An eye-opening presidential poll that shows Sen. Rand Paul leading Hillary Clinton in battleground states comes too early in the 2016 contest to be predictive, but it does give the Kentucky Republican ammunition against the argument that he's not electable, says an editor of a top political newsletter.
"This [poll] kind of runs in the face of that, and he can use that as evidence that he can be competitive with the likely Democratic frontrunner," Geoffrey Skelley, associate editor of the weekly tip sheet Sabato's Crystal Ball, published by the University of Virginia Center for Politics, told "MidPoint" host Ed Berliner on
Newsmax TV on Friday.
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Paul leads Clinton 44 percent to 41 percent in Colorado and 43 percent to 42 percent in Iowa in a
Quinnipiac University survey that was conducted March 29-April 7, the period leading up to and including his announcement on Tuesday.
Skelley said Paul might be able to show those numbers to potential voters and donors "to get some support from the establishment figures who are reluctant to back him. He can use that, fairly, as an electability argument on his side."
Paul is also moving closer to his party's mainstream on defense and foreign policy by sounding and acting more hawkish than he did as a libertarian Senate candidate who opposed U.S. foreign aid and major military entanglements abroad, Skelley noted.
"He's often been characterized, wrongly or rightly, as something of a dove, and that may have been a good position for him to be in a couple of years ago," he said. "But with the rise of ISIS, developments in Ukraine, Russia, a world that seems less safe than ever, we saw Paul react to that by offering an amendment to the budget to raise military spending."
Turning to another first-term Senate Republican, Marco Rubio of Florida, who is
preparing to join the race, Skelley said Rubio is positioning himself as the "ideas candidate" with fully developed policy proposals in areas such as taxation and immigration reform.
That approach carries risks, he said.
"It's kind of a … double-edged sword," said Skelley. "You can put these ideas out there, but they may open you up to criticism, and there are definitely some aspects of the
tax plan that might be considered heterodox to a lot of Republicans.
"Similarly, he's probably going to get attacked for his efforts toward comprehensive immigration reform in the Senate a couple of years ago, with the bill that passed there," said Skelley.
"Expect to hear him accused of having supported amnesty a lot during Republican debates and in the primaries," he said, adding, "how he handles that remains to be seen, but he's going to have to definitely fight off that to some extent."
Skelley said he's also waiting for an announcement from Republican Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin "because Walker, in many ways — his positioning at the moment — seems to be very strong."
"We're obviously very far out [from elections], but at national polling he seems to be doing pretty well," he said of Walker. "If he can remain a force, it's tougher to see a road [to the GOP nomination] for someone like Rubio."
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