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If anyone ought to be well positioned in the current, fractured Republican field, its Rand Paul. The Kentucky senators libertarian stances make him stand out from the pack, and his supporters were supposed to give him a solid base that he could expand by appealing to more traditional Republicans.

But instead, Paul seems to be flailing, and fighting for space in the crowded GOP landscape. Hes tied for fourth place in the average of national polls, fifth in Iowa, third in New Hampshire. His fundraising isnt going wellhes even been frozen out by the top donor to his father, the former Texas congressman Ron Paul. Hes struggling to earn the backing of his fathers rank and file supporters, as well. And while Rand Pauls recent maneuvers in the Senate succeeded in derailing renewal of the Patriot Act, they also served to highlight the unpopularity of his national-security positions within his partyand the stunt got far less buzz than the 2013 filibuster that made him a hero to many conservatives.

Inside and around the campaign, there is a sense that things are not going as well as hoped for Paul, multiple sources told me. They are in a challenging spot right now, said one Republican operative with knowledge of the campaign. They are having a hard time reaching out to new constituencies while keeping the base happy. The problem, the operative said, is that Pauls flip-flopping and triangulation have damaged his reputation for ideological purity. Senator Paul appears, in the minds of Republicans, to have gone from a guy who was standing on principle, who wanted to do things, to a politician who wants to be something, the operative said.

A different GOP strategist put it more succinctly to National Journals Josh Kraushaar, calling the Paul campaign a disaster.

Why is Paul having such a hard time? Partly it is because the crowded field he thought would give him an advantage includes several conservative candidates appealing to a similar pool of votersfrom the firebrand Ted Cruz to social conservative Mike Huckabee to neurosurgeon Ben Carson. Partly it is the shifting landscape of key issues, which has put foreign policy front and center. (National security and terrorism recently became the No. 1 concern of GOP primary voters, and 57 percent of them want an approach that is more aggressive, not less, according to a recent Pew survey.) And partly it is a matter of flawed strategic assumptionsa campaign that believed it could build a coalition of different kinds of voters based on the candidates various facets is finding it may instead be a zero-sum game.

Just a few months ago, some were calling Paul the early frontrunner for the nomination. The many moderate and establishment-oriented candidates, Paul himself theorized, would split the partys more traditional voters, allowing Paul to consolidate conservatives. Paul was by far the most aggressive candidate in building a campaign infrastructure, constructing a 50-state network that was in place more than a year ago. Meanwhile, he courted traditional big-money donors, schmoozing confabs like Mitt Romneys Utah donor retreat as he sought to prove he was less of a loose cannonsome might say gadflythan his father. In a March 2014 national poll of Republican primary voters, he placed first with 16 percent of the vote.

Paul started early because he was hoping to lock in support while other potential candidates were still making up their minds. He paid his first visits to Iowa and New Hampshire in the spring of 2013. He vigorously courted social conservatives with a message that linked personal liberty to religious liberty and emphasized his opposition to abortion. In the 2012 Iowa caucuses, Ron Paul came in third, with 21 percent of the vote; he came in second in New Hampshire, with 23 percent. Rand Pauls advisers figured he would naturally appeal to those voters as the closest thing in the field to Ron Paul, and could quickly vault to the front by building on that base.

But polling averages now put Paul under 9 percent in Iowa and around 12 percent in New Hampshire. Paul gets 9 percent of the Republican primary vote nationally, on average, the same amount of support as Carson and behind Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, and Marco Rubio. Polls at this stage arent at all predictive of how the race will actually shake out, but they are a barometer of Republican activists current sentiment. What they show is that, despite Pauls early organizational efforts and his supposed claim on liberty-minded Republicans, the percentage of voters ready to commit to him is smalland rather than building it up, he may be watching it shrink.

Ron Pauls supporters, a finicky and purist bunch, have proved less transferable to Rand Paul than the campaign assumed. In Iowa, several prominent former Ron Paul supporters, including state Senator Jason Schultz, are backing Cruz. This week, the New York Times reported that Rand Paul was beginning to win over some formerly leery Ron Paul fansa strikingly late conversion of a group he thought he could take for granted. Many Ron Paul supporters have been alienated by Rand Pauls gestures to the establishment, particularly his partnership with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, whose reelection he endorsed and campaigned for last year. In blocking the reauthorization of the Patriot Act last week, Paul antagonized McConnell, but won points with libertarians for proving he could stand up to the leader.

Unlike Pauls 2013 filibuster against drones, which brought him wide acclaim and highlighted his political creativity, his speech on surveillance last week was largely viewed as a political stunt aimed at thrusting him into the spotlight and goosing his lagging fundraising. Thats perhaps inevitablePaul is a candidate now, as he wasnt the last timeand perhaps unfair, as he has a long track record on the issue. But it highlights how his image has changed, from that of a passion-driven truth-teller, like his father, to that of a politically minded triangulator. Confronted with the accusation, Paul displayed another unfortunate tendency by lashing out at his critics, saying that those who oppose him secretly want there to be an attack on the United States so they can blame it on me. (He later backed off and acknowledged that the statement was hyperbole.)

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Rand Paul's Struggling Presidential Campaign - The Atlantic