for Rand Paul. The Politico story notes:
So even if he becomes the nominee, he must still choose in Kentucky between running for President and running for the US Senate.
redshirt
Just wait for Randmentum to take hold.
NonyNony
@Amir Khalid:
It’s not the stumbling block you think it is. First of all, I don’t think Rand actually thinks he’s getting the nomination – I think he knows he’s running a grift he inherited from his old man. So he knows he’ll be out of it by November anyway and will be thinking of how to run the grift again in 4-8 years depending on who wins the election. The fact that he’s not willing to put his Senate seat on the line pretty much seals the deal for me that he knows he’s not going to win absent a catastrophe that levels most of the other candidates off the playing field.
But even if somehow he managed to obtain the nomination, our electoral voting system provides an out. The Kentucky GOP could easily run Rand’s VP on the “President” line come next November and some nonentity as that line’s VP – with the full understanding of Kentucky GOP voters that a vote for whoever is on that line is actually a vote for Rand Paul as President. Then when the electors are chosen and go to DC, they just vote for Paul instead of the person who was on the line. (Normally that would be a “faithless elector” but in this case NOT doing it would be the faithless part). All perfectly legal too – though it violates the spirit of the law, the text of the law is just that his name can’t appear twice on the same ballot.
Bobby Thomson
@Amir Khalid: I’ll take non-existent dilemmas for 400, Alex.
SoupCatcher
@Amir Khalid:
I would guess, in the event that he actually did win the nomination, he would try to drop out of the Senate race and solely focus on running for President. Likelihood somewhere in the neighborhood of never.
I think NonyNony is spot on. Rand Paul is confident he can win the primary election for Senator and he knows he doesn’t have a shot at the Presidency. But that grift isn’t going to grift itself.
Amir Khalid
@NonyNony:
And the Kentucky Republican party likes Rand Paul enough to mess with the rules for his benefit, even if he stands no real chance of becoming president?
piratedan
@Amir Khalid: they got paid, so they can now afford some more lies to inundate the airwaves with….
Baud
I love the smell of the free market in the morning.
NonyNony
@Amir Khalid:
Well, they just rolled over and changed their rules for him because he handed them a half million to pay for it. So who knows what they’d do when he actually has them by the short and curlies (because dropping off the Senate ballot and having to sub in a different GOPer is likely to be a chancy proposition – they’d rather hang onto that Senate seat I’d think). If they were going to show that they didn’t like him enough to change their rules, yesterday would have been the right time to do it.
(Again though – they all know it isn’t going to happen so nobody’s worried about it. I’m honestly a bit surprised that they like him enough to help him run his grifting operation – I kind of wondered if they might just tell him to go pound sand. Maybe everyone on the executive committee is going to get a slice of that half million that he’s forking over to them to pay for the caucus. )
Petorado
It looks to be a sure sign of a corrupt system that someone will fork out a cool half-million dollars to keep a job that pays $175K a year. There’s obviously more money coming in to line Rand’s pockets from other source to make this worth his while. And that money will be earned by giving away things that belong to the public commons that are worth far in excess of what pittance Rand will make from it.
Amir Khalid
@Petorado:
Good point.
SoupCatcher
@NonyNony:
Or their kids are pulling down paychecks from the Rand Paul for President campaign.
NonyNony
@Petorado:
To be a tiny bit fair – that half million isn’t actually “his”. It belongs to his campaign. So he can only use it for certain things. The thing it’s meant to be used for is to help him keep his job. So in a way, this little investment is actually a legit use of those campaign funds.
(Of course, IIRC campaign finance laws are riddled with loopholes. For example, upon retirement the money in a candidate’s coffers cannot be spent on personal use, but can be donated to charities, or to PACs, or to party coffers. So one thing a candidate can do is set up a PAC, retire, donate their war chest to the PAC, then set themselves up as the chair of the PAC and pay a salary out of that war chest. Perfectly legal if I’m remember correctly, and easily bypasses the stated intent of the law.)
sigaba
@Petorado: I’m pretty sure he can use PAC money to cover this.
