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If she seals the 2016 nomination early, it will free up Democratic and independent voters to cross over into Republican primariesand into the Kentucky senator's embrace.

Jim Bourg/Reuters

Consider this post another installment in the series: Rand Paul could win the Republican nomination. Please stop laughing.

In previous installments, weve argued that Paul will inherit from his father a preexisting campaign structure in Iowa and New Hampshire that few, if any, of his rivals can match. Weve argued that Paul is showing the ability to raise real money, both from GOP insiders and via small donations over the web. And weve argued that, at least so far, Republican primary voters in key early states see Paul as a mainstream conservative, not a libertarian wacko bird.

Which brings us to Pauls other great, unnoticed, strength: Hillary Clinton. While things could always change, the 2016 Democratic nomination is so far shaping up as the least competitive, non-incumbent presidential primary contest in memory. It looks increasingly likely that if Clinton faces any opposition at all, it will be from a Don Quixote like Bernie Sanders or Brian Schweitzer, not a challenger with any genuine political base or ability to raise substantial money.

For Rand Paul, thats fabulous. It means lots of Democrats and independents will cross over to vote in Republican primaries, where the action is. And most of them will vote for him.

When it comes to governments role in the economy, Pauls views are diametrically opposed to most Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents. But that will be true of his major opponents too. What distinguishes Paul is that on some high-profile issuesgovernment spying, military intervention, prison sentenceshe espouses views that many Democrats find not only agreeable, but downright exciting. On NSA surveillance, for instance, Paul probably better represents the views of many grassroots liberal activists than do many Washington Democrats. Paul is more reluctant to send American troops into harms way than Hillary Clinton. The recently discovered speech in which he suggested Dick Cheney pushed for the Iraq War so that Halliburton would profit.

If liberals dont know that Paul holds these views now, they will by 2016. With the Democratic primary campaign a snooze, the press will devote massive attention to the GOP race. And Pauls Republican opponents will mercilessly attack him for his unorthodox national-security views, thus likely winning him even more sympathy among liberal Democrats and Independents.

The best model for all this is 2000 when John McCainalthough a conventional Republican on many issuestitillated Democrats with his crusade for campaign-finance reform and his criticism of George W. Bushs plan for to cut taxes for the rich. The more the GOP establishment demonized McCain, the more Democrats and liberal independents figured he must be doing something right. Independents comprised almost a third of the voters in the New Hampshire primary that year, and they favored McCain over Bush by 42 points. Independents and Democrats, who in previous years had constituted about 30 percent of voters in Michigans Republican primary, comprised more than 50 percent in 2000, and overwhelmingly backed McCain.

There are differences between McCain in 2000 and Paul in 2012, of course. McCain was considered a strong general-election candidate, which made him harder for the GOP establishment to stopthough of course stop him it ultimately did. Paul, by contrast, is widely considered a Republican George McGovern: an inexperienced ideologue whom Clinton would crush. But on the other hand, Paul has more fervent support in segments of the GOP base, and in the age of the Tea Party, Republican elites are weaker now than they were a decade and a half ago.

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Rand Paul's Secret Weapon: Hillary Clinton

WASHINGTON, April 8 (UPI) -- A video has emerged of Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., accusing former Vice President Dick Cheney of pushing for the Iraq war to benefit his former employer Halliburton.

Cheney recently slammed the "isolationists" within the Republican party, whom he said concerned him greatly in the 2016 presidential election, and thereby pointed the finger at presidential hopeful Paul. Now a video from 2009 has emerged, in which Paul expressed some hefty accusations toward Cheney. In the video, Paul claimed Cheney exploited the 9/11 terrorist attacks to go to war in Iraq in order to benefit the giant military contractor Halliburton, of which Cheney was formerly CEO.

"[Dick Cheney's] being interviewed, I think, by the American Enterprise Institute, and he says it would be a disaster, it would be vastly expensive, it'd be civil war, we would have no exit strategy," Paul said. "He goes on and on for five minutes. Dick Cheney saying it would be a bad idea. And that's why the first Bush didn't go into Baghdad. Dick Cheney then goes to work for Halliburton. Makes hundreds of millions of dollars, their CEO. Next thing you know, he's back in government and it's a good idea to go into Iraq."

