Rand Paul's Tea Party Support is Well Behind Cruz, Bush, Ryan and Rubio
[I]t's notable that Paul doesn't appear as reliant on tea party support as the other big supposed tea party candidate, Cruz. That's by design. Paul is reaching out to the minority groups and religious conservatives for a reason; he knows he's not the tea party-est of the tea partiers and that he can't/won't rely on their votes to deliver the GOP nomination in 2016.
With Paul, it's not so much that the tea party won't like him -- he will definitely get support from many tea partiers if and when he runs, and especially if Cruz doesn't -- as it is that it over-simplifies a pretty complex politician.
The trouble with Paul is that no well-known labels seem to fit him well. While his dad, Ron Paul, is a pretty straight-line libertarian, that's not really who the younger Paul is. He's not an establishment Republican, a neo-conservative, an arch-conservative or a moderate Republican.
We still don't know what label would be better than "tea party," but it's becoming clearer and clearer that this label doesn't really fit.
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