NEW YORK TIMES: Paul is a libertarian, certainly, but more importantly he’s a particular kind of a libertarian. He’s culturally conservative (opposing both abortion and illegal immigration), radically noninterventionist (he’s against the Iraq war and the United Nations), and so stringently constitutionalist that he views nearly everything today’s federal government does as a violation of the founding fathers’ vision. This worldview goes by many names, including “paleoconservatism,” “the old right” and “paleolibertarianism.” But its adherents — Paul and his father, Ron, included — view themselves as America’s only true conservatives, arguing that the modern conservative movement has sold out to both big government and the military-industrial complex. Instead of celebrating the usual Republican pantheon, paleoconservatives identify with the “beautiful losers” of American history, to borrow a phrase from the paleocon journalist Sam Francis — the anti-imperialists who opposed the Spanish-American War, the libertarians who stood athwart the New Deal yelling “stop,” the Midwestern Republicans who objected to the growth of the national security state after World War II. And they offer an ideological synthesis that’s well outside either political party’s mainstream — antiwar and antiabortion, against the Patriot Act but in favor of a border fence, and skeptical of the drug war and the welfare state alike. MORE

RELATED: The Tea Party is not merely an inchoate expression of a political mood, or an amorphous ragtag band of diverse elements, or a bipartisan cry of dissatisfaction with the supposed “government takeover” of health care. The Tea Party is a right-wing populist movement with a specific ideology. It resides in the aging white base of the Republican Party and wants to purge that party of leaders who veer from its dogma. But divisive as the Tea Party may be within the G.O.P., it’s hardly good news for President Obama and the Democrats either. Paul is articulate and hard-line. When he says he is antigovernment, he means it. Unlike McConnell, he wants to end all earmarks, including agricultural subsidies for a state that thrives on them. (He does vow to preserve Medicare payments, however; they contribute to his income as an ophthalmologist.) He wants to shut down the Department of Education and the Federal Reserve. Though a social conservative who would outlaw all abortions, he believes the federal government should leave drug enforcement to the states. It’s also in keeping with this ideology that Paul wants the federal government to stop shoveling taxpayers’ money into wars. He was against the war in Iraq and finds the justification for our commitment in Afghanistan “murky.” He believes that America’s national security is “not threatened by Iran having one nuclear weapon.” No wonder he didn’t get Cheney’s endorsement; Paul also opposes the enhanced government surveillance mandated by the Patriot Act. The Tea Party is a rolling rebuke to the neocons’ quarter-century dominance of the G.O.P. MORE

PREVIOUSLY: ATLAS MUGGED: Rand Paul’s Foot-In-Mouth Disease

RELATED: Last Night I Sneaked Into The Tea Party

RAND PAUL: “What I don’t like from the president’s administration is this sort of, ‘I’ll put my boot heel on the throat of BP.’ I think that sounds really un-American in his criticism of business. I’ve heard nothing from BP about not paying for the spill. And I think it’s part of this sort of blame game society in the sense that it’s always got to be someone’s fault instead of the fact that sometimes accidents happen.”

THE NEWS ROOM: The editorial board of Louisville’s Courier-Journal didn’t mince words following its sit-down with Rand Paul last month. Much of what the Republican Senate candidate supports, it wrote, “is repulsive to people in the mainstream,” including “an unacceptable view of civil rights.” MORE

RELATED: the Washington Post published a letter Paul wrote to the Bowling Green Daily News in May 2002, where he argued against the “Fair Housing Act.” In views similar to those expressed on NPR and MSNBC, Paul wrote that “a free society will abide unofficial, private discrimination, even when that means allowing hate-filled groups to exclude people based on the color of their skin.” MORE

MOTHER JONES: Last December, Rand Paul’s campaign communications director, Chris Hightower, resigned after a blogger exposed Hightower as an anti-Christian who believed that the US government was responsible for 9/11. The Paul campaign, asked by a local newspaper, if Paul agreed with Hightower on 9/11, said it was a “complicated situation” with “truth on both sides.” MORE

RELATED: During a July 23, 2009 show, Jones, decrying the Wall Street bailout, asked Paul, “This isn’t really socialism….Isn’t this more akin to fascism?” Paul replied, “You’re exactly right.” Later on the show, while Jones was denouncing cap-and-trade legislation (which he says could lead to “toilet paper taxes”) and calling for investigating Al Gore, Paul noted that should the climate bill become law, “we will have an army of armed EPA agents–thousands of them.” These EPA troopers, according to Paul, would be free to burst into homes and apartments to determine if they were meeting energy-efficiency standards. MORE

WASHINGTON POST: Paul was asked a straight Yes or No question: Does the Federal government have a valid role setting minimum wage? He declined to answer. Later on Stephanopoulos asked Paul if he would repeal the minimum wage. He seemed to say No but basically brushed off the question. And even if he is opposed to repeal, the question of where he stands on repeal — which is an impossibility — is separate from whether he embraces the core principles underlying the law. The pattern is becoming clearer and clearer: Paul simply does not want to answer direct questions about the proper role of the Federal government in regulating the private sector. He visibly bristles when asked to clarify his views on these matters. MORE

WASHINGTON POST: Rand Paul camp cancels Meet the Press because “he’s had a long week”