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Ted Cruz Is Beating Rand Paul in the Tea Party Primary

The two men's presidential hopes rest on appeals to the right-wing grassrootsand those voters seem to prefer Cruz.

Reuters

MANCHESTER, N.H.Rand Paul has been methodically planning his run for president. Now Ted Cruz could come along and spoil the whole thing.

Both senators have a path to the Republican nomination that rests on the support of the Tea Party. And when forced to choose, that segment appears to prefer Cruz, whose speech to an activists' gathering here over the weekend was the more enthusiastically received of the two.

Saturday's Freedom Summit, billed as an early audition for potential 2016 candidates, provided a rare opportunity for right-wing activists to directly compare the Texan and the Kentuckian. The senators spoke practically back to back, and the crowd clearly loved them both. But Cruz's theatrical delivery wowed them more than Paul's comparatively cerebral appeal, and his rhetorical focus on conservative red meat found more favor than Paul's detours into libertarian concerns.

"I like Rand Paul, I agree with a lot of what he says, but as far as charismatic leadership, I've got to go with Ted Cruz," Robin Parkhurst, a state-government worker from Newbury, New Hampshire, said after hearing both men speak at the event. "Ted Cruz has the ability to deliver a message that resonates with people."

Parkhurst was one of several at the summit to echo that sentiment. It was a dramatic demonstration of a dynamic political watchers have speculated aboutCruz's ability to steal Paul's thunder if both seek the 2016 GOP nomination.

And seeking the nomination is something both men seem inclined to pursue.Both headlined weekend events with the New Hampshire Republican Party in addition to appearing at the summit, which was sponsored by Citizens United and Americans for Prosperity. (Yes, the Supreme Court plaintiff that helped deregulate campaign finance and the Koch Brothers' political nonprofit collaborateda liberal conspiracy theory come to life.) Cruz finished his speech by asking audience members to subscribe to text-message alerts for his "movement," a tech-savvy means of building a list of grassroots supporters.

Rand Paul's Secret Weapon: Hillary Clinton

Paul's father, former Representative Ron Paul, came in second to Mitt Romney in the 2012 New Hampshire primary, and the senator's strategists see New Hampshire as a potential stronghold. With his appeal to civil libertarians and idealistic young activists, he has a built-in base of support that is loyal only to him.

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Ted Cruz Is Beating Rand Paul in the Tea Party Primary

April 15th, 2014

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DJ Rand Paul takes requests

Category: Rand Paul

(CNN) Sen. Rand Paul played along Sunday after "Saturday Night Live" poked fun at the Kentucky Republican as well as a few other potential GOP presidential candidates this weekend.

In a sketch called "GOP at Coachella," characters who played former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Rep. Paul Ryan attempted to reach out to the young audience that typically turns out for the massive music and arts festival in California.

The fake Bush and Ryan referred to themselves as "the new face of the Republican Party" but their efforts to appeal to the young, hip audience fell flat. A drugged-up "Gov. Bobby Jindal" also showed up.

At one point, the Republicans tossed it over to a character playing "DJ Rand Paul," who wore headphones while spinning records on stage.

"Here's something for the NSA to listen in on," he said, before mixing it up on the turntables.

While the point of the sketch was to paint Republican candidates as out of touch with young people - despite their efforts to broaden the party - the real Rand Paul appeared to have a sense of humor about the whole thing, at least on Twitter.

Taking song requests with the hash tag "DJRandPaul," the senator's Twitter account became a steady stream of music videos Sunday featuring an eclectic group of artists, including Chumbawamba, Bruce Springsteen, Coolio, Macklemore, Daft Punk, the Beatles and Fatboy Slim.

The jam session went on for nearly nine hours. Here's a few highlights:

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DJ Rand Paul takes requests

April 15th, 2014

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Why Rand Paul didn't really blast Jeb Bush on immigration

Category: Rand Paul

Sen. Rand Paul got headlines Sunday for criticizing the Jeb Bush comment that illegal immigration was sometimes an 'act of love.' But his rebuke was gentle, perhaps because 2016 is looming.

When potential presidential hopeful Jeb Bush said last weekend that illegal immigration was not a felony, but instead often an "act of love," he was surely braced for the blowback from conservatives. And it has come.

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But on Sunday, the latest rebuke was among the gentlest, and that could suggest that the entire tone of the conversation will change next year.

Speaking to ABC News on Sunday, Sen. Rand Paul (R) of Kentucky said Mr. Bush "might have been more artful, maybe, in the way he presented this," adding that the problem with Bush's views are that "we can't invite the whole world."

Senator Paul appears to have his own designs on a White House run in 2016, and he knows that advocating for immigrants who come into the United States illegally is hardly the way into the hearts of most Republican voters. Indeed, Paul was speaking to ABC News from a conservative summit in New Hampshire, where he appeared to be testing the presidential waters with other hopefuls such as Sen. Ted Cruz (R) of Texas and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.

This was not the time or the place to go soft on illegal immigration.

Yet Paul kept the flamethrower in the closet. He charitably suggested that Bush was not "terrible" for making the comment and added that "people who seek the American Dream are not bad people."

After all, Paul is not Senator Cruz, whose presidential bid is predicated on turning the Republican base into a quivering ball of outrage. But he's also not Bush, an electable establishment moderate who appears to be thumbing his nose at the tea party right.