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Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., addresses the Conservative Political Action Conference at the Gaylord...

Rand Paul didn't need to explain himself.

In May 2010, the small crowd assembled at a country club in Paul's hometown of Bowling Green, Ky., was already sold. Paul had just posted a commanding, unlikely victory in the Republican Senate primary in Kentucky, marking an important, legitimizing moment for the national Tea Party movement.

But on this night of triumph, Paul wanted to make sure that his audience of true believers understood that his platform was not on the fringe of American politics.

The Tea Party message is not a radical message. Its not an extreme message, Paul said. What is extreme is a $2 trillion deficit. Thats whats extreme. The Tea Party message calls for things that are widely popular among Republicans, Democrats and Independents.

Just look at the polls, Paul said. Most Americans support term limits or mandating that Congress balance the federal budget.

Paul was not challenging anyone to cross party lines to support him, but emphasizing post-partisan points of overlap. Harnessed though he was with the Tea Party label, Paul was speaking to the center.

As Paul now looks toward a potential bid for president in 2016, he is still struggling to shake the notion, held by many powerful Republicans and average Americans, that he is outside the political mainstream. The word transformative is thrown around regularly by Paul's allies as they envision what shape his presidential bid could take: Paul doesn't have to change, the subtext reads; it is the Republican Party that must evolve and expand to accommodate his vision.

Indeed, Pauls policies seem to cater to a yet-emerging idea of the American political center, which was outlined in great detail in an Esquire-NBC News survey last year. The poll was remarkable because, rather than relying on party identification to classify voters, it assigned them to one of eight groups of like-minded Americans across the political spectrum based on policy preferences, with four of the eight groups comprising the center.

The poll showed that most Americans identify most closely with Democrats on some important policy preferences, such as social issues, but simultaneously gravitate toward some Republican economic policies. They want the U.S. to be a strong international superpower, but largely disengaged. And yes, they support term limits.

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Rand Paul bets his future on redefining the political center