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'Today, I will end where I began, ready and willing to fight for the cause of liberty,' the Kentucky senator said.

By Shane Goldmacher, Alex Isenstadt and Daniel Strauss

02/03/16 08:53 AM EST

Updated 02/03/16 01:54 PM EST

Rand Paul dropped out of the 2016 president race on Wednesday, short on cash and support, two days after finishing with under 5 percent in the Iowa caucuses less than one quarter of the support his father had drawn four years earlier.

The Kentucky senator, who pitched his libertarian-infused brand of conservatism as transformational for the Republican Party, will exit the national stage and instead run for reelection to the Senate. His moment in the 2016 campaign never materialized.

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Brushfires of Liberty were ignited, and those will carry on, as will I, Paul said in a statement.

Steve Munisteri, a senior adviser to Paul, told POLITICO that the senator called him after the Iowa caucuses to ask his thoughts on continuing the campaign. "The going endgoal was if we got a top five we would go on. Then Rand reflected on it and he called to get my advice and my advice was that he not go on," Munisteri said of the Tuesday morning call.

Paul told senior staff about his decision on Tuesday. Other staff were notified Tuesday evening and the entire Paul campaign was told via a conference call on Wednesday morning at about 8:45, according to a campaign source. In that call the Kentucky senator talked about smaller government, continuing his fight for "liberty" and the Fourth Amendment.

For months, Paul struggled to gain traction or garner attention in a race that has been dominated by Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. Paul hadnt registered in double digits in any national poll since May, after he had led some surveys in 2014 and had been declared the most interesting man in Republican politics.

Paul had initially been viewed as a stronger contender than his father, former Rep. Ron Paul, who ran for president in 2008 and 2012 on a narrow libertarian appeal. The younger Paul had hope to build on the libertarian grassroots base that had poured tens of millions of dollars into the elder Pauls campaigns and expand it to more mainstream Republicans.

In the end, he was able to do neither.

Rand Paul struggled to raise serious campaign cash, from both big donors and small ones. He had entered 2016 essentially broke, with $1.27 million in the bank and nearly $250,000 in unpaid bills and some of the remaining money unavailable because it was earmarked to be used only in a general election. Paul had burned through more money than he raised in each of his last two full quarters as a candidate, when others, notably rival Sen. Ted Cruz, were spending far more and still able to pad their political warchests. His supporting super PACs ended the year with a little more than $4 million in cash on hand.

Paul is one of the GOPs leading non-interventionist voices. But with increasing instability in the Middle East, terror in Paris and an attack in San Bernardino, Pauls risk-averse brand of foreign policy has fallen out of favor, as the Republican Party has returned to its roots as proponents of a more muscular and aggressive international posture.

A senior Paul aide said the campaign suffered from not only rise of ISIL, but also the rise of Trump. "Trump got in, Trump zoomed ahead, we collapsed, and he had a massive impact in caging our people from us," the top aide said. "And that, combined with this foreign policy environment, when Rand was more flavor of the month a year ago, it was before they were beheading people in the Middle East and that just really altered the conversation, the dynamic on those issues."

While candidates like Trump, Cruz and Marco Rubio the top three finishers in Iowa became better liked as the campaign wore on, Paul was the opposite.

By the latest Des Moines Register/Bloomberg poll in Iowa, Pauls favorability had plummeted underwater, with 41 percent likely caucus-goers having an unfavorable opinion of him and only 40 percent favorable. That represents a remarkable swing from the previous January poll, when his favorability was 65 percent and unfavorability 25 percent. He finished fifth in Iowa ahead of Jeb Bush, John Kasich, and Chris Christie but was projected to do much worse in next weeks New Hampshire primary.

Paul's poor showing in Iowa marked a turning point, multiple Paul campaign aides said, painting a dire picture for moving forward.

"Third for sure, fourth maybe, but fifth wasn't [viable]," one campaign aide said.

"We did not see a surge in fundraising on that fifth place finish," one of Paul's senior strategists said. "Some money came in. You keep paying bills and live a little bit off the land but to what point? We took fifth. What then? We take 9th? After New Hampshire, South Carolina that was always going to be a disaster state no matter what position the campaign was in. So the calendar was getting worse for us in the short term."

Paul suffered another big blow last month when he was relegated to the undercard of the sixth GOP debate. He boycotted the event, saying he was running a first-tier campaign. While he made it back on the main stage for last weeks debate, he failed to make much of an impact.

He was also extremely unlikely to qualify for Saturday nights nationally televised debate in Manchester, N.H., according to criteria announced last week by ABC News. Paul failed to finish in the top three in Iowa and isnt in the top six in polls conducted among Republicans nationally (hes tenth) or in New Hampshire (hes seventh), according to POLITICOs calculations. Pauls standing in the polls wasnt likely to change before ABCs deadline of Thursday at 5 p.m.

He now plans to turn his attention to his Kentucky Senate race. Although, today I will suspend my campaign for President, the fight is far from over" he said in Wednesday's statement. "I will continue to carry the torch for Liberty in the United States Senate and I look forward to earning the privilege to represent the people of Kentucky for another term."