Cheney has often been criticized for his hawkish attitude and his approval of enhanced interrogation techniques on terrorist suspects. The Bush administration's handling of the war in Iraq and the constant assertion that Saddam Hussein possessed WMDs that were never found also marred the Bush presidency.

Paul's office has not commented on the reemergence of the video or the accusations, but has slammed certain members of the Republican party in a speech on foreign policy for promoting "neo-isolationism, in which diplomacy is distrusted and war is, if not the first choice, the preferred option."

[Mother Jones]

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Rand Paul accuses Dick Cheney of pushing Iraq war for Halliburton

The Kentucky senator twice suggested that Halliburton's relationship with Dick Cheney influenced Iraq policy. Is that so crazy?

Reuters

Every American sees that leaders in foreign countries sometimes behave immorally. Yet we often seem averse to believing that our own leaders can be just as malign. That's certainly my bias: Judging the character of U.S. officials, my gut impulse is to give them the benefit of the doubt. But I know that my gut is sometimes wrong, that our institutions rather than anything intrinsic to our compatriots explains the comparative lack of corruption and tyranny in the United States, and that it's important to stay open to the possibility of malign or corrupt leadersbecause otherwise, it's impossible to adequately guard against them. The Founders understood this. So did generations of traditional conservatives. Have today's Americans forgotten?

* * *

An old clip of Senator Rand Paul is in the news.

In 2009, he warned college Republicans at Western Kentucky University to "be fearful of companies that get so big that they can actually be directing policy."The example he used to illustrate the point: Dick Cheney's relationship with Halliburton, a defense contractor that benefited from the Iraq War. After serving as George H.W. Bush's secretary of defense from 1989 to 1993, Cheney was chairman and CEO of Halliburton from 1995 to 2000. In the 2009 clip, Paul said that in 1995, Cheney had argued on video that the Bush Administration was right to avoid invading and occupying Iraq.

The clip he cited is actually from 1994. Here it is with a transcript:

If we'd gone to Baghdad we would have been all alone. There wouldn't have been anyone else with us. It would have been a U.S. occupation of Iraq; none of the Arab forces that were willing to fight with us in Kuwait were willing to invade Iraq. Once you got to Iraq and took it over, and took down Saddam Hussein's government, then what are you going to put in its place? That's a very volatile part of the world, and if you take down the central government in Iraq, you can easily end up seeing pieces of Iraq fly off. Part of it the Syrians would like to have to the west. Part of eastern Iraq, the Iranians would like to claim, fought over for eight years. In the north you've got the Kurds; if the Kurds spin loose and join with the Kurds in Turkey, then you've threatened the territorial integrity of Turkey. It's a quagmire if you go that far and try to take over Iraq.

The other thing was casualties. Everyone was impressed with the fact that we were able to do our job with as few casualties as we had. But for the 146 Americans killed in action and for their families it wasn't a cheap war. And the question for the president, in terms of whether or not we went on to Baghdad, and took additional casualties in an effort to get Saddam Hussein, was how many additional dead Americans is Saddam worth?

And our judgment was not very many, and I think we got it right.

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Dick Cheney, Rand Paul, and the Possibility of Malign Leaders

So heres Rand Paul, in 2009, arguing that Dick Cheney used 9/11 as an excuse to invade Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein so that Halliburton, a contractor he was an executive at prior to his election as vice president, could profit. 9/11 became an excuse for a war they already wanted in Iraq, Paul says, of Cheney and Bush administration officials like Richard Perle.

The video of Pauls remarks comes from a story in Mother Jones by David Corn, suggesting that someone is trying to make Paul look like a kook. While this theory of the Iraq War isnt exactly uncommon on the left, it is not the sort of thing mainstream Republicans believe or say. Paul is still much less hawkish than most Washington Republicans, but he has spent much of his time in the Senate attempting to make himself acceptable to Republican elites, presumably in advance of the presidential campaign. But conservative foreign policy types are never going to embrace someone who was saying this sort of thing just a few years ago. If Rand Paul actually is running for president, he ought to get used to seeing YouTube clips like this one turn up in strange places.

