Nate Cohn: “The libertarians remain too young and too few to present Senator Paul with a realistic path to the nomination. He has to win over a much larger share of more reliable Republican primary voters, who will have considerable reservations about Mr. Paul’s policies. The other problem he faces: Many of the voters most receptive to libertarian views tend not to vote.”

“In one sense, you could argue that the libertarian wing of the Republican Party barely exists at all. According to a large Pew Research survey in 2014 of 10,000 respondents, 11 percent of Americans and 12 percent of self-identified Republicans considered themselves libertarian. They met a basic threshold for knowing what the term meant. But there wasn’t much ‘libertarian’ about these voters; over all, their views were startlingly similar to those of the public as a whole.”

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), “the maverick first-term Senator who rode a Tea Party wave from a Kentucky ophthalmology practice to Congress, is just hours away from his Tuesday morning launch of a bid for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination,” the Washington Post reports.

“Paul’s expected announcement in Louisville, which will make him the second major Republican candidate to formally jump into the 2016 race, is just the first of a string of campaign debuts currently slated for this month.”

Politico: “His challenge in the GOP nominating fight is to claim the anti-establishment mantle while capturing a broader swath of the electorate than his father, who had a devoted national following but fell far short of contending in his unsuccessful 2008 and 2012 GOP bids and in his 1988 presidential run as Libertarian party nominee.”

Politico says it will be, “Defeat the Washington machine. Unleash the American dream.”

“The slogan, beneath the RANDPAC logo of a torch flame, will be unveiled tomorrow as the senator kicks off a five-day, five-state announcement tour – starting in Kentucky and then going to New Hampshire, South Carolina, Iowa and Nevada (plus a Friday night fundraiser in Newport Beach, Calif.). The slogan is designed to set a theme that would work in both the primaries and the general election.”

As he prepares his own run for the White House, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) “is trying to present a profile distinct from his father’s: not so libertarian, not so antiestablishment, not so antiwar,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“Executing this pivot has become a central challenge for Mr. Paul, who plans to launch his campaign on Tuesday, as he seeks to reach beyond his father’s base of libertarians and appeal to a wider audience. The adjustment requires the younger Mr. Paul to keep a distance from some elements of his father’s legacy—his opposition to U.S. military engagement abroad, his uncompromising libertarianism and his deep hostility to GOP elites.”

“But drawing this distance is a difficult move for a candidate who learned his politics at his father’s knee. There was little daylight between the two over the years Rand Paul spent as a campaigner-in-training during Ron Paul’s runs for the House, Senate and presidency.”

The Hill: Paul seeks a Republican revolution

Think Progress: 6 reasons Rand Paul is not a Libertarian

“While other presidential contenders have thus far been sluggish in soliciting help from Capitol Hill,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) “has already enlisted some of Congress’s leading rabble-rousers to assist his White House run,” National Journal reports.

“Paul will officially launch his campaign Tuesday in Louisville, before embarking on a four-day tour through the first four states—Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada— on the GOP nominating calendar. During the launch, or soon after, the senator is expected to announce endorsements from a host of House Republicans who will help his campaign in some capacity. Among them: Reps. Justin Amash of Michigan, Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Raul Labrador of Idaho, and Mark Sanford of South Carolina.”

“When the presidential buzz began building around Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) a couple of years ago, the expectation was that his libertarian ideas could make him the most unusual and intriguing voice among the major contenders in the 2016 field,” the Washington Post reports.

“But now, as he prepares to make his formal announcement Tuesday, Paul is a candidate who has turned fuzzy, having trimmed his positions and rhetoric so much that it’s unclear what kind of Republican he will present himself as when he takes the stage.”

“There are at least two areas where Paul has moved more in line with the conservative Republican base, somewhat to the consternation of the purists in the libertarian movement: adopting a more muscular posture on defense and foreign policy, and courting the religious right.”

Politico: “On the eve of his expected presidential announcement, Republican insiders in Iowa and New Hampshire say Rand Paul is a top contender in those early states next year — and they agree that for better and for worse, his father, Ron Paul, looms large over his candidacy.”

As Sen. Rand Paul “prepares to formally enter the 2016 arena, younger conservatives are emerging as a backbone of his campaign strategy,” National Journal reports.

“In the best-case scenario, Paul accomplishes a primary feat that some on his team see as akin to that of President Obama, who turned out young voters and minorities in record numbers to knock off Hillary Clinton. In the worst-case scenario, other Paul advisers worry that if there is too much youth emphasis, he’ll find himself pigeonholed in a position that would be all too familiar to his father.”

“Just weeks before announcing his 2016 presidential bid, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul is completing an about-face on a longstanding pledge to curb the growth in defense spending,” Time reports.

“In an olive branch to defense hawks hell-bent on curtailing his White House ambitions, the libertarian Senator introduced a budget amendment late Wednesday calling for a nearly $190 billion infusion to the defense budget over the next two years—a roughly 16 percent increase.”

New York Times: “Who is the Republican front-runner for 2016? It is often hard to tell. But there is little debate about who is the biggest curiosity in the race: Mr. Paul, the junior senator from Kentucky, who has been building the most unorthodox campaign for the Republican nomination, bringing his brand of libertarian conservatism to audiences that are more inclined to vote Democratic.”

“Being a political curiosity is far different from being politically credible, however. And Mr. Paul is facing a challenge that will be much more complex than attracting cameras and crowds: persuading voters to get behind him, not just hear him out. In trying to expand the Republican coalition, Mr. Paul is fighting political and demographic trends that are pushing more voters away from his party. His campaign, which he is expected to announce early next month, will be a test of whether the kind of Republican rebranding he is attempting can happen in the next year, or whether it will take until 2020 or beyond.”

The Kentucky Republican Party’s executive committee voted unanimously to approve a presidential caucus next year, which would allow Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) to run for president and re-election at the same time, the Lexington Herald Leader reports.

“While winning approval for a caucus from the executive committee was key to Paul’s efforts, the state central committee, which comprises more than 350 members, will still have to vote on a formal proposal, with caucus rules and details, when it meets Aug. 22.”

Josh Putnam: “Trading the May presidential primary for separate caucuses was the easiest path to circumventing that law, allowing the concurrent runs for both offices. Sen. Paul now avoids having to go through the courts to challenge the law or attempting to exploit more intricate possibilities.”