LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Senator Rand Paul’s entry Tuesday into the race for the White House said as much about his own political aspirations as it did about a vexing truth for Republicans: Many of them believe their party is simply not big enough to elect a president in 2016.
Offering a conservative message threaded with a contrarian strain of libertarianism that he hopes will appeal to minority and younger voters, Paul is taking perhaps the most unconventional and untested route to assembling the broader coalition that many Republicans say they will need next year.
Addressing an animated crowd of 1,500 people of all ages who stood shoulder to shoulder in a downtown hotel ballroom, Paul said his message “is for all Americans, whether you wear a suit, a uniform or overalls, whether you’re white or black, rich or poor.”
“It’s time for a new way,” he continued, “a way predicated on justice, opportunity and freedom. Those of us who have enjoyed the American dream must break down the wall that separates us from the other America.”
As the only GOP candidate who supports less-punitive drug laws, more probing oversight of the nation’s intelligence agencies, and a reduced military footprint abroad, Paul raises questions for a party whose nominating process increasingly demands that candidates align themselves with conservative dogma.
He drew one of his biggest rumbles from the crowd Tuesday when he vowed to dismantle the government’s domestic phone data-collection program, the issue that may separate him most from his rivals.
“As president,” he said, “on day one, I will immediately end this unconstitutional surveillance.”
Paul is joining what is expected to be a crowded Republican field, with several current and former governors, two other US senators, and some who have run for president before. But his campaign will test whether one of the most enduring conventions of Republican politics — the Reagan idea of conservatism as a three-legged stool comprising social issues, fiscal policy, and national security — still stands.
Paul will not be the only candidate whose message to voters assumes that Republicans cannot win the White House with a strategy that depends on attracting a larger percentage of a shrinking share of the electorate: white voters.
Republicans generally agree that their party needs to get bigger. But there are significant differences about how to grow. Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor, and Senator Marco Rubio of Florida aim to expand the party’s appeal by reconnecting with Hispanic voters.
Meanwhile, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas is basing his campaign not on softening the party’s image so it can better resonate with minorities, but on winning over disaffected conservatives and evangelical Christians who have not voted.
Whoever the Republican nominee is “has to send a signal to people who have not voted for a Republican recently that we want them as part of the center-right coalition,” said Whit Ayres, a longtime Republican strategist who is expected to work for Rubio. “It’s a tone and an attitude of inclusion and acceptance.”
If the party’s next nominee received the same portion of the white vote that Mitt Romney won in 2012 — 59 percent — he would need to win 30 percent of the nonwhite vote to be elected, Ayres writes in his new book, “2016 and Beyond.”
Romney received 17 percent of the nonwhite vote, and George W. Bush won 26 percent in 2004.
Both Paul’s words Tuesday and the scene that played out on stage before he spoke showed how he is working to get black voters to give him a closer look. He pledged to repeal “any law that disproportionately incarcerates people of color,” and he invoked the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s description of “two Americas,” one rich with opportunity, the other marked by “daily ugliness.”
His cross-country campaign swing over the next week reflects Paul’s buffet-style approach. In New Hampshire on Wednesday, he will appear at the town hall in Milford, a setting intended to symbolize his belief in the importance of direct, local governance.