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Clinton said this week she sent her latest autobiography, Hard Choices, to her Republican rivals as a tongue-in-cheek way to explain her accomplishments as secretary of state. And Paul, one of those Republicans, is now auctioning off that book, promoting it on his online store as an opportunity to "GET YOUR OWN SIGNED COPY OF A GREAT FICTION BOOK!"

Paul placed the book -- signed by both him and Clinton -- on Ebay, and as of Wednesday evening it had attracted five bids and was available for $300. The auction, which includes a copy of Paul's new book, Taking a Stand, closes just before 2 p.m. Saturday.

Other Republican candidates have in return offered to send Clinton copies of their own books or said they would read Clinton's if she watched controversial Planned Parenthood videos.

Paul chose to take a shot at Clinton's record at the State Department on the title page of her book.

"Hillary, your refusal to provide security for our mission in Benghazi should forever preclude you from higher office!" he wrote in black ink before affixing his signature, according to a photograph in his online store.

Paul lists the item's condition as "brand new" and its subject as "fantasy."

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Rand Paul auctions off Hillary Clinton's book ...

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"I think the rumors of my demise are somewhat exaggerated, to say the least," Paul said Sunday on Fox News' "Media Buzz."

His paltry $2.5 million third quarter fundraising haul had sparked expectations that Paul might soon drop out. But he insisted Sunday that he doesn't need much money to keep up his campaign efforts.

"We run a tight ship around here," Paul said. "We plan on being in for the long hall, and I think ultimately celebrity will sort of filter out of this."

Paul also took a shot at Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, one of his GOP rivals for the 2016 presidential nomination.

Five days earlier, he'd said Cruz is "pretty much done for" in the Senate because he's failed to form personal relationships with his colleagues. Paul repeated that criticism Sunday.

"I think we do have different styles. My style is when I disagree with someone, not to call them a name or be very inflammatory," Paul said.

"I can be very strong in what I believe in and I'm willing to stand up for that," he said. "But even (Senate Democratic leader) Harry Reid -- who's on the opposite side -- I have pretty good relations with him, even though he's a Democrat, and I wouldn't call him a liar or I wouldn't call him dishonest because I don't think that furthers the debate, even with people you disagree with."

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Rand Paul says he's not dropping out of 2016 race ...

Its been a tough week for Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul.

The Republican presidential candidate has spent the week explaining why his campaign still even exists, appearing on outlet after outlet to defend himself from speculation that weakening poll numbers and a cash-strapped campaign would or should lead him to drop out.

This week, fellow GOP candidate Donald Trump mocked Sen. Paul on Twitter, writing, Rand Paulhas been driven out of the race by my statements about him he will announce soon.

Asked to respond during an interview with CNN, Paul shrugged off Mr. Trumps comments.

I guess its part of his bravado, his shtick, he said. But Ill tell you this: I think well be around just as long as Trump, or longer.

But Trump isnt the only one broadcasting these predictions. The senator raised just $2.5 million this quarter, a disappointing showing that adds insult to injury as polls peg his support at a national average of 2.4 percent, according to Real Clear Politics.

CNBC, which will host the next Republican debate on Oct. 28, has said that candidates polling at an average of 3 percent in the five-week period beforehand will secure a spot onstage.

And one of the three super PACs behind Pauls presidential run has lost confidence in the candidate, saying publicly it hasrefused to keep raising money, reports Politico.

Ed Crane, who cofounded libertarian think tank the Cato Institute and heads up a group named PurplePAC, said he believed the senator had abandoned his libertarian views.

I have stopped raising money for him until I see the campaign correct its problems, said Mr. Crane to Politico. I wasnt going to raise money to spend on a futile crusade.

Before that, PurplePAC had helped raise around $1.2 million, nearly half of Pauls total haul this quarter.

Pauls greatest strength in appealing to voters across the board a distinctive world view and message can also be his greatest weakness, The Christian Science Monitor's Francine Kiefer reported earlier this year, as Paul's ideological standpoints can also be alienating to some voters.

For now, however, the message from Paulworld is that the bad times are over, The Washington Post wrote this week.

