According to Kentucky Libertarian Party Vice-Chairman Joshua Koch, Rand Paul is not quite Libertarian enough, and he is considering running a Libertarian Party candidate in November. The deadline for filing is August 10. In an interview, Koch claimed that Paul was not a Libertarian:
“He had gone from being an outsider candidate to a tea party candidate to an establishment candidate in the past nine months,” Koch said. “It’s a complete identity crisis. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Insisting Paul is no Libertarian, Koch called Paul and his Democratic opponent, Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway, “faces of the same bad coin.”
[...]
The Paul campaign said it wasn’t concerned about the development. “If someone wants to split up Kentucky’s non-conservative vote more than it already is, that’s OK with me,” [Paul's campaign chairman, David] Adams said.
Conway had no immediate comment.
Koch said Paul’s views on a variety of subjects differ from the Libertarian Party, including his promised support for any measures to ban abortion and his opposition to same-sex marriage.
“Trying to impose a national standard for that would throw the whole system out of balance, and that’s definitely not Libertarian,” Koch said.
Rand Paul is currently ahead in the polls, with RCP showing Paul with a RCP average lead of +9.6. I can’t say with certainty that inserting a libertarian/conservative 3rd party candidate would be enough to tilt the race to the Democrat’s favor, but it is reasonable to see that as a possible outcome.
I initially had concerns about Rand Paul, but most of them were based on his father’s lunacy. In fact, it really wasn’t his father’s lunacy that bothers me the most, but the lunacy of his cult of followers. I know that not all Ronulans are as absurd in their devotion, but the ones that I have personally met have put me firmly in the anti-RonPaulRonPaulRonPaul camp.
Now it appears that there is a group of “libertarians” in Kentucky that are unhappy that they aren’t getting a candidate that is 99.99999999999% of what they want, so they feel that the logical response is to try to ensure that a Democrat gets the seat. Hopefully the Libertarian Party of Kentucky will come to their senses and realize how horrible of an idea this is.
Moe Lane
PG DeFreese
Victoria Coates
Daniel Horowitz
Dan Spencer
Its sort of comicly insane
SirGladiator (Diary) Wednesday, May 26th at 10:06PM EST (link)The idea of the Kentucky Libertarian Party guy wanting to run a candidate against Rand Paul is bizarre, but the good news is that the ‘reason’ he wants to do it is because Rand isn’t pro-abortion and pro-gay marriage. That means, one would assume, the candidate he plans to run will be much more liberal than Rand, and thus take more votes from the Democrat. Certainly no true Libertarian would waste their vote on a nobody when somebody like Rand is on the ballot, so I can’t help but think the votes the guy will draw will be sort of the liberal nuts out there, the kind of guy this ‘libertarian’ guy sounds like. Of course ultimately its all irrelevant anyway since Rand is going to win in a landslide, but even if it were close I don’t think this would’ve hurt him. Let the liberals pretend to be libertarians and run one of their own on the libertarian line, like Rand’s spokesman said, it’ll just divide the non-Conservative vote.
They aren't mounting a challenge, the Chair said the Vice Chair wasn't speaking for the KY L party
sailingaway Thursday, May 27th at 1:09AM EST (link)However, they did say Rand Paul is not a Libertarian, which he has been saying for some time, so I’m not sure exactly where they were. He is a Constitutional Conservative. Since the Constitution is a pretty libertarian (small l) document, there is overlap. However, he never misrepresented his views.