Paul has struck a balance by latching onto hot issues at strategic times. Rand Paul aims to go mainstream

Almost from the moment Rand Paul was elected to the U.S. Senate, a team of advisers has been working over time to distance him from his father’s brand of unconventional politics — both in style and substance.

And they may be succeeding. GOP strategists say the junior senator from Kentucky has come a long way in shedding the eccentric label that dogged Ron Paul’s presidential efforts. Just last week, the younger man was dubbed one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people.


Still, these same Republican analysts who are watching Paul closely, say there’s still much work to be done if the younger Paul hopes to become a viable presidential contender in 2016. His confusing comments on drones this week is a perfect example of his rough edges — he said they’d be justified to kill someone who robbed a liquor store of $50, despite his 13-hour filibuster railing against drones striking on American soil (he said much the same thing then, but it didn’t get the same attention).

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“He can be a serious presidential candidate because he represents a segment of Republicanism that hasn’t had a voice,” said Steve Schmidt, who ran John McCain’s 2008 campaign, speaking of Paul’s libertarian views. “But he can’t just be a neater package of his dad — that won’t work. He needs to convey his own domestic and foreign vision, and continue to overcome the kook factor, which he inherited.”

Since his 2011 arrival in the Senate, Rand’s aides acknowledge that their challenge has been to project the image of a mainstream, reasonable politician while holding onto Ron Paul’s passionate libertarian followers, who could be a strong base for Rand in a likely 2016 presidential run. “The strategic goal all along has been for Rand to position himself in a way that establishment Republicans could see him as the nominee for the Republican Party,” said one long-time Rand Paul adviser, who did not want be quoted by name. “Ron never crossed that threshold.”

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Added another political adviser to Rand: “Ron took things too far and alienated people. He was provocative just to be provocative. Rand has from the beginning tried to win people over. He may say similar things, but without the same intensity.”

Rand has tried to maintain this delicate balance by latching onto hot issues at strategic times — like drones, immigration and gun control — that at once thrust him onto the national stage and also appeal to libertarians. “He’s either remarkably lucky or he instinctively knows how to effectively drive a media story,” said Brian Jones, a Republican political and communications strategist.

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Many Republican strategists have indeed been impressed with Rand’s natural communication and political skills as he skillfully maneuvered himself into the center of a number of high-profile battles — including his successful filibuster of U.S. drone policy that attracted copious media attention and bipartisan support.

The tactic ultimately forced the Obama administration to respond, winning him kudos from libertarians and even liberals opposed to this part of Obama’s foreign policy. (Libertarians were, however, angry over what they perceived at his flip-flop on drones this week, which Paul denied.) He earned some conservative bona fides by winning the presidential straw poll at March’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), a gathering at which his dad had two victorious runs until organizers snubbed him in 2012. He surprised moderates and Latinos by addressing the U.S.-Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, and softening his stand on immigration. He favors opening a pathway to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the country, something toward which many conservative senators are skeptical.

In February, Rand also aimed to put his marker down on foreign policy before the conservative Heritage Foundation. While he touched on many of his dad’s strong non-interventionist principals, he was careful to say he was not an isolationist, but a realist. He urged “moderation” and more forethought when deciding whether intervene globally.“When foreign policy has become so monolithic, so lacking in debate that Republicans and Democrats routinely pass foreign-policy statements without debate and without votes, where are the calls for moderation, the calls for restraint?” he said.

Father and son were once thought to be flip sides of the same coin. They were both physicians and libertarians. Paul was, after all, elected to the Senate, as a tea party reformer, riding his father’s name in between Ron Paul’s two high-profile but quixotic presidential efforts.

Even Ron Paul-who served in the House from Texas for six terms-seems to be following the campaign’s strategic message that he has little influence over his son. In a recent radio interview, he made a point to say the two rarely consult on politics.

