Rand Paul in Las Vegas: ‘I’m the only fiscal conservative’

By Kyle Roerink

Monday, Oct. 26, 2015 | 8:30 p.m.

With support for his candidacy waning in key battleground states, Republican Rand Paul stuck with his bread and butter on a Monday trip to Las Vegas.

“We borrow $1 million a minute,” he said. “You know whose fault that is: both sides.”

Paul, a first-term U.S. senator from Kentucky, has become a household name in Nevada by casting himself as an outsider — not a player — in Washington, D.C.’s dysfunction. But that messaging got complicated earlier this year when nonpoliticians like Donald Trump and Ben Carson entered the race. Paul’s brand of libertarian, independent and Tea Party values got hijacked from him as Trump and Carson used many of Paul’s talking points. With four months remaining until nominating contests in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada, Paul is trying to win back his supporters, calling himself the only fiscal conservative in the GOP.

“I want a government so small that I don’t even know it’s there,” he told a crowd of 150 supporters.

Paul cast members of his Republican Party as hypocrites for touting themselves as fiscal conservatives while not willing to cut military spending. He said he proposed a defense budget that gave increases to the military in return for cutting domestic spending. Two of his U.S. Senate peers, GOP presidential candidates Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, proposed spending increases without cutting elsewhere, Paul said.

“You cannot be a conservative if you’re liberal with military spending,” he said.

He arrived in Las Vegas Monday to open his campaign office and give a preview of what he will say during the Republican debate on Wednesday in Colorado. To describe the growing national debt, he said a trillion dollar bills would stack 63 miles high. He vowed to instill a flat tax rate and said the country is losing business to places like Canada because of the complex and expensive tax code.

“I can’t believe I am saying it,” he said.

For Paul, the Nevada caucus is a must-win contest. The state’s diverse electorate celebrated his father, former Texas Rep. Ron Paul, who had similar plans to cut federal programs, roll back military spending and enact austere fiscal policy. But polls show that many of his supporters have pledged allegiances to Carson or Trump.

Paul, hinting at the success of Trump, described early presidential polling as inaccurate measurements of support among undecided voters.

“[They] are asking the undecided where they are leaning. That’s why they can go up and down 20 points. ... Some of these people may never vote.

So when you’re polling, it's a snapshot of who gets the most time on TV, and we think it’s going to change,” he said.