Understand something about Rand Paul - not a conservative, and only is congruent with a few points with what conservatives believe. First and foremost, Rand Paul is libertarian, a rather different breed of cat, and moves from a different base than most conservatives.
It would be natural with others from a distance, to sort of conflate the two. And most of the time, conservatives do overlap a lot with libertarians. The conservative, though, bases his (or her) concept of the world from what has been recorded and found to be a basic underlying set of truths, tested by experience and with reliable applications being proven right every time they are tried.
Libertarians differ in that their reaction to strange or uncomfortable newly formulated schemes in largely rejecting them, because these ideas almost always involve greater and greater intrusions in personal live and in decision making, and the response to most of this intrusion is “Get off my back!”
Sure, they can agree on a lot, but still, most conservatives consider most libertarians to be rather sloppy and unfocused in their methods and reasoning, and libertarians consider conservatives to be sort of stuffed shirts.
Yeah, he is rino like, that is one reason that he loses his cool so easy, he is trying to convey an overall image that is false, and cannot hold up to having his words and positions examined.
Cruz is a traditionalist, Rand is a libertarian. Both are preferable to the Rockefeller and/or Neoconservative wings of the GOP represented by Christie and Jeb.