KURTZ: How the media are saddling Rand Paul with his fathers baggage – Ron Paul's secession comments could pose …

Rand Paul is the most interesting presidential possibility out there right now. But will the media hang his fathers record around his neck like an albatross?

That may be unfair, since the Kentucky senator is a very different lawmaker and potential 2016 candidate than his father, former Texas congressman and perennial presidential contender Ron Paul. But Im starting to think it may be inevitable.

In fact, in a lengthy New Yorker profile, Rands mother, Carol, says the two men arent far apart:

Everybody that calls [Ron] wants to argue about their differences. They dont really have differences. They might have fractional differences about how to do things, but the press always want to make it into some kind of story that isnt there.

I would beg to differ. Both men are libertarians, to be sure. Ive watched Ron Paul speak to campaign crowds, and he can get them wound up on the gold standard, abolishing the IRS and other issues that make his ardent fans swoon but also rendered him unelectable as a national candidate. Rand Paul is a conservative pragmatist who has been breaking with Republican orthodoxy, particularly when it comes to reaching out to African-Americans.

As the magazine profile by Ryan Lizza makes clear, Rand Pauls life was very much intertwined with his dads career. Growing up, he worked on a number of his fathers campaigns, once taking off a semester to join his unsuccessful Senate race. "Ultimately, Rand was saved from political obscurity by his father. In 2008, Ron Paul decided to run for president. The campaign raised an extraordinary $35 million by cultivating a small but intensely committed following that later carried Rand Pauls message, too.

Paul himself once wrote of his impendingKentucky race:After seeing how the establishment treated my father during his presidential campaign, I had every reason to believe that the powers-that-be would do everything they could to keep another Paul away from the reins of government.

The elder Paul is an isolationist, and while the younger Paul doesnt go that far, he is an outspoken critic of U.S. military intervention abroad and has called for an end to foreign aid. His challenge is to ensure that their approach to world affairs arent morphed in the public mind.

Paul has spent the past few months often clumsily trying to convince voters that his foreign policy differs from his fathers. Rand is perhaps best known, thus far, for his nearly 13-hour filibuster last year to protest the administrations use of dronesa tactic that further convinced Republican hawks that he doesnt share their assessment of the risks posed by terrorism. Over the summer, Paul was under constant attack from rivals, such as Governor Rick Perry, of Texas, who described him as curiously blind to the threat posed by the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham. As with the criticisms of his past statements on civil rights, Paul felt that he was the victim of a smear campaign. Unfair criticism from people who have partisan goals, he told me.

Interestingly, John McCain, one of Pauls frequent critics, is quoted as saying that the freshman senator has evolved.

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KURTZ: How the media are saddling Rand Paul with his fathers baggage - Ron Paul's secession comments could pose ...