Paul drew a serious Democratic challenger, wealthy Lexington Mayor Jim Gray, last week, increasing pressure from national GOP officials to focus at home on his reelection bid. Though Gray is certainly an underdog, Republicans do not want to spend money in such a red state when they are protecting far more vulnerable incumbents in states like Wisconsin, Illinois and Ohio.

Paul's Senate reelection campaign team is expected to be spearheaded by Doug Stafford and Chris LaCivita, both of whom served as top strategists on the presidential bid.

Given his limited support, Pauls departure is unlikely to significantly alter the contours of the remaining presidential contest, though Cruz, who had competed most aggressively for Pauls libertarian base, is poised to swallow up at least some of his supporters. There was already evidence that some of Paul's biggest donors are beginning to move to other candidates. Scott Banister, a Pay Pal board member and major Paul contributor, immediately announced he was backing Cruz.

In a radio interview on Wednesday, Cruz described Paul as "a friend" and "a very good man" and said he hoped to win over his supporters. "Rand has been a tremendous voice for liberty in a sense that his father was for many, many decades," Cruz said.

Rubio, speaking to reporters after a town hall in Bow, New Hampshire, said he thought Paul "ran a good race," though he disagreed with him on "a lot of issues."

"He's a true believer on issues of limited government and liberty issues, and I respect him for it," Rubio said.

"I'd love to have Rand's support," Rubio replied when asked if he would seek an endorsement. "I haven't spoken to him."

"I also know that he is also probably now going to focus on his Senate reelection in Kentucky and we have to make sure he is reelected," he added.

Burgess Everett, Anna Palmer and Nick Gass contributed.

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Rand Paul drops out of White House race - POLITICO

The Kentucky senator and GOP presidential candidate lumped Clinton, the Democratic 2016 front-runner, and Rubio, a surging Republican candidate, together on foreign policy -- criticizing them for being too willing to intervene in Middle Eastern conflicts in an interview with CNN's Jake Tapper Sunday on "State of the Union."

"I see her and Rubio as being the same person," he said. "They both wanted a no-fly zone. They both have supported activity in Libya -- the war in Libya that toppled Gadhafi, an intervention that made us less safe.

"They both have supported pouring arms into the Syrian civil war, a mistake that I think allowed ISIS to grow stronger. And they both have supported the Iraq War. So I mean, what's the difference?"

He was particularly critical of both Clinton and Rubio over Libya, saying the two had advocated an intervention that led to instability and turned the country into fertile territory for ISIS.

"I fault Hillary Clinton. I fault President Obama. But I also fault the neoconservatives within my party like Rubio who have been eager for war in Libya, in Syria, in Iraq, and they want a no-fly zone in an airspace where Russia is already flying," Paul said.

"It's a foolhardy notion, and people really -- this is the kind of stepping it up to a debate over who would best be commander in chief that we really need in our country," he added.

Paul also took a shot at Rubio over an immigration bill he once sponsored with New York Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer, which included a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.

"He was a coauthor of the bill -- I mean it was the Rubio bill, the Rubio-Schumer bill," Paul said. "So he does have to explain it. I think it will be a big part of things."

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Rand Paul: Clinton, Rubio both 'neoconservatives ...

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At a campaign event at George Washington University, the Kentucky senator told the crowd that the National Security Agency's bulk collection of phone record data hasn't been stopped, despite a judge's order, due to a six-month window to end the program.

"So when they stand up on television and say the tragedy in Paris means you have to give up your liberty, we need more phone surveillance -- bulls--t!" Paul said.

Paul's libertarian leanings have been at the center of his bid for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. He has opposed U.S. intervention in the Middle East as well as government surveillance programs.

He also has called for a stoppage to the visa waiver program allowing European citizens to travel to the U.S. freely, saying we should only allow Global Entry travelers, who get a background check, to enter freely.

He reiterated that position Thursday to CNN's Wolf Blitzer.

"When a whole section of the world is saying they want to come here and attack us ... we have to be careful," Paul said. "It's hard to tell friend from foe."

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Rand Paul: It's 'bulls--t' to collect phone records after ...

Trump, the Republican front-runner, said he "would certainly be open to closing [the Internet] in areas where we are at war with somebody" at the CNN Republican debate Tuesday. The billionaire businessman was referencing shutting off parts of the Internet that helped incite or facilitate terrorism.

But Paul said following Trump's strategy was fundamentally against the Constitution.

"If you're going to close the Internet -- that's like something they do in North Korea, something like they do in China -- but it also goes against the Constitution. It goes against the First Amendment," he said on "America's Newsroom" on Fox News.

"Closing the Internet would require a change to our Constitution where we get rid of the First Amendment. That's a big step," he said.

Paul dismissed Trump's current standing in the 2016 horse race, saying that the polls could change in a matter of weeks.

"The polls are very fluid. Ben Carson, who I like a lot, has dropped 20 points," the Kentucky Senator said. "Same thing could happen to Trump."

Paul painted to one of Trump's positions on terrorists as being potential popularity shifters.

"He's talking about killing women and children -- the families of terrorists," he said. "I don't think many Americans want to kill two-year-old children or four-year-old children."

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Rand Paul: Donald Trump Internet plan un-constitutional ...

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