Paul is ramping up ads on foreign relations, and traveling more. Rand Paul goes national

DANVILLE, Ky. — For Rand Paul, campaign season is just getting started.

Less than a month before the end of the 2012 election, the first-term Kentucky senator is embarking on his most vigorous effort yet to expand his national profile.


Over the past week, Paul used his political committee — RAND PAC — to launch television ads in the Ohio, West Virginia and Florida Senate races, hammering incumbent Democrats on foreign aid. That offensive will intensify in the coming weeks, Paul advisers said, with an additional two or three Senate races on the Republican’s target list.

( Also on POLITICO: Swing-state map)

When Paul’s leadership PAC reports its fundraising haul later this month, a Paul strategist said RAND PAC will have more than $1 million in the bank. Paul intends to put that hefty sum to active use: the TV ads he has begun to air bolster congressional efforts to block foreign aid to Libya, Egypt and Pakistan. Paul describes the measure as a response to attacks on American diplomatic outposts in North Africa and Pakistan’s imprisonment of a doctor who helped the U.S. locate Osama bin Laden.

Paul has ramped up his political travel, too, making trips across Kentucky’s northern border to stump for Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan in Ohio. Later this month, he’s slated to appear in New Hampshire as a Romney-Ryan surrogate — Paul’s second visit in recent months to an early presidential primary state, after a spring trip to Iowa where Paul visited with top evangelical organizers.

If all that sounds like the maneuvering of a man who hopes to run for president in 2016 or beyond, Paul and his advisers don’t rule out that possibility. But, they say, Paul’s increased national presence — and especially the TV campaign from his PAC — have more to do with his passionate opposition to gratuitous overseas spending than any long-term political goal.

“It’s about the issue. I mean, what happens to me – who knows?” Paul told POLITICO at Thursday night’s vice presidential debate here in Danville. “We have limited resources as a country and I’m not for sending it to countries that are burning our flag, disrespecting us, imprisoning a doctor who helped us get Bin Laden. I say if you want to be our ally, act like it.”

Paul’s gambit on foreign aid is a revealing illustration of the senator’s ambitions and the unique place he occupies in the Republican Party. After his tea party-fueled election in 2010, Paul has not been the legislative arsonist some Republicans feared; his relationship with his fellow Kentuckian, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, has come a long ways since the awkward and chilly mood of his early days in the nation’s capital.

But Paul is staking out unorthodox ground on foreign policy for a Republican. Most prominent members of his party still hew closely to a George W. Bush-style philosophy of interventionism. It was only two years ago that Paul’s opposition to neo-conservative foreign policy led former Vice President Dick Cheney to cut an ad against him in the 2010 GOP Senate primary.

Paul’s fierce opposition to certain foreign aid has already generated an explosive confrontation with South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham — an internationalist Republican who defended Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia after Paul began airing the ads attacking him. Only a few weeks earlier, Paul sparred over the issue on the Senate floor with Graham and Arizona Sen. John McCain, with Paul declaring that Americans should be “mad” and “frothing” over the use of public resources “to fund dictators.”

( See also: Paul rips Graham defense of Manchin)

And before that, in otherwise mild speech at the Republican National Convention in August, Paul raised a few eyebrows by declaring that Republicans should “acknowledge that not every dollar spent on the military is necessary or well spent.”

Paul associates say that he has tried to pick his battles carefully since arriving in Washington as a political celebrity and the heir to his father, Texas Rep. Ron Paul’s, national libertarian following. The foreign aid issue, advisers said, is both in line with Paul’s personal convictions and also a place where the senator believes both parties are out-of-step with the majority of the American people.

That makes Paul a rare Republican delivering a “come home, America” message at a time when polls show voters increasingly skeptical of overseas entanglements and concerned about government overspending. It gives him a distinctive issue on top of the many positions — on health care, deficit reduction, social issues and more — that he shares with the rest of the GOP. And as Ron Paul’s quirky coalition showed during the 2012 campaign, there’s an audience for an anti-interventionist message outside the Republican Party, too.

