Rand Paul recently picked up a meaningful challenger in the Senate re-election effort Paul has been ignoring to embarrass himself by running for president, and that means that Republicans are losing patience with the third-tier presidential effort:
Party insiders give Paul a few more weeks before things become truly worrisome. Their concern is less money and more about “making sure that folks back home don’t hate you for it,” said one national Republican strategist.
“When does it get really embarrassing?” the strategist asked with exasperation. [...]
But the calculation for Paul is more complicated than simply getting a Democratic challenger. He and the state party have expended massive resources in rewriting the party’s rules to change to a presidential caucus state in March: How would it look if the state Legislature and the party went to all that effort for no discernible reason?
Bad. It would look bad. But it looked bad all along, and Kentucky Republicans went ahead and did it, anyway. Now it’s just one more (big) item on the list of ways Rand Paul’s presidential campaign has been an embarrassment. Although I don’t think the guy who said he was too good to attend the kiddie table debate when he was demoted there is exactly in tune with the reality of where he stands in the presidential race.