Rand Paul hopes NSA spying will top gay marriage for young voters

Sen. Rand Paul hopes that his opposition to National Security Agency spying will allow him to unite conservative voters skeptical of President Obama and young voters who have trended Democratic in the last two presidential elections -- and he's got a speech that was well-received both at CPAC and the left-wing bastion of Berkeley, Calif., to back up the theory.

“I'm not here to tell you what to be,” Paul, R-Ky., told several hundred students Wednesday at the University of California-Berkeley. “But I am here to tell you, though, that your rights, especially your right to privacy, is under assault.” The New York Times report noted that he "tried to speak in an informal way" at the university, but it's the same message he rode to a CPAC straw poll victory earlier this month.

“I believe what you do on a cellphone is none of their damn business,” Paul said at Berkeley, just as he did at CPAC. In both cases, the lines drew heavy applause.

Robert Reich, who led the Labor Department under Bill Clinton, told the Times that Rand Paul had taken on the easy issue for young people.

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