The door to Randolph Hall - the big relic of a building behind the Cistern - creaked open. The whole room smelled of presidential aspirations.

The man behind the pulpit was Dr. Rand Paul, freshman senator from Kentucky. Senator Paul has an uncanny ability to give the impression he's speaking a lot quieter than he really is. His voice is patronizingly personal, like a stranger with knowledge that you and me will never understand but wants to share it anyway. He doesn't make a speech, he just speaks; he fills the air with lofty ideas and brings them back down to earth, using phrases like “free enterprise” and “acutarial fact” that leaves the crowd reeling in a musky sense of stark ideological purity. The senator does a great job of presenting himself outside of the two-party structure, sprinkling his frequent attacks on big-government Democrats with the acknowledgment that although “some people are blaming those damn Democrats, sometime its those damn Republicans, too.”

The meat and potatoes of his speech took the form of a repeated question: “Do you blame capitalism, or do you blame the government?” The senator was quite clear in that he blames the government, and believes we must halt its expansion. “We must cut spending!” he repeated, although he stated that with a balanced budget, we would have $2.2 trillion left to spend. “We could still have some Pell Grants, some national defense, some roads.”

The reason for Senator Paul's visit to Charleston Monday was to test the waters of a possible presidential run in 2012, part of a series of visits to early voting states including Iowa and New Hampshire. The idea of a Rand Paul figure on the Republican ticket seems unlikely, almost silly, at first glance, as he will have had only two years of political experience in 2012.

However, there are a few pretty strong reasons why he might be seriously considering it. For one, he didn't once mention his dad, Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), in his nearly 15 minutes of speaking. In the past, Rand has campaigned multiple times for his father, who made an unsuccessful run for president in 1988 as the Libertarian Party nominee and survived until end of the 2008 Republican primary. Although Ron enjoyed a modest proportion of votes in 2008, his libertarian views - including abolishing the IRS and pulling troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan - were far too radical for most Republicans to swallow.

However, this was 2008 - before the Wall Street collapse, before the bank bailouts, before President Obama. The Tea Party, which became a powerful force in 2009, reflects the growing number of Americans who are fed up with the United States' huge budget and rising debt. Both father and son have strong ties to it. When I ignorantly asked him if he affiliated himself with the Tea Party, the younger Paul said, “There is no real Tea Party. But yes, I do accept the label, and the name of our book is The Tea Party Goes to Washington.” This was followed by roars of laughter, and whistling and clapping from the suits in the room. It was then I noticed the irony of the whole scene: almost every Tea-Partier was wearing a suit. Everyone else was clad casually. What's supposed to be a populist, grassroots movement seemed eerily... rich. Now I'm not one to judge a book by its cover, but these were also the people who hooted and hollered after Senator Paul dismantled the idea proposed by one man during the Q & A session that to balance the budget, we should increase taxes for the rich.

The suits' hollering at that point was only dwarfed by their response to a liberal bearded man standing next to me, who challenged the Senator about his conservative social views, support for federal drug laws and opposition to abortion and gay marriage. Paul ignored the issues of drug laws and abortion and focused on marriage. He called himself a “traditionalist,” and said although on a personal level he only supports marriage between a man and a woman, he doesn't like government interference with it. “I think marriage should be something that is generated by the church. We don't do that. We generate it from the state.”

The liberal man jumped in and said, “If marriage should be done by the church, should atheists like me not be allowed to marry?” I can't give you an exact quote of what the Senator said in response because the stir the question caused in two old suits behind me drowned it out from my tape recorder and their clapping following the response caused me to jump and break my pencil. More applause followed statements about the senator's personal views of gay marriage as unnatural. He then went on to say that despite these personal values, he believes the government should “remain neutral on such issues.” After this, silence.

It was becoming quite clear that these people weren't part of the Tea Party for its economic anti-federalism. Like many southern conservatives throughout history, they are a lot more worried about social issues like gay marriage, abortion, and Christian values. And it's these folks that Rand, unlike his dad, has managed to capture - the unification of the libertarian with the Rush Limbaugh Ditto-heads.

This is what is so beautiful about Rand Paul's campaign, and what makes him so much more viable of a presidential candidate than his dad, who has supported the right of gay couples to marry as long as they don't impose their views on others and has never been an outspoken Christian. Rand, on the other hand, played the Christian card multiple times in his speech.

In answering a student's question about military intervention in Libya despite the massive amount of troops elsewhere, he reiterated his earlier statement that he believes in “strong national defense,” but that we must try to cut back military spending “to an extent.” Through these issues, Rand and the Tea Party have brought together social and economic conservatives and cultivated a powerful force in the GOP. There may never be a more perfect time for a Tea Party candidate to run, and if Rand is lucky, the Republicans will realize this.

I wanted to figure out where the Senator drew the line in federal intervention, his main talking point. I used the legalization of marijuana as an example. When I announced this, the Senator instantly had a reply: “You guys must smoke a lot of pot down here.” Uproarious laughter echoed around the room, this time mainly from the college students. After it died down, I continued: “If I were to say legalizing marijuana would save us $7.7 billion at a state and national level in law enforcement and it would generate $2.2 billion in tax revenue, that's about $10 billion total, would you be in favor of this?”

His reply was highly evasive. “I wouldn't say we should just legalize marijuana. What I would say, is that I don't like the idea of mandatory minimums, or teenagers going to jail for smoking pot.” He ended up falling back on placing the power in the hands of the states, something that is a key part of his overall philosophy. Right as he finished, I fired out my final question. “Do you support federal drug laws?” As I was speaking, he ignored me and turned to the next and final questioner. I realized I had made a mistake in not asking him that first. You have to be razor sharp with politicians or they'll squirm away every time.