When Republicans still gleeful over their November election wins accused President Obama of waging an unauthorized war against the Islamic State, Sen. Rand Paul marched to a different beat and introduced legislation to give congressional consent to the latest front in the war on terrorism.

When Mr. Obama surprised the world over the holidays by warming relations with the Castro regime, most Republicans howled about communist appeasement. But Mr. Paul declared that he supported normalizing relations with Cuba.

When the Democratic president gave a defiant State of the Union address last week filled with veto threats and unilateral policy actions, Republican congressional leaders accused Mr. Obama of conducting an imperial presidency. But Mr. Paul said he wanted to find ways to work with Mr. Obama.

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And when Mr. Paul found himself on a California stage a few days ago with several Republican presidential rivals advocating for additional sanctions on Iran, the Kentucky Republican argued against slamming Tehran to the ground and for giving the president more time to persuade Iran to put the brakes on its nuclear enrichment program in return for relief from sanctions that have crippled its economy.

I think diplomacy is better than war, and we should give diplomacy a chance, the senator declared.

To Mr. Paul, son of former Rep. Ron Paul of Texas and a favorite of the Republican Partys libertarian and anti-war factions, his positions seemed perfectly consistent with his view that political conflict and military intervention too often have been first solutions when they should be last resorts.

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His rivals for the presidential nomination see things differently and say Mr. Paul sounds like an Obama apologist.

I am a little cautious, I would say, perhaps skeptical about negotiating with someone who has openly said he wants to force all of us to either be like him or die, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida said of Irans supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, snapping back at Mr. Pauls position Sunday at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.

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Rand Paul's libertarian foreign policy has GOP rivals comparing him to Obama