The 2016 Republican nominating season is shaping up to be one of the most wide open and intriguing in many years, and Sen. Rand Paul’s entry into the fray Tuesday only reinforces that impression.
Paul’s views, to the extent he stands by them rather than starts hedging to appeal to the Republican right, are well worth an intraparty debate, too. That’s especially true regarding the war on terrorism, foreign intervention and political outreach beyond the traditional GOP base.
We would have included defense spending in that list as well, except that the Kentucky senator in recent months seems to have pulled back from his once admirable resolve to keep military expenditures in check, too.
On a positive note, Paul has been one of the most vocal critics from either party of the surveillance state, at one point staging a 13-hour filibuster to delay a vote to confirm the president’s nominee for the CIA. He’s been skeptical of an aggressively interventionist foreign policy, too — a position for which he is already being pounded in an ad campaign by a conservative group that accuses him of being soft on Iran.
To be sure, American weariness with foreign wars may have subsided with the surge of the Islamic State and other radical groups. And if so, Paul’s time as a candidate may have passed before he ever got in the race. But it would be a healthy sign if his commitment to civil liberties and restraint abroad could still find traction in the GOP.
Paul also clearly plans to reach out to a broader constituency than some Republicans have in the past, including minorities and the young. This is strikingly evident even in his first 30-second campaign video, especially compared with one released by the only other major Republican candidate who has officially announced, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas.
Cruz makes a straightforward appeal to God-and-country conservatives in his video. Paul, by contrast, includes clips of everyone from right-wing Sean Hannity to left-wing Jon Stewart praising him for various actions, in a video called “A Different Kind of Republican Leader.”
Of course, we’ll see how different he really is once other Republicans, from Marco Rubio and Scott Walker to Jeb Bush, follow him into the race and start butting heads. And then we’ll learn whether his streak of libertarianism has made any inroads with the GOP’s broad conservative base.
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