Reminder: Rand Paul = Democrats' Enemy #1

Wondering why the entire Establishment media--on BOTH sides--is shrieking for Rand Paul to get out of the race?

Wondering why, during this election cycle, all the media talks about is poll results?

Wondering why, during this election cycle, the media is giving Progressive crony corporatist and pretend Republican Donald Trump literally billions of dollars' worth of airtime?

The Democrat Machine has been afraid of Paul ever since he was elected. And last year, when it started to look like he was indeed running for president, the attacks started in earnest. Here's why:

Rand Paul = Democrats’ Enemy #1
By Olivia Nuzzi for The Daily Beast
08/07/14

...Democrats fundraise and campaign by exploiting concerns about right-wing extremism. But at least at the moment, what they apparently fear most is the rise of a candidate who could potentially poach enough of their supporters to beat them in 2016.

Rand Paul has not yet formally announced he is running for the Republican nomination. But with a lead in GOP polls and already laying the foundation for the infrastructure of a campaign, the junior senator from Kentucky is considered the early front-runner, one who is transparent about his desire to appeal to a broad range of voters—and that has Democrats worried.

For the 10th time in two years, Paul arrived on Monday in Iowa, where the first presidential caucuses will be held in 17 months, to try out his message on a three-day, multi-city, headline-generating tour.

Over the course of the trip, the Democratic National Committee sent out 10 press releases about Paul’s every move and utterance. “What it can tell you as a political observer is that they recognize what we’re trying to point out, which is Rand is the Republican who has the best chance of keeping and energizing the base while going into their constituencies," a senior aide for Paul told The Daily Beast. ...

“He’s working not to get out of the conservative box but to redefine it,” Simon Rosenberg, president of the New Democrat Network, told The Daily Beast. If Paul gets the nomination, he becomes the effective leader of his party—meaning his redefinition of that conservative box could become the definition, a problem for Democrats, as Paul has a tendency to stake out atypical positions for a conservative and reach across party lines.

Paul has a limited-government, non-interventionist worldview that is particularly attractive after a decade of war, rampant overspending, and privacy invasions.

He has campaigned against domestic spying and the use of drones on American citizens—memorably conducting a 13-hour filibuster in 2013 on the latter—and has criticized both Republicans and Democrats for their foreign policy. He generated headlines this year when he refused to blame recent violence in Iraq on President Obama, instead pointing a finger at the Bush administration, particularly Dick Cheney. In Iowa this week, he labeled the conflict in Libya “Hillary’s war,” providing a preview of what the general election could look like with both of them in it.

And Paul’s determination to make the GOP more inclusive makes him much harder to vilify than conservatives who might stomp their feet at such a notion.

He has made efforts to reach out to black voters that while met with some skepticism (he once questioned the constitutionality of certain parts of the Civil Rights Act) and cynicism have won him supporters and the acknowledgement that he is, at the very least, trying.

“It’s blindingly obvious to [Democrats] that Rand is the Republican who can reach across the party.” ...

Along with New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, a Democrat, Paul has introduced a plan to overhaul the criminal justice system with the REDEEM Act. The measure is intended to, in Paul’s words, fix the “cycle of poverty and incarceration” by, among other things, sealing or expunging the criminal records of juveniles. The senators’ partnership has won high-profile fans like musician John Legend. ...

The Democrats’ strategy to defeat Paul seems to be to engage him as he tries to gain experience, with the hope that he’ll misspeak his candidacy to death before it gets off the ground. “This is smart politics for the Democrats,” Rosenberg told The Daily Beast. “What you want to do as opposition is you want to go after the candidates when they’re inexperienced…We saw a deeply inexperienced candidate [in Iowa]...and a lot of early scrutiny could really weaken him.”

Or so the left is hoping.

“It’s kind of dangerous to have a Republican like Rand,” said the senior Paul aide. “It’s blindingly obvious to [Democrats] that Rand is the Republican who can reach across the party.”

Read more: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/08/07/rand-paul-democrats-ene...