WaPo:"Rand Paul Seems to Stray from Libertarian Roots"

 Karen Tumulty and Robert Costa write at WaPo:

When the presidential buzz began building around Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) a couple of years ago, the expectation was that his libertarian ideas could make him the most unusual and intriguing voice among the major contenders in the 2016 field.

But now, as he prepares to make his formal announcement Tuesday, Paul is a candidate who has turned fuzzy, having trimmed his positions and rhetoric so much that it’s unclear what kind of Republican he will present himself as when he takes the stage....

There are at least two areas where Paul has moved more in line with the conservative Republican base, somewhat to the consternation of the purists in the libertarian movement: adopting a more muscular posture on defense and foreign policy, and courting the religious right.

Where he once pledged to sharply cut the Pentagon’s budget, for instance, Paul late last month proposed a $190 billion increase over the next two years — albeit one that would be paid for by cutting foreign aid and other government programs. His tour following the announcement of his candidacy will include an event at Patriots Point in South Carolina’s Charleston Harbor, with the World War II-era aircraft carrier USS Yorktown as a backdrop...

The haziness over Paul’s positions increased last week with his conspicuous silence on controversies in the realms of both national security and the cultural fronts.

Nearly all of his potential rivals for the 2016 GOP nomination have been vocal in their support for Indiana’s new religious liberties law, which critics say would allow discrimination against gays. And the Republican response to President Obama’s nuclear negotiations with Iran has been widespread skepticism.

In both instances, Paul’s office said he was vacationing with his family and would not comment.

What Paul says Tuesday and in several stops in the following days will be closely watched by a handful of disparate constituencies into which he has tried to make inroads over the past year, including Silicon Valley executives drawn to his libertarian ways and more traditional Republican business leaders who are wary of them. Attracted to his promise of expanding the GOP electorate, they have met with Paul, but many remain unsure of his electability, as well as his views...

Paul also has been trying to find common cause with evangelical Christian voters, who have been skeptical of and even hostile toward the energized libertarian element of the GOP...

His tone was a signal, wrote David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network, that “this is not some ‘crazy libertarian’ who wants to distance himself from faith-and-government issues.”

Tuesday is not going to be pretty. Rand's strategy simply appears flawed. He wants to somehow hold onto the libertarian base that his father built, but at the same time build a Republican Big Bunker by reaching out to Evangelical warhawks, whose foreign policy views are diametrically opposite that of libertarians---at the same time he is also pissing off libwaps with his Evangelical-leaning view on the gay lifestyle.

Rand may want to build a Big Bunker but he is not the political strategist equivalent of General George S. Patton. Or the political strategist equivalent of chess champion Bobby Fischer. Neither were ophthalmologists. They both spent their entire lives, beginning at very early ages, studying history and strategy in their chosen fields. Rand has nowhere near the knowledge base to pull off what he is trying to pull off.

As far a a strictly politically strategy, it may make sense to go after the Evangelical votes when few others are doing so, but there are too many others with deeper Evangelical creds than Rand going after that vote this cycle. Rand is not going to get a big chunk of that vote, As pollster Fritz Wenzel pointed out to me, Rand's father launched an economic populist campaign that was very successful. If Rand were to go in that direction rather than attempting to capture the Evangelical vote, he would likely prove much more successful and consistent.

The Evangelicals simply don't trust "Stand with Rand," and "Pray with Rand," doesn't rhyme.

-RW