Based on interviews with the senators campaign team, the Post reports:

As of this week, the campaign has at least one county chair in all 99 Iowa counties, winning them overeven as Paul's supportwas mired in the single digits. It has added new staff in the caucus state of Nevada, where it is currently holding onto an endorsement from a Republican state legislator who wasreportedly switching to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.).

There are no layoffs, no triage plans, for a staff of more than 40 people, which was always designed to be lean.No one, according to the campaign, has been asked to take a pay cut or an IOU.

I think the rumors of my demise are somewhat exaggerated, to say the least, Paul said Sunday in an interview with Fox News.

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Rand Paul on 2016: Why the GOP candidate says he's not ...

The libertarian moment in American politicsforetold just last year in the New York Times magazineis like the horizon; always retreating as we advance upon it.

The political events of 2015 are a brutal reminder about how far this country is from embracing libertarianism and how alien those ideas are even to the purported shock troops of the freedom movement. While libertarianisms opponents can take heart, its champions are setting their cause back by pretending that all is well.

The collapse of the Rand Paul campaign speaks volumes. In a 15-person field, Paul is the only candidate who looks even remotely libertarian (social tolerance, foreign policy restraint, and limited government). He started the campaign with decent name recognition, a seat in the United States Senate, lavish media attention, a serious will to win, and a battle-tested, national political operation inherited from his father, Ron.

If there were any significant support for Libertarian ideas in the GOPany at allRand Paul would be near the top of an otherwise crowded, fragmented field that is fighting over every non-libertarian voter in the party.

If real Libertarian votes were there for the taking, someone would have come along and done the harvesting.

Yet hes polling at a mere 1 percent among Republican voters nationwide and has a higher unfavorability rating than anyone else in the GOP race.

According to an August survey by the independent polling firm Eschelon Insights, far and away the most popular candidate nationwide among libertarian-inclined Republicans is Donald Trump, the least libertarian candidate in the race.

Libertarians who cant stomach Trump scattered their support without any ideological rhyme or reason (11 percent for Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush, 9 percent for Ted Cruz and John Kasich, 8 percent for Carly Fiorina, 7 percent for Paul).

The secret of Trumps appeal to Pauls base is that a large segment of the Ron Paul Revolution leavened its libertarianism with a pony keg of crazy. Birthers, 9/11 Truthers, a wide assortment of conspiracy theorists (many of whom believe the Federal Reserve to be a modern manifestation of the Illuminati), and naked racists rivaled the number of reasonably sober libertarian-ish voters among the faithful.

Trump won their hearts by throwing even more crazy into the mix and stirring up a white, working class populism last given political life by George Wallace.

Paul let these voters down because he was disinclined to offer the distasteful dog whistles that his father traded for extremist support, much less the louder, baser appeals that are Trumps stock-in-trade.

The second voter bloc Rand Paul hoped to bring into his campTea Partiershas likewise rejected the Kentucky Republican. Thats because there are few Libertarians there, either.

According to a survey conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute, more than half the Tea Party is made up of the religious right while only 26 percentthe smallest ideological bloc within the groupcan be loosely described as Libertarian.And Tea Partiers have always manifested a large degree of nativist populism.

It should be no surprise, then, that the candidates doing best with Tea Partiers are Donald Trump (37 percent support), Ted Cruz (19 percent), and Ben Carson (14 percent). Rand Paul? Two percent.

Sure, one can argue that Paul has run a sub-par campaign and that a more adroit effort would have produced better results.But given the above, it is hard to argue, as some do, that Paul would have done better had he run as more of a libertarian.

If real libertarian votes were there for the taking, someone would have come along and done the harvesting.

If there was truly a $20 (electoral) bill lying on the sidewalk, its hard to believe that none of the other 14 starving candidates would bother to pick it up.

Yet this is precisely the narrative that the prophets of the Libertarian vote would have us believe: an epic political market failure.

Theres good reason that political professionalsthose with the most to gain from an accurate reading of the political landscapedo not pander to the libertarian vote: It doesnt exist.

The most thorough search for libertarian sentiment was conducted last year by the Pew Research Center.They asked 10,013 adults 23 questions about a variety of social and political issues and then used cluster analysis to sort respondents into homogeneous groups. Pew found that Americans who resembled libertarians form a group that is too small to analyze: no more than 5 percent of those surveyed.

