Rand Paul's brother says that when it comes to ideology, there's "no difference" between his brother, the Kentucky senator and Republican presidential candidate, and his father, the former congressman and three-time presidential candidate.
Ronnie Paul, the eldest son of the former congressman and sometimes-surrogate for his brother, was speaking with libertarian podcaster Israel Anderson. He said that both his brother and father held the same beliefs, there's just a difference in the implementation of how to get there.
"The difference is purely in implementation," Paul's eldest son said. "If you had a philosophical discussion on what the world should look like, there would be no difference."
As he runs for president, Rand Paul faces the task of both appealing to a broader set of mainstream Republican primary voters, while maintaining enough credibility with the vast Paul family libertarian network to get those people to the polls in early states.
Over the last year, he has sharpened his rhetoric on defense and terrorism. He signed Sen. Tom Cotton's letter about a potential Iran nuclear deal and recently proposed increasing defense spending, though the increase was offset by other cuts. Last summer, he supported intervention against ISIS, and said, in his presidential announcement speech, "the enemy is radical Islam, you can't get around it." When he was a surrogate for his dad in 2007 and 2008 the Kentucky senator often spoke of American interventionism as a cause of terrorism and the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
"Basically, if we're both going the same place you may have a favorite way to get there and I may have a little different way to get there. We both are going to the same place and I can't even say that your way maybe is better than my way, you know, we can debate all day long which way is the best way," said Ronnie Paul in the recent interview.
"So they've taken different paths. Do you take little pieces at a time, do you try for the whole thing at one time? You know, there's all different debate on how do you get to ultimately limited government, a pro-American defense foreign policy and Bill of rights, individual liberties for the people at home."
Ronnie Paul added in a philosophical discussion on ideology there "would be no difference" between his dad and brother and "the end goal without a doubt is the same."
"I mean, the goal is the same and I'd be willing to wager we could get everybody who listens to this and we can agree on the vision we're going to and we'd probably have, if we had 100 people in the room we could have 100 different paths. The path is a little different; the end goal without a doubt is the same."
"The difference is purely in implementation. If you had a philosophical discussion on what the world should look like, there would be no difference."