Naturally you have to wonder why there’s such a thing as a Kentucky Republican Party if it’s just a proxy for what Rand Paul wants and is willing to pay for, sorta makes the organization redundant. (Though this does not change my general opinion that all party primaries should be by caucus…)
Roger Moore
@Petorado:
It’s probably not his money, per se; it’s money from his election campaign that he legally can’t spend on personal stuff anyway.
aimai
@Petorado: This, exactly.
Amir Khalid
@Roger Moore:
It still surprises me that Rand Paul gets to spend that money, wherever it came from, on bribing his state’s Republican party to change the rules to his benefit.
Kay
Oh, don’t worry. This pompous, preening phony put some “down home” spin on it:
That sounds a lot, lot nicer than a tanking candidate buying himself a caucus to promote his own career, doesn’t it? Ron Paul’s saving grace was he seemed to see some humor in his own self-promotion and grifting. Rand Paul doesn’t even have that. It’s always a noble cause with this clown. Oh, how he suffers to save the republic.
lgerard
Speaking of grifting……
I see Ron Paul is now doing TV commercials fronting for dubious stock promoter Porter Stansberry
That is quite a comedown from ‘The Ron PAUL rEVOLUTION”
shell
While here in NJ, we would all be perfectly happy for Christie to quit his job if he wanted to continue running for Prez.
shell
@lgerard: How soon before he starts doing ads for reverse mortgages?
lgerard
i have been an election official for 30 years and have never heard of anything like this…….maybe at a PTA election.
Helen
@Kay: That doesn’t sound “nicer.” It sounds like a voluntary poll tax. Is that even true? Do some states pass the hat around at the polls?
Baud
What I don’t understand is, aren’t there other people nominated by primary who will now have to go through the caucus? Are they OK with this?
Joy
Isn’t this called “hedging your bets””. He must not have much faith in his presidential bid if he needs to have a fall back position.
lgerard
@shell:
I laugh every time I see that commercial when Fred Thompson say they were based “on a notion that President Ronald Reagan had”
NO They were based on extensive lobbying by the mortgage banking industry.
Baud
@Joy:
He doesn’t and shouldn’t. He’s actually worse at this than his father was.
Ruckus
@Baud:
True but that’s a damn low bar. About as low as whale shit after it settles.
Roger Moore
@Amir Khalid:
This is something actually relevant to the success of his campaign and for which he will not obviously benefit financially. It’s actually less corrupt than hiring all his friends and relatives to expensive, do nothing jobs, which plenty of campaigns do.
Roger Moore
@lgerard:
You say tomayto, I say tomahto.
Hal
I brought this up in another thread, but Paul’s justification deserves a repeat.
The people of Kentucky had a voice in the presidential election. It just wouldn’t have included Paul without him giving up his Senate seat. But I guess he figured Kentucky can’t live without him.
Rachel Maddow once asked on her show if Rand was running for president, or like his father in the business of running for president. I guess we know the answer.
Kay
@Helen:
I love how it fits with Libertarian Principles. Political parties get a lot of latitude in setting their own primary rules- there are limits but they’re allowed “closed” primaries for example, where only “declared” (R and D) voters can vote under their freedom of association.
I don’t think he intends to collect money. I think he loves harkening back to simpler times when one passed the hat to cover costs and his followers love it too. It distracts from the fact he has 500k of other people’s money to put towards a vanity caucus. Dirty, icky political money he raised by sitting in a room and calling donors 3 hours a day.
Iowa Old Lady
@Kay: The Iowa caucuses are theoretically closed. I’ve only gone to the Democratic one, and it’s always set up with a table at the door where you can change your party affiliation if you want. You can also register to vote if you haven’t already.
lgerard
I wonder if the whole caucus idea could backfire on Rand, as they can be far more volatile then elections.