Its true that if we avoid asking people about concrete issues and instead ask general questions, we can (if we squint hard enough) see a great deal of latent libertarian sentiment out there.

It has been noted, for instance, that 59 percent of the American public is, broadly speaking, libertarian in that they answer yes to the question Would you define yourself as fiscally conservative and socially liberal?Political scientists and campaign strategists, however, almost universally dismiss self-identification and general sentiment surveys as functionally meaningless. Both academic investigation and hard-earned political experience tell us that attitudes about specific governmental programs are far more telling than asking people what labels or characterizations describe them best.

Libertarians, however, can take heart from the fact that political sentiment is moving their way in some areas. Gay rights, drug decriminalization, increasing outrage over heavy-handed police tactics, growing concern over an unjust legal system, disgust over crony capitalism, and opposition to military deployments abroad all suggest that libertarian arguments can have political force. But just because people buy libertarian arguments when it comes to civil liberties or foreign policy does not mean they are more likely to buy them on taxes, spending, or regulation. If they were, then Bernie Sanders Democrats would be Rand Paul Republicans.

Libertarians love to preach the virtues of markets. Yet in the marketplace of ideas, their bundled product has been regularly and thoroughly rejected for over a century.

Until libertarians acknowledge that market verdict and re-think either what theyre selling, how theyre selling it, or both, they will remain on the margins of American political life. And for friends of liberty, that would be a tragedy.

Jerry Taylor is the president of the Niskanen Center,a think tank in Washington, D.C. dedicated to the advancement of liberty and pragmatic policy solutions.

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The collapse of Rand Paul and the libertarian moment that ...

This article first appeared in Real Clear Politics.

Rand Paul raised just $2.5 million for his presidential bid over the last three months--a sum that not only pales in comparison to the high double-digit hauls of his rivals, but amounts to roughly a third of what he brought in the previous quarter.

The Kentucky libertarian has slipped so far in the polls--the RCP average shows him at 2.3 percent--that he may not qualify for the prime-time debate stage later this month.

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The Kentucky senator who rode the 2010 Tea Party wave to a victory in the Senate is a practical libertarian

Paul has also recently been raising money for his U.S. Senate re-election, raising questions about his commitment to the presidential contest. Paul pushed the Kentucky GOP to host a caucus instead of a primary, which would allow him to run for both offices--and he footed the $250,000 bill.

Altogether, this paints a picture of a campaign on life support.

But the campaign doesn't see it that way and instead points to signs of life: in the two weeks after the second Republican debate, it raised $750,000. The campaign insists there will be no shakeups or changes in strategy, that Paul will continue his campaign schedule in the early states and regions off the beaten track, and that it has enough resources to carry the candidate through at least the first four primaries. This week, the campaign rolled out a list of caucus state endorsements.

Spokesman Sergio Gor said the campaign has added new staff over the past week.

"Our campaign is in for the long haul and Senator Paul's message of limited government and individual liberty will continue to resonate with primary voters," Gor said in a statement.

"Most Interesting Man in Politics"

Still, the numbers are startling for a candidate who, at this time last year, had been dubbed the "most interesting man in politics." Paul's libertarian leanings, especially his audience-commanding efforts in the Senate on drone strikes and NSA snooping, his calls for criminal justice reform and support for legalizing marijuana, and his ability to expand the conservative message to new groups and communities were all supposed to set him apart from the crowded field.

Instead, the GOP returned to its hawkish roots on foreign policy as situations escalated abroad, and Paul found himself in a challenging position. He wanted from the outset to expand the coalition of loyal libertarians his father had built through his own presidential campaigns, but he also hoped to win over a faction of the mainstream. He irked libertarians by proposing an increase in the defense budget, joining Sen. Tom Cotton and others in trying to trip up the Iran negotiations, and ultimately opposed the nuclear deal. And on the campaign trail, he didn't always appear to be all that interested or interesting.

