Rand Paul enters 2016 US presidential race with battle cry to ‘take America back’

Republican Rand Paul, the libertarian conservative senator, has declared a plan to "take America back" from an unpopular Washington establishment in announcing his candidacy for the presidency in 2016.

In a speech to a hotel ballroom full of raucous supporters in Louisville in his home state of Kentucky, the first-term senator set out a vision to appeal to a coalition of civil libertarians, fiscal conservatives and anti-war proponents on the fringe of the Republican Party.

Tapping the unpopularity of Washington by railing against the “special interests” of the political establishment and big government, Paul painted himself as an outsider, blaming Republicans and Democrats for the problems in the US.

The Christian senator took the stage at the Galt House hotel on the banks of the Ohio River to the strains of 1970s rock music and stood before a campaign banner slogan: “Defeat the Washington machine; unleash the American dream.”

Cheering crowd

“The Washington machine that gobbles up our freedoms and invades every nook and cranny of our lives must be stopped,” he said, to a cheering crowd that interrupted his 27-minute speech with chants of “President Rand” and “Stand With Rand”.

The anti-establishment senator, a household political name since his nearly 13-hour filibuster in the US Senate about drone attacks on American citizens in 2013, is the second Republican to declare his candidacy, following another freshman senator, Ted Cruz of Texas.

Paul (52), a former ophthalmologist, will benefit from a base built by his father, Ron (79), the former Texas congressman who ran for the presidency three times and electrified a well-organised grassroots network of young libertarians, many of whom were new to politics.

Those supporters, who backed Ron Paul’s isolationist foreign policy, have been less easy with the younger Paul, who has generally opposed military intervention but who said last year that war was “a last resort” and recently proposed a $190 billion (€175 billion) increase in defence spending.

Entering the presidential race early, with 580 days to election day, Paul sought to challenge the perception that he is isolationist on foreign policy or weak-kneed on national security. He said: “Conservatives should not succumb to the notion that a government inept at home will somehow succeed at building nations abroad.

“I envision an America with a national defence unparalleled, undefeatable and unencumbered by overseas nation-building.”

Moving closer to other likely Republican candidates in the nascent presidential race Paul shifted position, saying that he would “do whatever it takes” as president to defend America from “radical Islam”.

Nuclear deal

He also changed his previous conciliatory view on negotiations with

Iran

, criticising the White House’s nuclear deal and calling for the final deal to be signed off by

Congress

.

“I will oppose any deal that does not end Iran’s nuclear ambitions and have strong verification measures,” he said.

Tackling an issue that has made him popular among civil libertarians and students, Paul vowed to end the National Security Agency’s “unconstitutional” surveillance of phones and computers.

“I believe that we can have liberty and security, and I will not compromise your liberty for a false sense of security,” he said to the loudest cheers of his speech. Evoking Martin Luther King jnr’s “two Americas” Paul said he would tackle deep economic inequality by creating “economic freedom zones” in poor areas such as Detroit or eastern Kentucky.

In a policy that will pique the interest of American companies in Ireland, Paul said he would bring back manufacturing jobs by "dramatically" lowering the tax on companies bringing profits home.

Eclectic

Paul’s eclectic mix of policies and supporters, transcending party lines on some issues, has made him a stand-out candidate among a field of homogenous candidates and one to watch in the presidential race.

“He embodies what we believe in as Americans, standing up to the cronyism of Washington,” said Nolan Kirchner (21), who attended the Paul rally with a group of fellow university students from Kentucky.

Opinion polls on average put Paul joint fourth in a packed field of likely Republican candidates, trailing former Florida governor Jeb Bush and Wisconsin governor Scott Walker.

Selling his 2016 candidacy as “a different kind of Republican”, Paul, who was elected to the Senate in 2010 on a wave of Tea Party support, hopes to build on the minority libertarian vote by appealing to more young people and non-traditional Republican voters. He will aim to pick up some Republican establishment voters and more conservative support, and hope that the many other candidates can split the rest of the party’s vote, netting him gains in early-state nominating battles.

"Rand Paul, with his tousled looks, his informality, his maverick status, does have an appeal, especially to young voters," said Stephen Voss, a politics professor at the University of Kentucky in Lexington.

“The main thing he has got going for him is that a lot of Republican candidates have in the past set a bad tone which younger voters can’t identify with. Rand Paul doesn’t have that problem.”

Paul's supporters left the ballroom to the strains of The Doors' Break On Through (To The Other Side) – exactly what he will be hoping to do in the run-up to 2016.