How Ron Paul won the debate

This Tuesday, Republican frontrunner Rick Perry sent out a statement questioning Rep. Ron Paul's fealty to Ronald Reagan. On Wednesday, he attacked Paul from the stage. And on Thursday, photographs circulated of him jamming his finger into the mild-mannered libertarian's face.

This may be the best thing that's ever happened to a Paul presidential campaign, and it wasn't entirely an accident. The Ron Paul campaign set out to bait Perry into a confrontation, a tactical move that's part of a quiet but real shift from Paul's earlier, inward-looking presidential campaigns toward an effort that has added a layer of experience and mainstream Republican strategy to the passionate, deep-pocketed, but limited Paul grassroots.

The crucial experience may have been Rand Paul's 2010 Senate race, which introduced the Paul team to the Republican -- and to the notion that a campaign can be more than a statement.

"There’s been a growth in general in the Ron Paul organization – and that includes the Ron Paul family and that includes Rand Paul," said Paul's campaign chairman, Jesse Benton, a longtime aide who's married to Paul's granddaughter, in an interview from Lake Jackson, Texas, where Paul is shooting ads today. "The fact that we were able to win in Rand's campaign shows people what we can do and what it takes to win."

Benton took two key lessons from 2010: First, that the candidate should spend more time talking about practical issues than libertarian philosophy.

"We’ve learned that people are looking for a utilitarian answer – not everybody is going to have the same core beliefs about the role of government or what we should be doing for a society, but I think they look and see what works and what doesn’t," he said. (Paul has clearly made an effort to focus on central Republican policy questions -- he opened his speech in Ames with a long discussion of abortion -- though the new campaign hasn't exactly silenced his more esoteric concerns, like the lost glory of silver dimes.)

The second lesson is that the longtime outsiders could use traditional Republican methods, tactics, and even consultants.

The 2010 campaign offered insiders, like Benton, a trial by fire. And the campaign also has a new layer of professional Republican operatives in the campaign's inner circle. Trygve Olsen, a veteran GOP operative who worked for Rand Paul after he secured the GOP nomination, is now a key Paul adviser, as is Virginia GOP hand Mike Rothfeld, Benton said. And adman Jon Downs, a mainstream GOP consultant, made the spot portraying Perry as "Al Gore's Texas cheerleader," prompting Perry to break a basic rule of politics and punch down.

"We know that part of being successful is making sure that you're in the conversation and having noteworthy television that puts both high production value and also has a sharp message gets people’s attention and will be talked about outside just the viewers that you get on TV," Benton said.

Drawing Perry's fire was "one of our goals," he said.

"Clearly we ruffled ome feathers over there, because they did engage, and that speaks to the fact that they’re taking Ron very, very seriously," he said. "You wouldn’t engage someone that you weren’t taking seriously, and when Ron is taken seriously by the frontrunner it helps him be given the consideration that he deserves by folks in the media and folks in the public."

Benton said that while Paul has laughed off the Perry exchange, the campaign likes the contrast.

"What it shows is that Rick perry is a very aggressive, in your face person," he said. "He puts his hands on people, he tries to show that he’s the alpha dog, he tries to psychologically intimidate people and gets in people’s faces.

"Some people like that, but other people like someone who's going to be a more thoughtful president, not a bully," he said.