article_snippet: the Kentucky senator's widely publicized appearance this month at the South by Southwest festival at Austin, Texas, was one opportunity the Kentucky senator used to appeal to a tech-savvy audience.
article_snippet: What accounts for the Kentucky senator appeal?
article_snippet: For many disaffected younger Republicans, the Kentucky senator offers a version of the conservative agenda that seems foreign to the modern GOP.
article_snippet: the Kentucky senator has been a vocal critic of the neoconservative turn that the modern GOP the modern GOP has embraced in recent decades, during which the modern GOP moved beyond support for high national security spending and toward a bolder vision of aggressive nation-building and regime change.
article_snippet: For some Republicans, including the Kentucky senator, these policies were at the heart of the failures of George W. Bush's presidency and a sharp departure from the modern GOP's principles.
article_snippet: Similarly, the Kentucky senator has been one of the few Republican voices to argue that post 9/11 surveillance policies have dangerously curtailed civil liberties.
article_snippet: At the local level, the Kentucky senator has criticized the militarization of police forces and the treatment of African Americans by law enforcement officers.
article_snippet: the Kentucky senator has also backed away from some tenets of social conservatism that don't sit well with a growing number of Republican voters.
article_snippet: the Kentucky senator has been an outspoken advocate of giving states the right to legalize marijuana.
article_snippet: the Kentucky senator has been attuned to the ways in which younger generations of Republicans are not on board with the evangelical fervor of the 1970s conservative movement and want to move in a different direction.