Republican presidential candidate Rand Paul responds to questions as he meets with students from Republican groups on the campus of the University of Colorado in Boulder. (David Zalubowski/AP)
BOULDER, Colo. -- Taking full advantage of a restive and swollen debate press corps, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) held a brief roundtable with supporters at the University of Colorado, then indulged a media question about Donald Trump's sagging poll numbers.
"I think maybe he should get out of the race," Paul said.
The students, organized by the Ron Paul-founded Young Americans for Liberty, had no horse race questions. Rand Paul, accompanied by his wife, Kelley, sat between a dozen or so libertarians, a wall of cameras, and a few more students listening intently. (Not everyone in the dining yard was so interested; one student could be told telling a reporter that his name was "Hunter S. Thompson.")
The senator, who has trumpeted that his organization on campuses -- Students for Rand -- has passed 300 chapters, stuck mostly to his familiar patter about the need to reform the Republican Party and roll back the state.
He harked back to a back-and-forth in an earlier debate, when New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a GOP presidential rival, said he'd end Colorado's experiment with legal marijuana. "I'm not an advocate for drugs, I'm an advocate for freedom," Paul said of legal marijuana. "This has been my beef with Jeb Bush. I don't fault him for smoking pot in high school. What I do fault him is being for laws that will put kids in jail."
When he faced the media's cameras, Paul said that he would return to Washington on Thursday and "commence the filibuster" against the debt limit deal handed to House Republicans on Tuesday.
"Whether or not we can physically do it, some of it depends on when the bill comes to the floor,"Paul told The Washington Post. "Instead of using the debt ceiling as leverage, they're actually using it as a way to bust the [sequestration] caps. I can't overstate how bad this deal is -- how it's destroying the understanding of Republicans even being conservative."