Third Rand Paul-Supporting SuperPAC Arises, Run by Cato Institute Co-Founder Ed Crane

Also in Paul money news: Behind in big bucks, Paul likely won't attend big weekend meeting of Koch-associated funders

I noted last week the disappointing take of the two prominent SuperPACS dedicated to promoting Rand Paul for president, with his SuperPAC total lagging behind nearly every other GOP candidate's.

This week the pre-existing Purple PAC (which supported Libertarian Party gubernatorial candidate Robert Sarvis of Virginia back in 2013) also came out for Rand Paul.

From an Associated Press report:

"There are some very wealthy libertarians out there, and they're all going to be hearing from me," said Ed Crane, president of one of the pro-Paul super PACs, called Purple PAC. "It's a strong potential base for Rand."

Politico reports Purple PAC's total pull so far as $1.2 million, from just four donors.

That expansion in PACs does not appreciably expand the actual number of megarich people spending big for Rand, since $1 million of Purple PAC's cash came from Jeff Yass (of Susquehanna Partners, a trading firm), the same Yass who also gave a million to an earlier Paul PAC, America's Liberty. That one, the first in the Paul super PAC field, is run by former Ron Paul campaign chieftain (and husband of one of Rand's nieces) Jesse Benton. 

Purple PAC's Crane has a long history with both libertarian advocacy and politics. He co-founded the Cato Institute and ran it from its 1977 founding until 2012, after a prominent and nasty fight with other co-founder Charles Koch.

Crane was also a major player in two Libertarian Party presidential campaigns in 1976 and 1980. (Crane and his impact are discussed at length in my 2007 history of the American libertarian movement, Radicals for Capitalism.) Crane has largely eschewed public support for specific candidates since.

Politico reports today that Paul was invited to, but likely won't show up at, a confab sponsored by an umbrella group for Koch brothers' political philanthropy, Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce. Some wonder at the wisdom of Paul declining to make a case for himself in front of what is surely one of the biggest concentrations of GOP moneybags accessible. Still:

Paul has not ruled out an appearance, said his campaign spokesman Sergio Gor. But he added "it will be difficult due to trips to Iowa and New Hampshire, the first GOP debate in Cleveland and the U.S. Senate being in session all during the same week."

Gor suggested that Paul's relationship with the Kochs and some of their top donors transcends the seminars. Paul "regularly works with both Charles and David Koch directly," Gor said. He cited his boss's support from active Koch network donors, including New Jersey businesswoman Frayda Levin, and he pointed out that Paul participates in events with Koch-backed groups, including Americans for Prosperity and Concerned Veterans for America, which is hosting an event featuring Paul in South Carolina this week.

Associated Press sums up what Purple PAC's entrance into the funding fray means for total Rand Paul money so far, five months ahead of voting:

Three super PACS supporting the libertarian-leaning Kentucky senator said they raised a combined $6 million through June 30. That's on top of the nearly $7 million that Paul's campaign reported pulling in between his April announcement and the end of last month.

Comments

[Thymirus]

Paul's lack of support amongst ordinary, generally apolitical Americans, from my experience, tends to be attributable to a ludicrous and erroneous perception of his principles as a prelude to anarchistic chaoticism. He's able and willing to specifically describe the excesses of government he seeks to rid this country of, which is counter to the strategy candidates usually employ consisting of platitudes and nebulous bullshit.

Members of my generation seem especially determined to hasten the obliteration of the Republic, with preferences most commonly tending toward shitbags like Bush and Clinton. I'm the only person in this age group with these political views, and it's fucking lonely.

[mfckr]

Members of my generation seem especially determined to hasten the obliteration of the Republic, with preferences most commonly tending toward shitbags like Bush and Clinton. I'm the only person in this age group with these political views, and it's fucking lonely.

Millennial?

[Hyperion]

preferences most commonly tending toward shitbags like Bush and Clinton

Doesn't sound like a millennial to me.

[mfckr]

Is there a surge of Millennial support for Bernie Sanders?

Thymirus mentioned feeling like a lone Libertarian in a wilderness of statists, so I figured they must be a Millennial.

[Hyperion]

I would wager that if you asked 100 millennials right now who the presidential candidates are, 99 of them couldn't name even one.

When he says his generation mostly support Bush and Clinton, I'm guessing that he's over 60.

[mfckr]

I would wager that if you asked 100 millennials right now who the presidential candidates are, 99 of them couldn't name even one.

Probably true.

Though concerning attitudes towards government, I'd say Millennials have more in common w/ the 60+ crowd when it comes to being statolatrist shitholes. So I could see them springing for Clinton or Bush just the same.

[Thymirus]

I'm 22 in August. With literally two exceptions that I can recall individually, everybody in their teens, their early twenties, or their mid-twenties, male and female, that I discuss politics with -- and, necessarily, the shitshow that is the upcoming presidential election -- is either solidly socialist (Chavez-grade), progressive (as Americans define it, in variant shades and severities), bombastically neoconservative, outright communist, or generically apolitical (that is, they never considered the issues, but when confronted with them, these folks usually conclude that Clinton-esque progressivism is desirable).

It breaks my heart, though I'm sure there are less authoritarian millennial populations elsewhere.

[Hyperion]

Well, all of that makes sense. But I'm still surprised that most of them even know who Hillary Clinton is. And she's definitely no progressive. She's a lot of things, all of them bad, but that's not one of them.

[Thymirus]

She's a totalitarian piece of shit, and that's a good enough disqualifier. I'm pretty sure she's not human, too, but I need to prove it somehow.

[Princess Trigger]

Is she visible in a mirror?

[Mr Lizard]

Does she weigh more than a duck?

