Rand Paul Announces He’s Running For President

Rand Paul announced his bid for president Tuesday morning on his campaign website, randpaul.com.

On the web page, Paul wrote, "I am running for president to return our country to the principles of liberty and limited government." The Kentucky senator has already begun asking his supporters for donations to help his cause, too.

His political action committee sent a long email imploring supporters to contribute anywhere from $10 to $500 for a "Stand With Rand Money Bomb." Paul has used this fundraising technique in the past to collect small-dollar donations online from grassroots supporters.

"The media tells us -- if our Republican Party has any hope of defeating Hillary Clinton -- you and I should choose a nominee with a track record full of sellouts, compromises and Big Government betrayals. So even though I'm at or near the top of every state poll for the nomination, they continue to try and dismiss my message of liberty and limited government!" the appeal reads.

Paul is expected to formally launch his White House bid at an event in Louisville, Kentucky Tuesday afternoon. The announcement has been expected for weeks, and Paul spent the early part of the week converting his campaign-in-waiting to an actual campaign.

Monday evening, he changed his Twitter handle from @SenRandPaul to simply, "@RandPaul,"a likely attempt to distance himself from Washington in keeping with the themes of his campaign.

"The truth is, I'm the kind of top-tier candidate our media has not seen in years. I'm not a career politician. I haven't spent my entire life in government quietly preparing to run for President," the fundraising appeal says. He goes on to say that he was "perfectly content" living life as an opthamologist in Kentucky, "until I saw politicians in Washington, D.C. betraying our Constitution and ignoring their constituents at every turn."

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Rand Paul video previews presidential announcement

His announcement already has some detractors. A group called the Foundation for a Secure & Prosperous America announced Tuesday morning that they will spend $7 million on an ad campaign that accuses Paul of endangering the U.S. by supporting the framework nuclear deal with Iran being negotiated by the Obama administration.

"The Senate is considering tough new sanctions on Iran," a narrator intones in the ad, which is called "Sanctions." "President Obama says he'll veto them. And Rand Paul is standing with him. Rand Paul supports Obama's negotiations with Iran, and he doesn't understand the threat."

The ad then plays the audio from a 2007 interview in which Rand Paul, hitting back at critics of his father's foreign policy. "It's ridiculous to think that they're a threat to our national security," Paul said of Iran.

"Rand Paul is wrong and dangerous. Tell him to stop siding with Obama because even one Iranian bomb would be a disaster," the narrator says, with the image of a nuclear bomb blast playing in the background.

Unlike many of the other potential 2016 candidates, Paul has not publicly weighed in on the outlines of the nuclear deal. But his spokesman told Bloomberg News, "We don't know the details of the deal yet. Senator Paul will be watching closely and believes any deal must make clear Iran cannot acquire a nuclear weapon, allows for full verification and is approved by Congress. He voted for sanctions both times they were put before Congress and believes only Congress should remove those sanctions."

The ad will run on broadcast television and Fox News in New Hampshire, Iowa, South Carolina and Nevada - the first states to vote in the presidential primary and the ones Paul will visit in the coming days as part of his announcement tour.

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