I’m pretty far away but even I know that there is quite a bit of animosity between the Paul wing and the McConnell wing. Could Mitch pull off a fast one while Rand is out campaigning?
KG
@Petorado: sure, but that’s 175k guaranteed for six years. That’s 875k over the course of six years. Plus the fringe benefits. Plus the side work, like speaking fees, book deals, seats on boards of directors. Not to mention building of war chests for reelection campaigns in what may turn out to be noncompetetive races for the next thirty years. That’s one hell of a retirement plan… Especially combined with a government pension
Suzanne
@lgerard: Right?! This is seriously one of the most simultaneously corrupt and utterly redneck things I’ve heard in a really, REALLY long time.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@lgerard: Virginia Republicans have had a convention rather than a primary in the last few cycles. It hasn’t worked out well for their prospects in the fall.
It’s generally easier to control the outcome in a caucus/convention than a primary. (But it depends at least some extent on whether a primary is open to all voters, as in Virginia, or closed to only registered party members.) That’s, no doubt, why Paul wants it.
The Virginia GOP is going to have a primary this time.
Cheers,
Scott.
rikyrah
Bending the rules to suit his purpose. What else could you expect from someone who SELF-CERTIFIED????
rikyrah
@NonyNony:
That is my feeling too. He needs to set up the long-term FAMILY GRIFT.
redshirt
@rikyrah: Great point.
They’re all frauds. It’s amazing.
MazeDancer
@Xenos:
Rand is scared of his likely opponent.
We were talking about all this and the purchasing of the caucus in a thread yesterday. Because Rachel Maddow, on Friday, thought Rand would lose the GOP vote to be able to break KY law.
Recap of yesterday’s discussion is Ms. Maddow brought up Adam Edelen, a Democrat in Kentucky who is running for Kentucky State Auditor. And is likely to be Rand’s opponent next year.
Jesse Benton, the Paul aide recently indicted, was supposed to be in KY getting rid of Mr. Edelen now. But since he’s indicted, he can’t do that.
Why is Rand scared? Because Adam Edelen is the best speaker on the stump you have seen since in the South, as Rachel says, since Bill Clinton, Ann Richards or John Edwards (to quote Rachel “before he became a terrifying creep”). She played a clip.
And wowza, I was ready to move to KY to vote for him.
Germy Shoemangler and Botsplainer say Edelen is the real deal.
As Germy noted in that thread, Edelen said:
And in the clip on Ms. Maddow’s show, Mr. Edelen, remarking on how the GOP wants to deprive deserving low-income people of health care that:
So, knock wood, some hope for next year in KY.
Roger Moore
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
I think it’s more of a letter of the law vs. spirit of the law kind of thing. The letter of the law is that you can’t appear in two races on the same ballot. The spirit of the law is that you aren’t supposed to run for two offices at the same time, because you’re making a false promise to voters by doing so. Paul has sufficient contempt for voters that he cares only about the letter of the law, not the spirit, and is cheating to comply with only the letter.
Jinchi
@Amir Khalid: If he gets the nomination he has a 50/50 shot at being president. That gamble would be worth sacrificing a Senate seat.
Schlemazel
@Roger Moore:
OH NO! It is NOT cheating when Ayn does it
Jinchi
@lgerard:
I do too. I bet Trump would be thrilled if he could convince every state to switch to a caucus instead of a primary.
Zinsky
Aqua Buddha needs his eyes checked – no wait, he is an ophthalmologist, isn’t he??
Jinchi
@lgerard:
I suppose this is what Paul thinks the poll-tax was all about.