[AlmightyJB]

Don't pretend like she's not one of yours Mr. Lizard.

[gaoxiaen]

Almost as much as one of these ducks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DUKW

[mfckr]

It breaks my heart, though I'm sure there are less authoritarian millennial populations elsewhere.

I saw some at a Ron Paul speech I went to during the '12 primaries? so there's that, I guess. But like you, I generally don't find many fellow Libertarians in this generational cohort.

In my experience, a lot of them seem agreeable towards fiscal Libertarianism when it's presented to them? but, they invariably vote Democrat because abortion, gays, and a distaste for stodgy SoCon shit that permeates the GOP. Basically, it's hard to get them firmly into the Libertarian camp so long as the GOP is perceived to be a threatening specter, thus they vote Democrat to counter that.

Couple that with the fact that only the progressive-socialists are out there waging the war of ideas to present a compelling vision of the future, and you have a recipe for ultimately ossifying Millennials into compliant statists.

[Mickey Rat]

In other other words they are culture warrors who are willing to throw the baby out with the bathwater over a perception.

[mfckr]

Indeed.

[gaoxiaen]

I first misread that as "tightening sphincter".

[sloopyinTEXAS]

Aren't a majority of millennial snow considered pro-life? I'm sure I read that somewhere.

[mfckr]

Aren't a majority of millennial snow considered pro-life? I'm sure I read that somewhere.

Looked that up out of curiosity, found this and this.

Issues like abortion also presumably attain more salient eminence in their minds, being generally young, unmarried, and less financially stable. Not to mention the common perception seems to be that the GOP wants to outlaw abortion entirely.

[Scarecrow & WoodChipper Repair]

A coercive monopolistic government by definition mixes personal ideology with government. Those who we think would be good for all the separate individual functions of government must also be our leaders in every aspect of government. It's as if we had to shop at only a single store for houses, cars, clothes, food, entertainment, insurance, health care, and everything else, and we only got a single collective vote once every four years as to which store that would be -- Democrats or Republicans.

No one in their right mind would think that was a sane way to run any country; Chavistas would probably think the defect was in having an election, but that's another story.

The problem persists and grows stronger because government provides so many targeted benefits to so many specialized classes, and no one wants to be the first to give up their benefits in the hope that others will follow along, especially when everyone knows that the reduction in spending and control would only provide room for new benefits for some other small privileged class. Government will eventually change when it runs out of other people's money, but no one can predict how.

[Jay Dubya]

Many people come across libertarian ideas in college. I did. A libertarian conversion also typically depends on at least some understanding of economics and history because so many of the arguments are empirical - again, these are topics most Americans are first accurately confronted with in college given the laughable state of primary schooling.

If the elderly members of this thread would cease stroking themselves long enough to consider their own history, its quite likely they first found libertarianism around the same age group (20's). Communism is not more popular now than it was in the late 60s and early 70s. Baby boomers broke this country by refysing to reform entitlements and they know it. Every generation, though, will invariably pat itself on the back for their huge contributions to culture and society while chiding the kids for crimes real and imagined.

Few things more quickly demonstrate a complete lack of objectivity than bitching about 'millenials'.

[mfckr]

Many people come across libertarian ideas in college. I did. A libertarian conversion also typically depends on at least some understanding of economics and history because so many of the arguments are empirical - again, these are topics most Americans are first accurately confronted with in college given the laughable state of primary schooling.

Sure. I self-converted to Libertarianism (then later into market-anarchism, etc.) in my early 20s, but college didn't much to do with it. There simply wasn't a Libertarian presence on campus that I knew of? but I did see plenty of posters around advertising various Marxist and Progressive activist groups.

Few things more quickly demonstrate a complete lack of objectivity than bitching about 'millenials'.

I doubt anyone's claiming a mantle to objectivity here on this. Just saying that my anecdotal experience parallels Thymirus'.

Though I suspect these aren't mere isolated incidents, but suggestive of a broader pattern to not look for a Libertarian revival amongst Millennials anytime soon.

[Hyperion]

Paul is timing this thing. He's very quiet right now. He's going to let some of the others peak too early, then he's going to get his mojo on. There will be plenty of money bombs later on for Rand. I'll donate. Yes, that's right NSA, I'm going to donate to Rand, so put me on this list now, you statist shitbags.

[mfckr]

That's what I figure too.

Relatedly, Reason should be grateful to Trump for currently sucking the air out of the Jeb Bush inevitability narrative.

[Hyperion]

Reason are too busy trying to appease the proglodytes and SJWs to appreciate anything like that.

[mfckr]

Reason are too busy trying to appease the proglodytes and SJWs to appreciate anything like that.

Reason still trying to ingratiate itself into the cool kids club at HuffPo & Salon, eh?

[Medical Physics Guy]

Ed Crane saw the Cato into their heyday in the 90s in which they provided a lot of key ideas to the 1994 Republican takeover. They had right thinking liberals shaking in their boots. He's awfully shrewd and this can only be good.

[Almanian - Trump's Woodchipper]

I swapped "Ed Crane" with "Bob Crane" initially and thought, "Whooa..." NTTAWWT

[Almanian - Trump's Woodchipper]

The Trumpocalypse will send the Randians and others on their way.

It is inevitable. As inevitable as marriage rape, as inevitable as "military-hero-status" shit flinging, as inevitable as crony capitalism.

/begin channeling The Trump - Trump Voice on

But it's all done with class. Which is something the other candidates just don't have. And so they're jealous. But they're losers. But I'm a winner. And I'll bring America back to where it should be. Thank you, Fernwood! Good night!

/channeling Trump, Trump Voice off