KAREN TUMULTY AND ROBERT COSTA

Last updatedMon Apr 06 05:14:03 UTC 2015

LAURA BUCKMAN / Reuters

HIPSTER SENATOR?: Rand Paul talks during a session at the South by Southwest (SXSW) interactive, film and music conference in Austin, Texas, last month.

When the US presidential buzz began building around Senator Rand Paul a couple of years ago, the expectation was that his libertarian ideas could make him the most unusual and intriguing voice among the major contenders in the 2016 field.

But now, as he prepares to make his formal announcement on Tuesday (local time), the Kentucky Republican is a candidate who has turned fuzzy, having trimmed his positions and rhetoric so much that it's unclear what kind of Republican he will present himself as when he takes the stage.

"He's going to get his moment in the sun," said David Adams, who served as campaign chairman for Paul's insurgent 2010 Senate campaign. "What he does with it from there will have bearing on the Republican Party."

KEVIN LAMARQUE / Reuters

RIGHT-WING: Rand Paul speaks the CPAC conference in Maryland in February.

There are at least two areas where Paul has moved more in line with the conservative Republican base, somewhat to the consternation of the purists in the libertarian movement: adopting a more muscular posture on defense and foreign policy and courting the religious right.

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US Presidential candidate Rand Paul veers from libertarian positions