This wasn’t quite the speech Ted Cruz gave last month when he announced his 2016 bid at Liberty University, but it was a decent foray into the fray.

Paul makes a big deal about “stopping the Washington machine,” carrying the standard of liberty and setting off an economic boom. He comes back to those points over and over, as they’re items pretty much everybody on the GOP side of the aisle can agree with.

But he doesn’t talk about any of the hottest issues among the Republican base at present. Nothing on Obamacare, nothing on immigration and nothing on the Indiana religious freedom debate. One supposes that might be due to Paul’s positions not particularly resonating with the majority of the party’s voters, or maybe the speech was written to be a little more general.

It’s not like Paul won’t have to articulate a position on those subjects.

Anyway, here’s the speech…