Republican Rand Paul on Wednesday morning suspended his campaign, in order to focus on running for re-election to a U.S. Senate seat in Kentucky.
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“It’s been an incredible honor to run a principled campaign for the White House”, the Senator of Kentucky said in a statement.
Vowing to continue his drive for less-intrusive government and more restrained foreign policy, Paul, low on support and cash, said he looks forward to earning another Senate term representing Kentucky. Paul had long hoped to appeal to college students with his credentials as an anti-war, anti-surveillance and pro-criminal justice reform candidate, but young voters instead flocked to Sanders’ insurgent campaign.
But Rubio wished Paul well in his re-election race. “Although, today I will suspend my campaign for President, the fight is far from over”, expressed Paul in his statement. Paul even donated $250,000 to pay for the caucus himself. State party leaders set up the caucus to draw them in, with a 5 percent threshold for winning delegates and a format in which the victor does not take all. “I disagree with it, but I respect it”, Christie said.
Paul’s exit from presidential contest a month before the Kentucky caucus will likely raise questions about the maneuver. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., emerging as the favorite of the pro-Israel and interventionist right-wing, who came in third in Iowa. That although Paul finished a distant fifth, he was well ahead of Bush, Kasich, and the parody of a bad New Jersey politician that is Chris Christie.
Still, Rand Paul probably would have had outsized support in ME and seemed to recognize that, speaking in Freeport in September and enlisting state Sen. That was before he was an official presidential candidate, but he was polling as a top candidate for the nomination and fueling speculation that he’d run.
Ohio Gov. John Kasich says Republicans will be “making a awful mistake” if they underestimate the challenge of beating Hillary Clinton in a general election.
“It’s hard to find anybody – since Rand is out of it – anybody that would take a libertarian position, hardcore libertarian position on privacy, on the war issue and on economic policy”, said Paul, who twice sought the Republican nomination, in 2008 and 2012.
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Cruz regularly likens the current state of the Union to the late 1970s, when the failings of the Carter Administration led to what he calls “the Reagan Revolution”, which last he said began with the New Hampshire Primary.