“I meet people in Louisville and I ask them in Northern Kentucky, do you think we should send money to Pakistan or keep it home and fix bridges in Louisville or fix bridges in Northern Kentucky? I don’t find anybody Republican or Democrat who want to send it to Pakistan,” Paul explained.

Paul insiders say the idea to launch ads came from the senator and is motivated by no political calculus beyond wanting to hold wrongheaded legislators accountable. One top adviser to Paul freely acknowledged that the senator was interested in growing his national influence, but not necessarily for the purpose of running for president.

“Rand, whether or not he ever runs for national office, wants to have national influence. He has always said that,” the strategist said. “We’re not laying down a 2016 marker just in case it’s available. What we’re doing is building into what he believes will be a national leadership role, regardless of whether he ever makes that decision.”

Paul’s main goal, another adviser said, is “to fundamentally transform the way Republicans view foreign policy and foreign aid … If that is beneficial to Rand Paul in the future , in ’16 or ’20 or something like that, then that’s a very productive byproduct.”

At the same time as Paul branches out nationally, he has also taken steps to shore up his support back home. He has raised money for GOP congressional candidate Andy Barr, the challenger for Democratic Rep. Ben Chandler in Kentucky’s only competitive House race. Paul also headlined an event for the state House GOP caucus and backed a successful Republican primary candidate, Thomas Massie, in the race to succeed retiring Rep. Geoff Davis.

An ophthalmologist before mounting his first campaign in 2010, Paul didn’t come up through the ranks of Kentucky politics. And as he engages more deeply in state elections this cycle, there’s little question among politicos here about where the senator’s primary focus lies.

“He is, at least right now, kind of following in his dad’s footsteps in the libertarian mode,” said Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear, a Democrat. “He is becoming a national spokesman for that kind of philosophy and that kind of approach.”

Beshear, who said he has found Paul “very open to me, in terms of us sitting down and talking about things,” added: “I’m hopeful that he will also keep in mind that he’s from Kentucky, that we need help here.”

Former Republican National Committee Chairman Mike Duncan, the longtime Kentucky power-broker who backed Paul’s primary opponent, Trey Grayson, in 2010, said the senator had “exceeded expectations” for many of his onetime foes.

But there’s no doubt, Duncan said, that Paul is “an unusual junior senator,” and perhaps one with a wider national constituency than other Republicans anticipated.

“In the old days, you sat in the Senate and wondered, ‘How did all those people get there?’ for a long time before you said anything. But that was before the 24-hour news cycle … and he came to this with a national name because of his father,” Duncan said. “He is appealing to a broader swath of Republicans than most people thought when he came into office and I think you’ll continue to see that because he represents a lot of the values of Republican constituencies, particularly the small business group.”

Paul strategists said any decision on a presidential run is still years away, even if President Barack Obama is reelected and the GOP has an open primary in 2016.

But Paul has already begun to get involved in the next election cycle. He endorsed Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli last month for the 2013 Republican gubernatorial primary, taking sides against the state’s sitting lieutenant governor, Bill Bolling, who has the support of outgoing Gov. Bob McDonnell.

Paul’s most immediate goal, however, is firmly claiming the role of foreign policy maverick within the Senate Republican caucus, even if that puts him at odds with the bulk of the conservative establishment.

“Rand Paul is a key leader inside the GOP driving a return to a traditional, pro-American foreign policy that ensures a strong national dense, international commerce and diplomacy but avoids unneeded conflict and expensive, draining nation-building that uses our military as a global police force,” said Jesse Benton, a Paul family confidant who was recently named McConnell’s campaign manager for 2014.

Benton explained the brand Paul’s cultivating in these terms: “He is the most independent voice in the U.S. Senate and he wants to make sure his word means something.”