Rand Paul has turned out to be a more talented politician than he seemed in 2009 and 2010, when he was still green enough to do things like unambiguously state his opinion on the Civil Rights Act. Hes polished enough now that hes commonly referred to as a 2016 front-runner. But his background is full of unseemly associations and dumb public statements thats a given for anyone who came up in the world of Ron Paul. Dave Weigels recent piece on the shady direct mail network that funded Pauls political operation is a good example of the sorts of things that will cause headaches for Rand Paul in a campaign with the full attention of the national press. And he hasnt quite put all of this behind him: Even in 2012, Rand was repeating historical theories from fringe-y paleoconservative thinkers.

Even if Rand Paul can escape blame for his fathers controversies like, say, the whole racist newsletter thing theres still plenty of material in his own history. There is, for example, his long history with toxic conspiracy maven Alex Jones. In a 2013 clip that Im sure Rand Pauls staff was thrilled to see, Jones said hes known Rand Paul for 15 years, and that Paul will probably end up being president unless hes defeated by the electronic voting machine fraud. And we havent even gotten to The Southern Avenger.

For the last few years, Paul has enjoyed generally soft press coverage, because the political press loves a renegade Republican. But Republican hawks arent going to let him anywhere near the nomination, and theyll spend the next two years digging up every slightly controversial thing he ever said to stop him.

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How 2009 Rand Paul will sabotage 2016 Rand Paul

When Mother Jones published a video of soon-to-be Sen. Rand Paul claiming that former vice president Dick Cheney pushed the Iraq War because of his ties to Halliburton, it was a good reminder of how much the potential 2016 presidential candidate differs from the rest of his party on foreign policy.

Unless an unpredictable international event in the next two years swallows the United States' attention span like the early years of the wars in the Middle East did, it's unclear his views, a malleable mush of his father's orthodox ban on intervention and a Reaganish devotion to "peace through strength," will matter much. Given the increasingly extracurricular role international affairs play on the list of important issues voters bring out once every four years, foreign policy seems unlikely on the surface to keep Rand Paul from the nomination if his party decides he's the one to beat. On the other hand, potential presidential candidates have been forced to air their views on international affairs quite a bit the past few months, as unforeseen events have crept into American policy discussions.

Let's unpack how foreign policy could affect Rand Paul's future political aspirations.

Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) shakes hands with a guest as he signs copies of his book "Government Bullies" at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), March 7, 2014. Reuters/Mike Theiler

There are considerable challenges in breaking with the Republican Party on foreign policy, something Rand Paul is well aware of thanks to his family's history.

Ron Paul is one of the most ideologically consistent politicians in the United States, and most of his policy ideas can end with, "because it would shrink government." On foreign policy, Ron Paul thinks the United States spends an inordinate amount. The best way to trim the budget is by stopping interventions and slashing foreign aid. While many of his fellow Republicans also advocate for a smaller government, the savings usually stop at America's shore. Paul Ryan's latest budget plan calls for extensive domestic savings, but a still-robust budget for the Pentagon.

Over his three presidential campaigns, Paul's stubbornly libertarian foreign policy lens defined his campaign -- and his supporters. Although Paul always rounded up a merry band of young libertarians to support his campaigns, the major donors, strategists and pundits in the Republican Party never took him too seriously, although his strengths as a candidate became more notable each time he tried. The rest of the political establishment never took him very seriously either. Here's a graph of news coverage of the 2012 presidential contenders in 2011.

Source: Pew Research Center

Regardless of the perception inside and outside the Republican Party, Ron Paul was doing something that resonated with a lot of people. His 2012 campaign raised more money than any other Republican candidate except for Mitt Romney. The top five employers who supported Ron Paul? The U.S. Army, the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Navy, Google and the Department of Defense.Not only were Ron Paul's foreign policy views catching, but they were resonating with the same people tasked with carrying out that policy.

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul seems to have picked up on the pros and cons of his father's foreign policy views. He's non-interventionist enough to appeal to libertarians, winning his dad's approval for being one of two senators to vote against the Ukraine aid package, but he's also willing to see a bit of gray in international affairs. He wrote an op-ed for Time Magazine saying that it is the United States' "role as a global leader to be the strongest nation in opposing Russias latest aggression."

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What role will foreign policy play in the 2016 election? And what does that mean for Rand Paul?