Paul was the second candidate to announce his presidential campaign, and did so with the message: "Defeat the Washington Machine, Unleash the American Dream." But Paul had also worked to alter Kentucky state laws to allow him to run for his Senate seat and the presidency at the same time, which not only raised questions about his intentions but also seemed antithetical to his anti-establishment campaign.

The rise of real political outsiders, Donald Trump in particular, undercut Paul's credentials. And Paul's efforts to swat down Trump, especially in the first debate, proved futile and appeared desperate.

Paul became a favorite punching bag for Trump. On the main debate stage last month, Trump asked why Paul was even participating. This week, he tried to stoke the fires and take credit for Paul's demise, tweeting: "Prediction: Rand Paul has been driven out of the race by my statements about him-- he will announce soon. 1%!"

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GOP presidential candidate and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul sits down with CBS' "Face the Nation" to discuss the Syrian refugee crisis, Planned Parent...

Paul responded by saying he would be sticking around the presidential race just as long as Trump, if not longer, and called the real estate mogul "a clown."

"Ultimately we're going to get to the truth, we're going to get to substance--it takes a while," Paul told CNN earlier this week. "But by no means am I finished: I'm just getting started."

But Trump isn't the only one undermining Paul's campaign. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz has also sought to appeal to some of the libertarian contingent and has maintained his standing in the polls. The tension between the two has thickened.

This week, the Cruz campaign rolled out a video highlighting eight supporters of his campaign who had previously backed Ron Paul. The video also noted that Rand Paul, along with Ron, had endorsed Cruz during his Senate campaign.

Paul said Cruz was "done for" in the Senate Tuesday after Cruz failed to garner enough support to amend a government-funding bill. "Ted has chosen to make this really personal and chosen to call people dishonest in leadership and call them names, which really goes against the decorum and also against the rules of the Senate, and as a consequence, he can't get anything done legislatively," Paul told Fox News Radio.

The criticism, however, was a bit peculiar, as decorum and Senate rules are rarely priorities for anti-establishment voters. Cruz picked up on that in an interview with radio host Hugh Hewitt, reminding listeners that Paul endorsed Mitch McConnell in his re-election bid and that the now-Senate majority leader returned the favor.

Fundraising Takes a Dive

Paul will have even more competition. The close of the fiscal quarter this week serves as a window into the financial health and habits of campaigns. Cruz has not released his numbers yet. So far, Ben Carson has wowed the field by raising $20 million in the last quarter, and his campaign says most of the contributions come from small donors.

In the previous quarter, Paul raised over $7 million and had $4 million in cash at the end of June. This time, he raised $2.5 million and has $2 million cash on hand.

Ron Paul raised nearly $35 million during his presidential run four years ago. In his 2007 run, the elder Paul raised $6 million in a 24-hour period through an aggressive online "money bomb" pitch.

What's more, Rand Paul can't rely on two of his three super PACs to propel his stalling campaign. One group said this week it halted its fundraising efforts for a "futile" campaign, though it had spent little so far this cycle.

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Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul is one of the 10 Republican presidential candidates who qualified for the first prime-time GOP debate. Paul's poll number...

The leaders of another group backing Paul, America's Liberty PAC, are under indictment on campaign finance charges stemming from their previous work on Ron Paul's presidential campaign.

Another PAC, Concerned American Voters, which is focused on organizational efforts in the early states, says it's still raising money. "Donors who have given to us were generally pretty energized by the performance in last debate," says the PAC's senior adviser, Matt Kibbe, who noted that Trump has taken up a lot of the oxygen but that there is still time for Paul to turn things around. He pointed to criminal justice reform as one of Paul's initiatives likely to gain steam.

"What I'm hearing from investors and activists is they want to hear more of what they heard in the last debate," Kibbe says. "They want to hear those libertarian values to distinguish Rand."

It's unclear, however, whether Paul will make the big stage for the third debate in Colorado on Oct. 28. Host CNBC said candidates must average 3 percent in national polls Sept. 17 to Oct. 21. A standing of 2.5 percent would be rounded up. But right now, at least in the RCP average, Paul stands at 2.3 percent.

In other words, Paul's fate as a presidential candidate may just come down to rounding. And he could rebound. Still, some argue, there's a Senate race in Kentucky may that may look to be more and more inviting.

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