By Quentin Misiag
Move over, Donald Trump.
The heavyweight title of 2016’s most disruptive candidate will soon belong to Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky.
At least, that was a weekend prediction of Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky.
As Paul, the state’s junior senator and 2016 presidential hopeful, was anxiously hunkered down Aug. 22 in his home state awaiting a decision by the Kentucky GOP Central Committee to adopt a presidential-caucus system next year, his campaign operatives dispatched Massie to Iowa this weekend for a four-stop tour to energize local GOP bases.
“We need a disrupter. Right now, Donald is that,” Massie said on Aug. 22, referring to Trump, the billionaire New York business mogul, TV star, and current front-runner among the 17 main Republican presidential candidates.
Trump’s outlandish political frenzy will fizzle out over the next few months, Massie told supporters at the University of Iowa. But Paul is committed to remaining in the game for the long haul, he said.
“Sen. Paul is going to go the distance. He will be there in January, February, and March,” he advised the some 20 supporters, many of whom were dressed in navy blue campaign T-shirts with the slogan “Defeat the Washington machine, unleash the American Dream” emblazoned on the back.
Trying to underscore the weakness of Trump’s presidential campaign, Massie said, “Republicans are going to take a sober look at Donald Trump, and I think a lot of oxygen will come back into the room.”
Kentucky Republicans’ vote to move its presidential nominating event from a May primary to a March caucus is seen as a victory for Paul, who can now seek re-election to the Senate while pushing forward his White House bid.
But the 52-year-old has languished near the bottom of national GOP polls.
Paul was widely considered a political heartthrob among libertarian-leaning Republicans in 2014.
He was first among the GOP field in a CNN/ORC poll conducted in March 2014 and had support in the double-digits in April of this year.
But in the most recent CNN/ORC poll, only 6 percent of Republican registered voters said they would support him. The poll, conducted by phone, surveyed 1,001 adults. The poll’s margin of error was plus or minus 3 percentage points.
“You can’t ignore the polls,” Massie told UI student Sahan Thenuwara when he asked if Paul’s campaign had moved “into the dark.”
Massie’s address to supporters spanned around 20 minutes. At times, he lost their attention when he talked about his personal narrative as a fellow Kentucky Republican who hails from an area similar in geographic landscape to Iowa.
And he dished out long sentences about policy and numbers and drew laughter when he said the hit AMC series “Walking Dead” was more akin to working in Washington, D.C., than it is to the popular Netflix series “House of Cards.”
“Not everyone in Washington, D.C., is evil,” Massie said. “… Most of them are.”
Massie’s stumping in the IMU Union was stop No. 2 on his one-day swing through the state. He also met with potential caucus-goers in Cedar Rapids, Dubuque, and Des Moines.
When Paul made the UI one of his five stops on his official presidential-campaign launch in April, he drew a crowd of more than 600 in the IMU Second-Floor Ballroom.
