Republicans mock Rand Paul's 'Defeat the Washington machine' slogan: 'It's like Hillary Clinton running on a platform of email transparency'

• Paul slogan will underscore a Tuesday presidential campaign launch 
• He's battling perceptions that he has softwned some of his once-rock-solid libertarian positions in order to build broad electoral appear
• Paul was for 'containing' ISIS, and now says he supports military action; he was 'a judicial activist' in constitutional cases but now complains judges are 'out of touch' 
• Iowa Republican Party official says the senator's claims to Washington-outsider status 'won't sell in Iowa' although it might work for a governor

By David Martosko, Us Political Editor For Dailymail.com, In Louisville, Ky.

Published: 14:32 EST, 6 April 2015 | Updated: 14:51 EST, 6 April 2015

Rand Paul's timing couldn't be better, and it couldn't be worse.

Kentucky's junior senator is poised to enter the 2016 presidential contest on Tuesday, at a moment when only Sen. Ted Cruz, the tea party darling, is already in the race and consuming precious news-cycle oxygen.

But the issue that made him a national figure two years ago – domestic snooping by the National Security Agency – is no longer on America's front-burner.

Paul will launch his campaign Tuesday morning in Louisville, Kentucky with the populist slogan 'Defeat the Washington machine. Unleash the American dream.'

An aide to a member of the Republican leadership in the House of Representatives laughed that line off on Monday.

Scroll down for video 

READY TO RUN: Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul will announce his candidacy for president on April 7 in Louisville

CHIP OF THE BLOCK? Paul's uber-libertarian father, former Texas Rep. Ron Paul (left), earned an image party-wide as a cantankerous and prickly contrarian with little chance of winning over centrist Republicans

NEW AUDIENCES: Paul the younger has made a name for himself meeting with minority groups – and speaking to all-bkac audiences – in an attempt to win them over with a message of criminal justice reform 

'That's hilarious,' the Capitol Hill staffer said in a phone interview. 'Rand Paul is as much a part of the Washington machine as Joe Biden or Harry Reid.'

'It's like Hillary Clinton running on a platform of email transparency in government.'

'If he's an outsider, I'm a Democrat,' he said. 

An Iowa Republican Party official who said he hasn't chosen a horse in the 2016 primary told Daily Mail Online that 'Rand Paul is going to have problems if he thinks he can position himself as an outsider.'

'That can work for a governor,' he explained, 'and maybe for his father, who was outside the mainstream in just about every way. But it won't sell in Iowa, especially since he's walking his views back toward the center.' 

Both men spoke on condition of anonymity.

Paul has taken heat in recent days from libertarians for softening some of the principled stands thad have defined his brand since Kentuckians sent him to Washington.

He described himself as 'a judicial activist' in January, for instance, telling a conservative audience that federal judged shouldn't hesitate to toss out majority-rule decisions by Congress if they infringe on constituional rights.

Rand Paul teases 2016 presidential announcement

In an interview Sunday with the blog The Federalist, however, he said Americans 'should leave more power in the hands of the states and local governments.'

'More often than not, the longer a federal judge or elected official is in office, the more out of touch they become,' he said.

SMALL POND: The only other big fish to announce his candidacy so far is Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, an evangelical Christian whose views couldn't be much more different from Paul's

Paul has found himself occasionally in the policy weeds as the news cycle shifts away from his natural area of strength and into territory where he has yet to define himself. 

Bashar al-Assad, Ayatollah Khamenei and Bowe Bergdahl now occupy the space once dominated by NSA leaker Edward Snowden. 

And as other Republican presidential hopefuls strategize about how to approach the Middle East foreign policy mess on Barack Obama's desk, Paul has to contend with his past isolationist statements that make the president's approach seem bold and Reaganesque by comparison.

In February he warned a Heritage Foundation gathering that 'until we understand at least a modicum of what animates our enemies, we cannot defend ourselves and we cannot contain our enemies.'

That word – 'contain' – put him on the path to what conservatives have griped most about in the Obama administration's foreign policy: a tendency toward acceptance of global threats instead of a willingness to wipe them out.

In the Federalist interview, he sauntered back toward the middle of the road from its tenuous shoulder.

'I support military action against ISIS,' he said of the Islamist terror army, adding that 'if we are to go to war, we should make it brief, succinct and we must fight to win.'

He did allow, however, that 'there must be a vote by Congress and a formal declaration of war.'

Paul would be the first major-party candidate with roots in Kentucky to run for president since Abraham Lincoln, who was born in a one-room log cabin in the Bluegrass State.

He teased his Tuesday announcement over the weekend with a 3-minute YouTube video reprising portions of his February speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference near Washington, D.C.

'To fix Washington, we can't have business as usual,' Paul says in one clip. 'It's time for a new way. A new set of ideas. A new leader, one you can trust. One who works for you and, above all, it's time for a new president,'

OUT OF THE GATE ALREADY: Paul has been making campaign-style stops in the eary primary state of New Hampshire, like this March 21 appearance in the Granite State town of Rochester

WINNER: Paul has won three straight straw polls at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, buoyed by throngs of young libertarians whose views are often at odds with mainline conservatism

The video ends as his CPAC speech did, with boisterous shouts of 'President Paul! President Paul!' from a largely young and libertarian-leaning audience.

Sandwiched in the middle, is his problematic slogan: 'On April 7, one leader will stand up to defeat the Washington machine and unleash the American dream.'

Paul won a straw-poll of CPAC attendees for the third year in a row. His next big test will be winning support from high-dollar donors.

He is expected to focus some of his rhetorical firepower on reforming the IRS with a 'flat' tax system that would eliminate much of America's labyrinthine income tax code in favor of a 5-minute math exercise.

The senator also advocates for limiting the length of time members of Congress can serve in Washington, and for criminal justice reform – especially in cases where drug users and low-level traffickers have been sentenced to lengthy mandatory-minimum prison terms.

But he has been silent on the two most discussed news stories of the last few weeks.

Unlike Cruz, Paul hasn't weighed in on the Indiana and Arkansas religious-freedom laws that caused a gay-rights furor.

And his campaign-in-waiting has held its fire on Obama's triumphant proclamations that a nuclear deal with Tehran is all but in the bag.

Comments (2)

Share what you think

• Newest
• Oldest
• Best rated
• Worst rated

 View all

The comments below have not been moderated.

 View all

The views expressed in the contents above are those of our users and do not necessarily reflect the views of MailOnline.

Add your comment

Enter your comment

By posting your comment you agree to our house rules.

Submit Comment Clear

Who is this week's top commenter? Find out now