Rand Paul managed to give a speech without mention of Common Core, abortion, or gay marriage. This lacuna was most obvious when Paul attacked judicial activism, but the only case he mentioned was Chief Justice Robert’s opinion that the government can force you to buy insurance.
And when asked for the most important constitutional amendment he would want if he could pass only one, he responded “term limits.”
On middle-class economics, he gets a ‘zero’ for this speech—explicitly and oddly negating the “desire for wealth” in favor of the desire for liberty as America’s founding principle.
Politically speaking, it is a novel strategy. We will see how it plays.