Rand Paul shared a plane ride to Texas with Katie Glueck of Politico:
[Sen. Rand] Paul didn’t talk much during the trip about his roots as the son of an ex-congressman and libertarian folk hero. But Texans at every turn brought up his father, the highly polarizing former Rep. Ron Paul, from whom Rand Paul knows he must stake out a separate identity to have any shot at the GOP nomination.
And as Paul argued that the GOP needs a 2016 standard-bearer with broader appeal than its recent nominees, Mitt Romney and John McCain, he did not evince Barack Obama’s ability to move a crowd, George W. Bush’s everyman relatability or Bill Clinton’s love of the game.
At the same time, Paul made clear his ambition to remake the Republican Party by drawing support from constituencies that have voted reliably Democratic. Just as Ronald Reagan drew working-class Democrats into the GOP fold and Bill Clinton pulled his party to the political center, Paul has a vision of that magnitude in mind for his party.
“The country’s a mess, and I think there needs to be a program that Republicans put forward, and also there needs to be a messenger who can actually win,” Paul said, in perhaps his most overt remarks to date about what a presidential bid would look like. “And I’m concerned that if we put forward the same sort of candidate again, that we won’t be successful.”
So, probably what the Republicans need is a candidate willing to call Bill Clinton a sexual predator.
