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" TAMPA, Fla. \u2014 &amp;quot;When the Supreme Court upheld Obamacare, you know what I said? I said I still think it&amp;#039;s unconstitutional. The left-wing blogs were merciless. Even my wife said, Just count to ten before you say anything. So I did. I waited. I counted to ten and I still think it&amp;#039;s unconstitutional. You think Justice Scalia and Justice Thomas have changed their minds? I think if James Madison himself, the father of our Constitution himself, were here today, he would agree with me: The whole damn thing is unconstitutional.&amp;quot; Actually, he&amp;#039;d have thought you were a noisy twerp, but, by all means, Aqua Buddha, carry on. Listening to Senator Rand Paul here on Wednesday night was like walking into the middle of a conversation that already had grown heated. The necks of bottles were being gripped a little more tightly. People with beer steins were taking careful aim and calculating the distance across the coffee table. Young Rand was spoiling for a fight, and he didn&amp;#039;t care who knew it. He started off his speech, which started off an otherwise dull early evening at the Republican convention, in the middle of a haymaker and never stopped swinging from his well-tailored heels. There was the now-customary recitation of people he knew who Did Build It, and how the president had gone out of his way to insult shopkeepers, waitresses, immigrants, and, presumably guys who self-certify themselves as ophthalmologists. But, late in the game, he came to a passage that would have been positively bold, had he delivered it, say, at a Republican convention in 2004.  (If a Democrat delivered it, even today, he&amp;#039;d have been buried by nightfall in Brit Hume&amp;#039;s garden under six feet of anathemas.) &amp;quot;Republicans and Democrats must come together and realize that no terrorist can conquer us if we stay true to our founding documents,&amp;quot; Rand Paul said. &amp;quot;We have nothing to fear that should cause us to relinquish our god-given rights. We must never, never trade our liberty for any fleeting promise of security.&amp;quot; This got a huge hand \u2014 from the party of Gitmo and the Patriot Act and Dick Cheney and the waterboard, and the party that tapped into the cowardice of the other party to get all that done \u2014 but they might have thought he was still talking about Obamacare. The Ron Paul part of the Ron Paul Revolution may be over. He&amp;#039;s retiring, after all. But if the spalpeen thinks he&amp;#039;s the Dauphin Prince of Liberty, he&amp;#039;s got another thing coming. Dynastic politics is contrary to the DNA of this movement. In the back of the hall, Justin Carroll, a delegate from Alaska, listened skeptically to what Rand Paul had to say. &amp;quot;He still has a lot to do to prove himself,&amp;quot; Carroll told me. &amp;quot;He&amp;#039;s done a good job bringing the Tea Party and the politics together, and he&amp;#039;s got a pretty good voting record. I don&amp;#039;t follow anyone until I research them, and he&amp;#039;s still got to convince me. I&amp;#039;m still not comfortable with him playing the game so much. I think he plays the game a little more than his Dad did. Like, when he endorsed Mitt Romney, and I didn&amp;#039;t like the fact that he got up there to speak, and yet he can&amp;#039;t mention his dad&amp;#039;s name. [In the speech, Rand mentioned &amp;quot;a certain congressman from Texas who ran for president,&amp;quot; but not his father&amp;#039;s name. People like Justin Carroll notice things like that.] He&amp;#039;s not as principled as his father, and that concerns me. He&amp;#039;s willing to compromise his principles a little too much, a little more. &amp;quot;When they&amp;#039;re talking about, &amp;#039;I built that,&amp;#039; well, Rand Paul didn&amp;#039;t build that. Ron Paul built that, the movement.&amp;quot; A few minutes later, the Maine delegation, heavy with Paul supporters, walked out of the hall again. Good luck, Aqua Buddha. You&amp;#039;re going to need it. FOLLOW MORE LIVE COVERAGE FROM TAMPA ALL WEEK LONG RIGHT HERE AND WITH @ESQPOLITICS ON TWITTER &amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;gt; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a15567/rand-paul-speech-convention-2012-12188688/>