Rand Paul's Secret Weapon: Hillary Clinton

[jct74]

Rand Paul's Secret Weapon: Hillary Clinton

If she seals the 2016 nomination early, it will free up Democratic and independent voters to cross over into Republican primaries—and into the Kentucky senator's embrace.

PETER BEINART
APR 9 2014, 1:00 PM ET

Consider this post another installment in the series: “Rand Paul could win the Republican nomination. Please stop laughing.”

In previous installments, we’ve argued that Paul will inherit from his father a preexisting campaign structure in Iowa and New Hampshire that few, if any, of his rivals can match. We’ve argued that Paul is showing the ability to raise real money, both from GOP insiders and via small donations over the web. And we’ve argued that, at least so far, Republican primary voters in key early states see Paul as a mainstream conservative, not a libertarian wacko bird.

Which brings us to Paul’s other great, unnoticed, strength: Hillary Clinton. While things could always change, the 2016 Democratic nomination is so far shaping up as the least competitive, non-incumbent presidential primary contest in memory. It looks increasingly likely that if Clinton faces any opposition at all, it will be from a Don Quixote like Bernie Sanders or Brian Schweitzer, not a challenger with any genuine political base or ability to raise substantial money.

For Rand Paul, that’s fabulous. It means lots of Democrats and independents will cross over to vote in Republican primaries, where the action is. And most of them will vote for him.

...

read more:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/04/rand-pauls-secret-weapon-hillary-clinton/360409/

[jct74]

Hot Air analysis:


Will Hillary voters hand the GOP nomination to Rand Paul?

POSTED AT 4:41 PM ON APRIL 9, 2014 BY ALLAHPUNDIT

A fiendishly clever theory from Peter Beinart. Remember “Operation Chaos”? That was Rush Limbaugh’s plan to have GOP voters wreak havoc on the Democratic nominating process in 2008. With McCain’s nomination already all but assured and Obama clinging to an apparently insurmountable lead over Hillary, Rush encouraged Republicans in states with open primaries (i.e. states where you don’t have to be registered as a party member to vote in that party’s primary) to cross over and vote for Hillary in the Democratic primary instead. The idea was to drag the primary process out for Democrats as long as possible, forcing O to keep campaigning to protect his lead and encouraging further bloodletting between Obama and Clinton.

Fast-forward eight years. Assuming Hillary waltzes to the nomination in 2016 while the GOP primary is as competitive as everyone expects, it’ll be Democratic voters who’ll have nothing to lose by crossing over and voting in the other team’s primary. And who’s likely to benefit from that, Beinart asks?

...

As the most left-leaning candidate in the GOP field on social issues and civil liberties, Paul’s a natural choice for Democrats who are bored with their own primary. There’ll also be other Democrats who cross over to vote for him (and probably for Cruz) for purely strategic reasons, because they’re convinced that a right-wing ideologue will be the easiest candidate for Hillary to beat in the general election. Regardless of motive, Paul himself will eat this up because it plays directly into his big theme of the past year, that Republicans need to grow the party and win votes from constituencies who typically ignore them. If he squeaks to a huge win in New Hampshire or South Carolina (both of which have open primaries) and exit polls show a significant share of his vote came from Democrats, he’ll tout it as proof that he’s doing exactly what he said he’d do. He grew the party. He got voters across the aisle excited enough to vote for him in a Republican primary. Some of them will surely stick with him for the general election. Right?

...

read more:
http://hotair.com/archives/2014/04/09/will-hillary-voters-hand-the-gop-nomination-to-rand-paul/

[acptulsa]

Lord, they do like to be obvious, don't they?



There will be a great deal of blather about how Democrats like Rand Paul better than Republicans do. It's pretty obvious that they think this will nip Rand's bud in the primary. They learned from the last two cycles that they can stop a libertarian from winning the GOP nomination, and they have more faith in their ability to do that than to beat him in the general with yet another establishment warmongering Dixiecrat advertised as some kind of 'messiah'.

Our job is to keep asking Republicans if they want to win. If they do, ask them how they intend to do that without attracting swing voters.