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Among the crowd of Republicans angling for the 2016 presidential nomination, Sen. Rand Paul stands out. Like his father Ron Paul, he may not succeed. But for now he's getting the most attention.

Is Rand Paul really the most intriguing man in todays Republican Party?

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Thats the assertion Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus made the other day, going beyond that to declare the US Senator from Kentucky for Democrats, perhaps the most frightening potential presidential candidate in 2016.

That election is light years away in political time, of course. Sen. Paul could trip over something, like the evidence of sloppy plagiarism in his past speeches and writings he was forced to acknowledge last year.

But really, compared with the other Republicans mentioned these days Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Paul Ryan, Chris Christie, Jeb Bush, etc. (plus such 2012 also-rans as Rick Perry and Rick Santorum, both sniffing the presidential winds again) hes positively sparkly.

Pauls attraction is two-fold.

Hes with most Americans aghast at government domestic spying and resistant of anything that suggests even the possibility of costly adventures abroad. The war on terror waged from 9/11 through the 2000s brought both of those trends, and Pauls thinking is very much in line with that and would be, one senses, even if it didn't comprise popular thought as shown in the polls.

Also, his persona and demeanor doesn't say conservative Republican the jeans, mussy hair, and what Marcus observed was a laconic delivery and soft bluegrass accent that lent a certain stoner quality to his speech which is why (along with his message) he did well at the University of California at Berkeley the other day.

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Rand Paul 'most intriguing man' in the GOP. Really? (+video)

Rand Paul, future of the GOP?

Jamie Weinstein in The American Spectator : Rand Paul is many things: a doctor, a senator, a son and a father. But one thing he is unlikely to be is the 2016 Republican nominee. Not everyone agrees. There is a narrative that the Republican party is moving inexorably in Pauls libertarian direction. Opposition to National Security Agency surveillance, non-interventionism and drug policy reform will make 2016 Rand Pauls year or so we are told. This narrative isnt entirely false, but it is vastly overblown. Paul is an important voice in the Republican party, but for many reasons ideology, temprement, personality he is an unlikely GOP nominee.

One case study Pauls backers bring up is Syria. Many in the media were shocked when it became clear that few Republicans supported military action against the Assad regime when President Barack Obama took the issue to Congress last September.

Wasnt this the hawkish party that supported the Iraq war? Could it be that Paul had turned the GOP into a party of non-interventionists? The Syria debate marked the first time since House Republicans tried to keep America out of the Kosovo conflict in 1999 that a libertarian approach to foreign policy seriously challenged the GOPs old-guard caucus of hawks, Buzzfeeds McKay Coppins declared in a September article titled Rand Paul on a Warpath.

But this is a misreading of what actually occurred. While it is true some in the Republican leadership supported a military response, most Republicans, like most Americans, were skeptical of those on whose behalf the United States would have been intervening. Yes, the Assad regime is monstrous, but the opposition consists overwhelmingly of Islamists, the strongest elements of which are affiliated with al-Qaida. Even John Bolton, who no one has ever confused for a Rand Paul-style non-interventionist, opposed military intervention in Syria.

A true test of whether the GOP has become more Paulian in its foreign policy outlook is Iran and polling suggests it hasnt. A March 2013 Pew poll, for instance, revealed that 80 percent of Republicans would favor striking Iran militarily if it is necessary to stop the Islamic republic from obtaining nuclear weapons. This doesnt mean the GOP hasnt learned lessons from Iraq and Afghanistan. It just means that the narrative is far more complicated than it might first seem.

Steve Cohen in The New York Times : Tuition has risen almost 1,200 percent in the last 35 years, and the sticker price for many four-year private colleges and out-of-state public universities exceeds $250,000. Even at state universities, the average four-year cost for residents is more than $80,000 for tuition, room, board and expenses. But every college offers need-based financial aid, right? Well, sort of.

A college aid package can be made up of three elements: grants (sometimes called scholarships), loans and work-study programs.

The biggest single source of aid is the federal government but in the form of loans ($68 billion, 37 percent of all aid, in 2013). About 5 percent of aid comes from states and a large part from the colleges own resources.

Much of the colleges contribution comes in the form of a discount from the schools already inflated tuition, which, with a straight face, administrators call a grant.

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Other writers, on Rand Paul, the cost of college

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., speaks during the Berkeley Forum on the UC Berkeley campus on March 19, 2014 in Berkeley, California. Justin Sullivan, Getty Images

Railing against government surveillance practices, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., lit up a crowd at the famously liberal University of California, Berekley, on Wednesday.

Paul, among the intelligence community's most persistent critics since several far-reaching surveillance programs were thrust into the spotlight last June, said he's deeply troubled by recent charges that the CIA spied on Congress

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Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein accused the Central Intelligence Agency of hacking Congressional computers, but CIA dir...

Last week, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., took to the Senate floor to deliver a blistering rebuke of the CIA, which she accused of illegally spying on members and staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee as that panel was probing the agency's controversial use of enhanced interrogation techniques.

Since Feinstein's speech, Paul said, "I look into the eyes of senators and I think I see real fear...I think I perceive fear of an intelligence community drunk with power, unrepentant and uninclined to relinquish power."

Paul called for the formation of a "bipartisan, independent" select committee with full investigative authority to probe Feinstein's accusation and other potential spying abuses.

Paul also said he finds it "ironic" that President Obama, America's first black president, would be comfortable overseeing such a vast surveillance apparatus, given the government's history of spying on civil rights leaders.

Citing former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover's surveillance of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., during the height of the civil disobedience of the 1960s, Paul said, "If President Obama were here, he would say he's not J. Edgar Hoover, which is certainly true. But power must be restrained because no one knows who will next hold that power."

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Rand Paul: U.S. intel community drunk with power

Rand Paul got a standing ovation after his address at a crowded Berkeley auditorium. Hiscamp hopes that as an issue for young people, Paul's NSA-bashing will top GOP opposition to gay marriage.

Will Rand Paul be able to attract a substantial number of new young voters to the Republican Party? Its become increasingly clear that may be one of his main political goals as the libertarian-leaning Kentucky senator looks towards a potential 2016 presidential run.

Washington Editor

Peter Grier is The Christian Science Monitor's Washington editor. In this capacity, he helps direct coverage for the paper on most news events in the nation's capital.

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In his latest attempt at youth outreach, Senator Paul traveled to the famously liberal University of California at Berkeley on Wednesday to deliver a scathing speech warning of the dangers of unchecked National Security Agency surveillance.

Im not here to tell you what to be, Paul told a crowded Berkeley auditorium. But I am here to tell you ... that your rights, especially your right to privacy, [are] under assault.

Invoking one of the talismans of the digital age, Paul told the audience that if they own a cell phone, they are under surveillance, as the NSA collects metadata such as time and number called on all US cellular communications.

I believe that what you do on your cell phone is none of their damn business, said Paul, repeating an applause line hes used in previous speeches.

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Rand Paul wows Berkeley. Can his anti-NSA fire draw youths to GOP? (+video)

Sen. Damon Thayer on Bill That Would Aid a Rand Paul Presidential Bid
Sen. Damon Thayer (R-Georgetown) is sponsor of Senate Bill 205, which would allow candidates seeking re-election in the federal delegation to also run for pr...

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Sen. Damon Thayer on Bill That Would Aid a Rand Paul Presidential Bid - Video