Can Sen. Rand Paul handle the heat? Some wonder

James R. Carroll | The (Louisville, Ky.) Courier-Journal

WASHINGTON — Sen. Rand Paul's handling of recent plagiarism charges adds doubts about his readiness for a presidential campaign, some observers said Wednesday.

Stuart Rothenberg, editor and publisher of the nonpartisan Rothenberg Political Report, called Paul's response to the controversy a warning sign if the Kentucky Republican and tea party favorite were to decide on a White House bid.

"It raises questions about how he will handle being under the microscope," Rothenberg said.

Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics, said the allegations are serious.

"If (Paul) were at my school, he would have been expelled because of the honor code. It's a lot more serious than the 'Aqua Buddha,'" Sabato said, referring to a hazing incident during the senator's college days.

Paul, who has said he is considering a run for president in 2016, accepted responsibility for the controversy Tuesday on CNN, just two days after saying on ABC's This Week that "hacks and haters" were targeting him.

"Ultimately, I'm the boss, and things go out under my name, so it is my fault," he said on CNN. "I never had intentionally presented anyone's ideas as my own."

The controversy began last week when MSNBC TV host Rachel Maddow accused Paul of stealing several lines from Wikipedia in a speech he delivered at Virginia's conservative Liberty University.

BuzzFeed and Politico then found other problems in an article, speeches and his book Government Bullies. The article, an op-ed piece the senator penned for The Washington Times, led to the termination of Paul's weekly column, the newspaper announced Tuesday.

Kevin Madden, who was senior adviser to 2012 GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, said the furor is a lesson for Paul.

"If anything, it's Example A of how much greater is the scrutiny that you get when you become a national candidate," Madden said. "That level of scrutiny? He's going to see more and more of it."

Then-Sen. Joe Biden needed a long time to repair his image after reporters in 1987 unearthed evidence that he lifted segments of a speech, as well as portions of his life story, from a speech by British politician Neil Kinnock, Madden said. Biden, who was running for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination, was forced to withdraw from the race.

But Madden "won't be as harshly punished because we're in a bit more of a copy-and-paste, information-sharing age," Madden said.

The plagiarism charges would have hurt Paul more in a presidential primary season because the frenzy of a campaign tends to amplify missteps, Sabato said.

Rothenberg said the overall damage is not serious.

"The people who love him won't believe anything critical about him, and the people who don't like him don't need any additional evidence," he said.

Indeed, tea party leaders did not seem at all alarmed.

John Kemper, founder of the United Kentucky Tea Party, called the plagiarism flap a "minor detail."

Jane Aitken, founder of the New Hampshire Tea Party Coalition, called the Paul controversy "a tempest in a teapot."

"This is why the mainstream media is so off the wall," she said. "I wish the media would call us about more important stuff than whether Rand Paul copied something from Wikipedia."

Michael Baranowski, a political scientist at Northern Kentucky University, said the plagiarism charges are only a temporary setback.

"Potential opponents may try to bring this up, but outside of political junkies, very few people will remember any of this" in 2016, Baranowski said.

Paul has signaled that he is taking no chances when he delivers an address at The Citadel in Charleston, S.C., next week.

"Ninety-eight percent of my speeches are extemporaneous and have never had footnotes," he told CNN. "We're now going to footnote everything and make sure it has a reference because I do take this personally, and I don't want to be accused of misrepresenting myself."