Frankensteinbeck
@Amir Khalid:
Money does grease the wheels, but this has been in the works long before there’s any reason to believe he put up a penny. Months ago, when Rand started talking about running for president, the Kentucky state government pointed out that to even try for the nomination, Rand Paul would have to give up his senate seat, and the GOP would give up the incumbency advantage running to replace him. Plus, Rand Paul was a Republican, and identity politics is everything in Kentucky. The GOP went ‘You can’t tell us what to do, old man! Maybe we’ll have a caucus instead! Whatcha gonna do about that? Huh?’ There were questions about whether that would be legal, but it seems those are settled. Maybe the bribe pushed the decision over the edge, but he didn’t just outright buy this change.
Full metal Wingnut
I mean, Randy would’ve just been replaced by someone equally odious. But at least it would be someone more low-profile not some glibertarian (he’s not even a libertarian, he’s just not a heterodox republican on a couple of issues, and even on those he’s meh on) that the bro dudes like to fawn over.
Full metal Wingnut
@Jack the Second: Guy like Rand Paul wants to run on as short a record as possible. The longer he’s in Washington the less he’s some glibertarian outsider. I mean, Sanders has been in Washington for a long time, but he’s been consistent. But Paul is not that good a legislator and some new hot young thing will be around by 2020.
Full metal Wingnut
@Amir Khalid: That’s still a better bet than having to resign just to run. Though if Rand becomes the nominee I’ll eat a bowl of my own shit.
redshirt
@Full metal Wingnut:
I just entered your bet into Vegas and hope you never have to pay out.
Keith G
Other state parties have done this (or something similar) for a prominent member seeking the presidency and even VP, if I correctly recall.
Brien Jackson
To be fair, for as much as this seems unseemly at first blush, it’s worth pointing out that the law causing the problem in the first place is plainly stupid and probably un-Constitutional. There’s no compelling reason why someone shouldn’t be able to run for two different positions, especially in a Presidential primary where any number of candidates in any given year are incumbents in some other political office.
dww44
@Oatler.: It’s not just Chuck and Chris, it’s also Rachel and Lawrence and everyone else on MSNBC. A few weeks ago, I noticed the presence of GOP pundits and GOP operatives on each and every show.
Along with the canning of <emThe Ed Show and The Cycle and the absolute continual focus on the GOP horse race, I figured the big suits had given the show hosts and lesser folks their marching orders.I think the Comcast executives are out to insure that the country elects a GOP President and forever put paid to the notion that there is a liberal MSM in this country. Sad thing is that will do irreparable harm to the country.
dww44
@Xenos: Does he have any viable Democratic opposition?
Snarki, child of Loki
@NonyNony: “though it violates the spirit of the law, the text of the law is just that his name can’t appear twice on the same ballot.”
What are the odds that there’s someone ELSE in KY that is named “Rand Paul” that could be put on that ballot?
Brien Jackson
@efgoldman:
1. I’m not sure who would have standing to file such a suit. Another candidate maybe?
2. Even so, I would think the most likely result of any lawsuit would be the law being struck down on the grounds that there’s no compelling reason to prevent an otherwise Constitutionally qualified person from running for President/Senator that the law is meeting.
dww44
@dww44: Yes he does have viable Dem opposition, or at least the likelihood of it. Read further down the thread which I shuda done in the first place.
Full metal Wingnut
@Brien Jackson: With the slow erosion of the standing doctrine, I think it’s most likely that the courts find no one has standing.
Brien Jackson
@Full metal Wingnut:
I suppose another candidate would probably be able to assert standing at an ineligible candidate being allowed into the race. But even so, the law strikes me as so obviously un-Constitutional (or, at least, I can’t see what the compelling state interest argument would be in response) that I would expect it to just be vacated in federal court were it ever to be applied to elections for federal office.
Nathan Tyree
@Xenos: That would be such delicious irony. I would love it
redshirt
@Snarki, child of Loki: I’d change my name to Rand Paul for ONE MILLION DOLLARS.
Ken
Dear Kentucky Republican Party,
Make sure the check clears first.
Signed, A Friend
Jinchi
@efgoldman: @efgoldman:
Maybe. But we were imagining a world in which he had already won the nomination.