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DES MOINES Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul laid the groundwork for a possible 2016 Republican presidential bid Friday by offering a message he believes will appeal to the party's conservative base while attracting young and independent-minded Iowans fed up with a federal government over-reaching into their lives.

"I would be someone who is conservative with a little bit of libertarian-ish flavor," said Paul, 52, a member of the U.S. Senate since 2011 and son of former GOP presidential candidate and U.S. Rep. Ron Paul of Texas. He said he would decide his own presidential intentions sometime in March or April.

Paul held an "audit the fed" rally at a local winery that drew more than 200 supporters who cheered his call for bringing more transparency to the Federal Reserve Bank and its lending practices, easing harsh drug penalties, defeating Loretta Lynch as President Barack Obama's U.S. attorney general nominee and taking a go-slow approach to international military intervention.

The Kentucky senator said he has not been afraid to challenge the current administration by suing the president over NSA spying and he plans to lead the charge in building public pressure to allow the General Accounting Agency to do an independent audit of federal banking and lending practices that put trillions of taxpayer dollars at risk.

"I think we need some sunshine," he declared.

Paul expressed concern that Obama has tilted the separation of governmental power by using executive orders to write law and he pledged to restore balance among the competing branches and not overstep foreign policy boundaries by making U.S. military commitments without congressional approval.

"You're going to get a choice on who the nominee is for the Republican Party. You're going to have nine, 10, 15, 20 who are eager to go and want troops on the ground. They want 100,000 troops on the ground right now," Paul told the Iowa crowd.

"If there's one true thing I can tell you that I think they cannot object to that the facts clearly demonstrate - every time we have toppled a secular dictator, we've gotten chaos and we've gotten a rise in radical Islam and we've been less safe.

"I can tell you if things move forward, whether I'm in the Senate or I do run for the nomination, I can tell there will be one loud voice in our party saying think of the unintended consequences," he said, noting that he would always seriously weigh "what we're going to accomplish and whether it will work before we go to war."

Paul said Iowans appear to be evenly split on the deployment of U.S. troops in international conflicts and he sees his position as an asset among the developing 2016 GOP presidential field because he believes in a strong national defense but is not eager to be involved in foreign wars unless there is an American interest at stake.

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Paul offers Iowans a conservative-libertarian mix