February 21, 2014

Rand Paul is the P.T. Barnum of the Modern Senate

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Paul Waldman is impressed by Rand Paul:

Rand Paul continues to win my admiration, I have to say. There are people who come into the Senate with a kind of celebrity status and get lots of good press—one Barack Obama comes to mind—but I can’t think of anyone who has gotten so much good press through their own initiative, coming up with one clever way after another to get people to pay attention to them in ways that are almost always positive. His latest move required a subtle ideological tightrope-walk, one that Paul played perfectly. And all it took was a tweet.

It’s true. Rand Paul has a sort of Palinesque native genius for self-promotion. This isn’t going to get him any closer to the Oval Office than St. Sarah, mind you, but it’s still damn impressive. Like Waldman, I was nodding my head in admiration when I saw his tweet about Ted Nugent last night, because I knew instantly that it was perfectly suited to get him a whole gob of attention for a day or two. If he’s lucky, maybe even longer. For a tweet about Ted Nugent!

It’s genius, I tell you. He knows how to play both his own base and the media like a Stradivarius.

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We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

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