Peter Lawler has wondered if maybe Rand Paul will be tough to beat for the Republican nomination. Paul is well positioned to inherit his father’s voting base, but his father’s voting base was not nearly large enough to be a real threat to win the Republican nomination.

There are several factors that make Rand a potentially more formidable candidate than his father. He doesn’t come across as a fanatic and a sectarian. He has a chance to reach beyond his father’s voting base to conservative voters who are frustrated with the establishment and don’t see anyone else who is standing up to the GOP’s Washington elites.

Paul is also helped by the peculiar dynamics of 2016. Ted Cruz could conceivably challenge Rand Paul for the party’s anti-establishment voters but, as Henry Olsen has pointed out, Cruz actually has a pretty narrow path to the nomination and could get taken out early in Iowa by Ben Carson. It is quite possible that Rand Paul could emerge from Iowa and New Hampshire as the only breathing alternative to the establishment candidates. Rand Paul could end up being both the Ron Paul of 2016 and the Rick Santorum of 2016. It is also possible that the Republican establishment will fail to coalesce around one candidate and that the establishment Republican vote will either split several ways going into South Carolina and/or the establishment candidates will bankrupt and destroy each other in the course of pursuing their ambitions.

That is a lot of ifs. My best guess is that the most likely scenario is one where Paul finishes a very strong second (think Clinton in 2008 rather than Santorum in 2012) to the surviving establishment candidate.

I just wish that the GOP establishment was less of an arm of the Washington business lobbies and that Tom Cotton had a few more years in the Senate.