Rand Paul is in trouble.
The Real Clear Politics average has him at just 2.3% in the polls, putting him well behind outliers like John Kasich (3.2%), Mike Huckabee (2.9%), and Chris Christie (2.6%). Substantive comments in last month’s CNN debate didn’t help him much—but Carly Fiorina’s popularity spiked.
Enter a golden opportunity for Paul to hitch a ride on Fiorina’s media wave. During an interview yesterday with Wolf Blitzer, he lashed out against Fiorina’s hardline stance against dealing with Putin and tolerating Assad’s regime in Syria:
From Mediaite:
When Wolf Blitzer asked Paul how he would deal with Russia in Syria, Paul brought up Fiorina’s previous remarks that she wouldn’t want to talk to Putin and said, “Man, are we lucky she wasn’t president during the Cold War.”At one point Blitzer noted how Paul himself has a noninterventionist policy and that he doesn’t consider to be “isolationist.” Paul then said that it’s people like Fiorina who want to “isolate us” and cut off channels of communication to engage in international diplomacy.
This whole line of attack was indeed set up during last month’s CNN debate, when Paul slammed Fiorina’s line of thinking on Putin and diplomatic relations with Russia:
This could be a good pivot for Paul, who has spent a great deal of time criticizing Donald Trump on both matters of policy, and on Trump’s approach to handling his fellow candidates:
As I said above, this is a good play for Paul—or at least it will be, if his team can pull off a corresponding media push and connect it to current events.
Judging by those polling numbers, though, that might be a lot to ask.
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