Manchester, New Hampshire (CNN) -- Earlier this year, as Frank Guinta was driving his children to school, he turned on a local radio station and heard Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul talking about Guinta's failed attempt to win re-election to Congress just a few months earlier. Paul was discussing the future of the Republican Party and the need for the GOP to maintain its traditional political base while also welcoming more libertarian-minded conservatives. The Kentucky senator then started citing specific data from the 2012 general election, including Guinta's race. "Your two Republicans up there lost recently for Congress," Paul said to New Hampshire political reporter James Pindell in the telephone interview on WGIR. "They lost by four percentage points, and the libertarian in each race got 4½ percent, so really we do have to figure out a way to attract some of those voters who are voting libertarian if we want to have enough of a majority to win."
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Potential 2016 presidential candidates already influencing national dialogue
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While it's too early to mount a campaign, there are steps potential candidates are taking
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Social conservatives have large say in later primaries but centrist could do well in N.H.
"This was not his political adviser," the New Hampshire @placeholder said during a recent interview over breakfast.
But @placeholder, who is considering running for office in 2014, said he was not shocked by the moment.