I tend to find Henry Olsen’s analysis of the limits of Rand Paul’s potential Blue State appeal persuasive, but I give credit where it’s due today in Politico regarding Paul’s shrewdness and imagination:

It is a Rand Paul moment in the Republican Party not just because the headlines almost every day seem to reinforce his core critique of leviathan as too big, too unaccountable, and too threatening, but because he is smart and imaginative enough to capitalize on those headlines.
Paul has that quality that can’t be learned or bought: He’s interesting. How many potential Republican presidential candidates have helped shepherd a new verb into the English language?The hoopla around Paul’s filibuster gave us, “to drone,” in the sense of “don’t drone me, bro,” as an attendee yelled when Paul took the stage at CPAC.
Other conservatives in the Senate like to brag that they joined Paul’s filibuster, but it was Paul who came up with the idea and executed it, in an inspired bit of political theater.