Rand Paul? Really?

As we slide into the Christmas break, both around the country and on the campaign trail, a particular reality seems to sinking in among the campaigns at the bottom end of the primary trough. Voters are packing up to go be with their families. People are sitting around at home tuning in to It’s a Wonderful Life (or Die Hard for some of us) instead of CNN. And when we all shake off our hangovers on January 2nd and take a fresh look at the race it will be only four weeks until the voting in Iowa begins and the curtains will be pulled back on all their houses.

It’s at times like this when desperation sets in, and that seems to be the case with Rand Paul. (The Hill)

“We’ve all let the polls consume us too much. I don’t think the polls are very accurate,” he said, noting that the polls were off by 13 points a week before the recent Kentucky gubernatorial race.

He said Trump is performing well in the polls because he’s getting a disproportionate amount of media coverage and many respondents who say they’ll vote for him aren’t likely to turn out on primary day.

Rand is out there beating the drum, declaring that The Donald is “not for limited government or balanced budgets” and favors eminent domain. To be fair to Rand, those are good points, and ones which have been noted here before. But there’s one other thing that Rand Paul should probably keep in mind: everyone already knows that. And a near majority of the voting base apparently doesn’t give a flying flip off an overpass. This race has become about things beyond the normal check boxes on the conservative platform list as far as I can tell, and much of that was distilled into the response to the omnibus spending bill.

The cries of, “the polls are skewed!” have been heard before, much to our chagrin in 2012. They are also, as a wise man once said, the last refuge of lost and desperate souls. Now, I agree that the polls have gotten considerably worse and polling companies have failed to keep up with the changes in technology which came with a more mobile oriented generation. Rand points to the Kentucky governor’s race polling as an example, and they certainly blew that one. (Worth noting here that it’s harder to poll a smaller, largely rural population.) But the polls are still fairly solid in reading trends if not hard, fixed numbers. Trump may well lose Iowa to Cruz, but what the margin will wind up being is up in the air.

But to cling to the idea that virtually all of the polls in first fifteen states are completely backward is a pipe dream. If Trump is going to be “wiped out” six weeks from now it’s not going to be by Rand Paul and I’ll bet that the polls will catch wind of it before it happens. How that’s supposed to happen is far beyond the ability of my Magic Eight Ball to divine.