NICK GILLESPIE: Will Rand Paul Mainstream Libertarianism on the Way to White House?

Here’s the NYT profile that Gillespie calls “required reading for anybody interested in knowing more about Paul and, arguably as important, how the mainstream views him and will likely view him over the next couple of years.”

If the Times wants to tie Rand Paul to his dad’s wackier views, is it unfair to connect Barack Obama to his dad’s wackier views? Because they were, you know, wackier.

But my advice to Rand Paul is to look to your staff, and shed those who might cause you trouble in a Presidential race. Because, as with your father, you won’t get the pass that, say, Obama got with Van Jones.

And if the Times profile gets more people to look into Lysander Spooner, so much the better, notwithstanding the NYT’s misrepresentation of Spooner’s character. They make him sound like a Confederate sympathizer, when he was in fact a radical abolitionist.