Rand Paul believes he was born to lead the anti-establishment movement sweeping the GOP. . . . While Republicans across the country, from Scott Brown in Massachusetts to Marco Rubio in Florida, have succeeded in tapping into the anger of the "tea party" crowd, Paul, the third son of the anti-tax icon and Texas congressman Ron Paul, is a product of it. The insurgent GOP primary candidate, who wants to succeed retiring Sen. Jim Bunning in Kentucky, is being heralded as the second coming by a constituency long suspicious of government, protective of privacy and assured of America's chosen-people status.
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Rand Paul's stump speech can be a downer. Although he is not above offering some anti-Obama red meat -- "Sarah Palin said he's been palling around with terrorists; now he's palling around with the world's communists" -- his remarks drift into dark idiosyncrasy: He criticizes population-control policies by saying governments fear "too many breathers," as in humans. He reminds supporters that the "Bridge to Nowhere" was built by earmarks from Republican senators in Palin's own state and mourns a system so broken that "I'm not sure you can elect enough good people to fix it -- I mean, I'm really concerned about it."
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On Wednesday, he aired his first TV commercial, in which he articulates his recalibrated, more Republican-friendly Guantanamo position ("Terrorists captured on the battlefield should be tried in military court and not brought to the U.S.") and stands imposingly in his eye-doctor scrubs
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Paul's main problem is bureaucratic: Only voters who registered Republican by Dec. 31 of last year can participate in the May vote. That doesn't leave much time for this first-time candidate, who still spends much of the week doing Lasik surgery, to ingratiate himself with Kentucky conservatives.
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