Rand Paul Appears Likely to Declare White House Bid

The Des Moines Register reports:

After Rand Paul’s three-day mad dash across Iowa last week, zigzagging around the presidential testing grounds for 800 miles, he appears the most likely to declare a White House bid among all the politicos putting out feelers in the first-in-the-nation voting state.

Paul is a Republican U.S. senator from Kentucky and the son of three-time presidential candidate and former Texas U.S. Rep. Ron Paul.

Here are some observations from his visit last week...

Paul went out of his way to meet with every faction of the GOP in Iowa.

Business leaders got Paul’s undivided attention at a roundtable at the headquarters of the Von Maur department store chain in Davenport on Tuesday afternoon. Meredith Corp. brass got a private audience in Des Moines on Wednesday morning.

Paul did a one-on-one at a Starbucks coffee shop with GOP heavyweight David Oman, who later told the Register: “Paul is an engaging guy who is saying some of the right things on entitlements, poverty, privacy, debt, limited government, and smart national security vs. nation building.”

Evangelical pastors got a read on Paul over lunch Wednesday at the Holiday Inn by the airport.

Christian conservative Sam Clovis, the GOP state treasurer candidate, was invited to ride along between two Des Moines events. State Rep. Bobby Kaufmann, a property rights advocate and son of the Iowa GOP chairman, was on board for Tuesday’s leg between Iowa City and Davenport.

A variety of non-Paul folks — meaning those who weren’t among the elder Paul’s supporters in 2012 — sized up the Kentucky senator at a gathering Wednesday afternoon organized by Lowell Scott, husband of Iowa’s GOP national committeewoman.

Ron Paul-backing liberty movement conservatives were invited to a private reception at the Embassy Suites in Des Moines on Tuesday night. Among the 70 or so who showed up were at least a couple of registered libertarian party members. And Paul had dinner with his father’s 2012 Iowa campaign chairman, Drew Ivers, on Centro’s patio Tuesday night....

Paul barnstormed the state to do appearances with the four GOP congressional candidates, then, standing next to Gov. Terry Branstad at a rally in Urbandale, endorsed the entire Iowa GOP ticket.

That’s something his father never did, and Republican insiders took it as a signal that he intends to be a team player.