“None of us can be exactly alike,” Paul made a a point of noting. “We can have similar goals. I think the way we proceed, and what we do — his techniques are definitely different than mine. …I didn’t work too well with the establishment, but if you want to advance a bit, you have to be able to do that.”

Rand’s strategic alliance with Senate Minority Leader Mitchell McConnell (R-Ky.) has put him in a position to further garner establishment credibility. Should he run for president, GOP sources say that McConnell would be hard pressed not to support his home state colleague, paving the way for others to follow suit. Rand has endorsed McConnell’s reelection effort, and has played a pivotal role in helping McConnell ward off a tea party challenge.

“You don’t get more establishment than Mitch McConnell,” said GOP pollster and strategist Ed Goeas, who helped the party with its recent self-examination.

Goeas added that Rand Paul’s style seems to be “more reasonable, more willing to listen [than Ron.] He doesn’t take the same delight in trying to win the argument …. He seems to take a longer view.”

Still, there are edges to smooth if Rand hopes to walk the fine line between hanging onto his dad’s skeptical supporters, some of whom see him as a sell-out, and persuading conservatives that he is one of them. Rand allies say he should be able retain about 75 percent of his dad’s followers, according to operatives who overlapped with both operations. “Truthfully, we don’t want the rest,” said one Rand adviser, suggesting many may be too extreme in their libertarian views and hard to mollify.

Beyond that, his strategists say Rand will have to attract a broader coalition of moderate Democrats, youth and minorities to prevail in a general election.

“He needs to figure out how to channel the energy behind the Paul brand, but also demonstrate that on some issues, he can be in the conventional wheelhouse,” says a prominent GOP consultant who asked for anonymity. “ If he goes too far in one direction he could lose the believers — and too far in the other direction, he becomes become Ron Paul 2.”

Democrats privately call Rand a demagogue for holding up legislation with amendments that go nowhere. Paul’s harsh outburst at Hillary Clinton over the Benghazi crisis during her last appearance on Capitol Hill before stepping down as Secretary of Stat e was seen as pure grandstanding if not downright nasty.

He intrigued Democrats and Republicans alike when he recently requested to address students at Howard University — one of the nation’s oldest African American schools — becoming only the third Republican to do so in 15 years. But Paul stumbled there . Students later said they felt he talked down to them by giving them a glossy history of Republicans and civil rights, which they already knew.

Conservative establishment Republicans continue to be suspicious that his positions mirror what they view as his father’s naive non-interventionist, anti-foreign aid, anti-Israel approach.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) famously called him a “wacko bird” for his outspokenness and the drone filibuster, and Rush Limbaugh bellowed that conservatives worry that “he comes from his father’s gene pool.”

“The neo-cons…. they might think he’s a kook, but they’re worried that he’s a kook that nobody thinks is a kook, and so they’ll follow him. He’s a stealth kook,“ said the rambunctious radio host.

Rand’s indoctrination into politics came in 1984, during his father’s run for the U.S. Senate in Texas. The younger Paul campaigned heavily for his dad, at one point even standing in at a debate with Phil Gramm when Ron had to rush back to Washington for votes. He was 20 years old.

The third of Ron Paul’s five children, Rand followed his dad to Duke Medical School and set up his ophthalmology practice in Bowling Green, Ky. As an adult, his only foray into politics before running for the Senate was in 1994 when he started Kentucky Taxpayers United, a watchdog group that tracked taxes and spending in the Kentucky state legislature.

In the wake of the September 2008 economic crisis, Rand Paul became outspoken in his home state in the growing nationwide anti-tax movement that became known as the tea party

He stumped for his father during both his presidential efforts, espousing his dad’s small-government, civil libertarian message. But he always used a tone that projected reason. Father and son are known to be close, but it’s pretty hard to get a gauge on their current communication, since staff wants to project that Rand is his own man.

Ask advisers to both men, how much counsel father is giving son these days and the answers are predictably aligned: not much.