THREE television crews (one with a drone for aerial shots), a trio of photographers, six reporters, a political aide and two press secretaries travelled to Guatemala last week to watch Rand Paul, an eye doctor, first-term senator from Kentucky and putative presidential contender, conduct pro bono surgery. The medical mission followed a rash of magazine covers and profiles, posing the same question: is the self-described “libertarian-ish” Republican a viable candidate for the White House?

That is the wrong question. Lexington would wager against Mr Paul winning the Republican nomination, let alone a general election. As a politician he is ill-disciplined and drawn to absolutist positions, to the right and left of the mainstream. He drafted a plan to balance the budget in five years (by eliminating whole departments and slashing services), opposes all gun controls and is “100%” anti-abortion even in cases of rape and incest. At the same time, he says government spying on phones and e-mails has turned America into a “police state”. A more compelling question concerns the 51-year-old senator’s analysis of politics. He thinks he has spotted a turning point, with voter disenchantment so widespread, especially among the young, that old party loyalties are up for grabs.

The senator responded more constructively than many on the right to recent unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, following the shooting of an unarmed black teenager by a white police officer. Mr Paul thinks it understandable that many black Americans reacted with outrage. The militarisation of police departments has brought weapons of war to small-town streets, he notes. Drug laws fill prisons disproportionately with blacks and Hispanics—even as white drug-users with good lawyers often walk free.

Mr Paul urges Republicans to understand black anger as a question of justice, but also as an electoral opportunity. August 25th found the senator at a fundraiser in South Carolina, a conservative state whose first-in-the-South presidential primary is a vital test for Oval Office aspirants. A slight man in cowboy boots, blue jeans and blazer, he asked his audience to ponder if drug addiction had touched their families, and to remember Christian teachings about redemption. “I know we want bad people separated from society, but couldn’t we be a bit compassionate?” he asked the largely white, grey-haired crowd, many with “Vote the Bible” badges in their lapels, as they munched barbecued pork in a country-club ballroom. How about tackling harsh mandatory sentences, or restoring ex-inmates’ voting rights?

He cited such states as Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Illinois, which routinely elect Republican governors but have stayed Democratic in presidential elections for at least a decade, in part thanks to black urban votes. “If we’re trying to reach out to new people, we have to show concern,” he told his audience. He talked of going to cities such as Detroit to explain how conservative policies—from tax breaks to ending municipal school monopolies—would bring more jobs and growth than seemingly generous Democratic handouts or stimulus plans for business that involve picking winners. He recalled meeting students in lefty Berkeley, California, where he downplayed the right to bear arms but talked a lot about the right to privacy, and decried government snooping into youngsters’ smartphones.

The country-club crowd shuffled uneasily when Mr Paul touched on national security. Several in South Carolina mentioned his foreign-policy views as their greatest concern. His father Ron Paul—a cult figure among libertarians, longtime congressman and serial White House contender—wanted to close American military bases overseas and questioned aid for Israel. The younger Paul is more cautious, backing aid for Israel (at least until aid to less friendly countries is scrapped) and supporting some troop deployments abroad. But he still takes an America First view of foreign entanglements. Strikingly, he has expressed “mixed feelings” about attacking the jihadists of Islamic State, and called Hillary Clinton a “war hawk” whose willingness to use military force in the Middle East would—he predicts—scare off independents and even Democrats in a presidential election.

Domestically, he paints a dystopian picture of spy agencies seeking the indefinite detention of Americans. Yes, “bad people” want to hurt the country, he conceded in South Carolina. But Republicans need to defend such pillars of liberty as trial by jury. If Republicans wrap themselves in the Bill of Rights, he predicts, the young should flood to them, alongside such historically persecuted minorities as blacks, Jews and Japanese-Americans.

Towards a dead end

Mr Paul dreams big. He wants to build never-seen coalitions including Christian conservatives, civil libertarians, the war weary, and traditional Democrats sick of bad schools, harsh justice and economic stagnation. It is already a stretch to think that such mutually antagonistic voter groups would not fight and repel one another. More problematically, the centre post holding up his big tent is distrust of government. In each policy area that he calls a failure, his diagnosis is state overreach. (He seems less fussed about shielding non-Americans from swaggering agents of the state: he recently endorsed calls to strip many long-term illegal immigrants of protections against deportation.)

Yet studies show that the strongest predictor of Democratic voting, especially among black and minority voters, is a desire to be protected by government. Lots of independents shrink from calls to fix Middle Eastern turmoil. That does not make them blasé about terrorist threats, or mean they agree with Mr Paul that the government is a Big Brother. The senator is right that his party needs to broaden its appeal. He deserves credit for asking uncomfortable questions and making Republicans consider how America looks to voters very different from themselves. But his analysis of the 2016 electorate will not be their salvation.