The evolution of super PACs..

The article, "Jeb Bush prepares to give traditional campaign a makeover", discusses an interesting twist that could develop in the 2016 presidential election. While Jeb Bush has not yet formally announced that he is for president in 2016, his fundraising efforts have already been going strong. According to the article, the super PAC affiliated with his probable run for the presidency, "Right to Rise", has already raised tens of millions of dollars. The twist comes with how Jeb is going to treat this super PAC. It appears that he may entrust several duties of the campaign to the super PAC instead of being handled by the campaign itself.  The campaign itself would handle items directly to Jeb while the super PAC would cover the rest. The idea in this strategy is that a super PAC can legally raise unlimited amounts of money making them the logical choice to cover campaign spending. The only drawback is that Jeb will not be able to directly coordinate with those in the super PAC. For the primaries, his strategy may lead to a super PAC for an individual candidate outspending the candidate itself in American history.

This idea for campaign finance really intrigues me. I am astounded that any one candidate would be able to relinquish such a task to an outside organization. He must have a lot of faith in the people on this committee because his whole election may depend on if they are competent enough to spread the Jeb Bush message.

Rand decides to run for President, but will one group run with him?

The article, "Rand Paul Announces Presidential Run", tells that Rand Paul, a U.S. Senator from Kentucky, has decided to run for President in 2016. The article goes on to relate key excerpts from his speech at his announcement rally. The main takeaway from this speech is... what specific group is he trying to attract? At one point, he chastised both Republicans and Democrats for the current political backup in D.C.. A point that all voters would agree on. From there, however, his stances began to become more divisive. He stands with classic Republican thinking on issues such as abortion, same-sex marriage, the Iran nuclear deal, and cutting taxes to increase industry from larger corporations. On the other hand, he stray to the left when he describes how he wants to eliminate invasive government surveillance into American citizens along with reducing drug sentencing laws. He is also appealing to Libertarians by promising to shrink the size of the federal government.

While it is smart to appeal to a broad group of voters, I believe that Paul is doing this too early. He must first appeal to his party directly before he can appeal to whole spectrum of voters. I, for the most part, agree with his views, but I am dubious as to if he will escape the primaries. Time will tell if his diverse strategy will allow him to complete his run to the Oval Office.