Rand Paul As Bill Clinton Style Reptile

Ben Domenech says:

Let’s be clear about one thing here: Rand Paul thinks he’s going to win in 2016. He has a vision for the party, but he is not running as an idea candidate. He is trying to win the election. He’s not running for Vice President. He’s not running to grow a movement. He thinks he can run, beat everyone, and be president.

In order to get there, he is deploying a unique approach to outreach – one that is designed to promote a certain type of cross-pollinating political appeal, one that is largely unfamiliar on the right, in order to broaden a coalition not around limited government ideas so much as around his uniquely libertarian positions on key hot button issues. In this, Paul’s Berkeley event – as much as his events in other supposedly unfriendly venues – is an example of how he’s making a pitch for people to identify him with specific issues (typically based in distrust of government) that cut across traditional coalition lines. It’s also an example of how he’s trying to do something very different than traditional Republican candidacies in the modern era...

Yet the Clinton “all things to all people” model contains some hope for Paul’s approach. It was an appeal to the middle class in tax and regulatory policy. For Wall Street, it offered a lighter regulatory touch paired with an emphasis on free trade. To the hard hats, it offered Sister Souljah and welfare reform. To the feminists, it was Hillary at the policy forefront. It managed to build a coalition of middle class and elites and EITC.

What held this odd grouping together was Clinton’s particular gift of reptilian political skill, and a knack for shooting the moon. Can Paul replicate that? It’s a challenging strategy. It also just might be that Paul has the personal gifts to make it work.