Tagged: rand paul

Two national polls released this week show Kentucky Senator Rand Paul neck and neck with many other potential 2016 Republican presidential candidates.

Both Quinnipiac and Public Policy Polling released surveys Wednesday showing Paul in second or third place in the early GOP primary field. 

Paul clocks in at 15 percent in the Quinnipiac poll, behind former vice presidential nominee and Congressman Paul Ryan at 17 percent, and fellow Republican Senator Marco Rubio at 19 percent.  

The PPP survey has Paul making a bigger leap since their previous presidential poll. Paul has 17 percent of primary voters in the PPP poll, with Rubio at 21 percent.

Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference, Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky said the GOP has "grown stale and moss covered" and needs to embrace libertarianism.

"The new GOP will need to embrace liberty in both the economic and the personal sphere. If we're going to have a Republican Party that can win, liberty needs to be the backbone of the GOP," he said.

For many conservatives, Paul's nearly 13-hour filibuster of CIA director John Brennan in protest of President Obama's drone policies puts him at the head of the line for presidential contenders in 2016.

The high-profiled speech gave Paul a chance to court the so-called "Facebook generation" on privacy matters, and explain why he favors limits on presidential power.

Paul's remarks also gave him a chance to rebuke GOP rival and fellow Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who right before Paul's speech said the party didn't need new ideas.

Watch the full speech:

Ending early Thursday morning, U.S. Sen. Rand Paul filibustered the nomination of  John Brennan for CIA director for nearly 13 hours.

Visibly frail and in a wheelchair, Bob Dole reappeared on the U.S. Senate floor Tuesday to support ratification of a treaty advocates say will help disabled people worldwide. Dole served in the Senate from 1969 to 1996, many of those years as the Republican leader. He'd been the Republican's 1996 presidential nominee, the Republicans 1976 vice-presidential nominee and the chairman of the Republican National Committee.