Is Rand Paul going mainstream, or vice versa?

By Karen Tumulty, Published: June 19

Rand Paul seems to be crossing over to the mainstream — or maybe it’s the other way around.When Kentucky’s junior senator arrived in Washington just over two years ago, he appeared destined to inhabit the role of perpetual outlier. But now, he’s in the mix on just about everything that is happening, and is talked about as a credible Republican presidential contender in 2016.Paul is aggressively trying to forge at least a cordial relationship with GOP establishment interests that have been suspicious of him — sometimes even outright hostile — in the past.

“He is a work in progress,” said one well-known Republican who recently met with Paul and spoke on the condition of anonymity, sensitive to the fact that public knowledge of their cordiality wouldn’t benefit either of them.

Part of his new relevance comes from the sudden prominence of a set of issues on which Paul has been a somewhat lonely voice in the Republican Party…

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