Joe Imel/Daily NewsSen. Rand Paul speaks Wednesday at the Bowling Green Noon Rotary Club at the Bowling Green Country Club.

WASHINGTON — The moment was classic Rand Paul.

The freshman Republican senator from Kentucky on Tuesday took on Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. – a highly decorated veteran and former presidential candidate – over a provision in the defense authorization bill that would deny civilian trials to American terrorism suspects.

Paul’s impassioned opposition to the provision put him on the same side as the White House and many Democrats and at odds with many Republicans, including his fellow Kentuckian, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

“There is one thing and one thing only protecting innocent Americans from being detained at will at the hands of a too-powerful state – our Constitution and the checks we put on government power,” the libertarian-leaning Paul said in a speech on the Senate floor.

McCain, who is the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, countered that Paul didn’t fully understand the threat of terrorism on American soil.

“Facts are stubborn things,” McCain said repeatedly on the floor. “If the senator from Kentucky wants to have a situation prevail where people who are released go back into the fight to kill Americans, he is entitled to his opinion.”

Although Paul’s attempt to strip the provision ultimately failed – the fate of many of his similar stands over the past year – he was successful in raising the issue’s profile. After a series of protracted negotiations, the Senate passed the $662 billion Pentagon funding bill Thursday night.

In the year since Paul, a Bowling Green eye surgeon, rode a tea party-backed wave to clinch a surprise victory in Kentucky’s U.S. Senate race, the political newcomer has become one of the movement’s most visible faces. In his numerous appearances on network news programs, he has come to symbolize the conservative dissatisfaction that rattled Republican ranks and whittled the moderate Blue Dog Democrats’ corps through the tea party’s broad gains in the House of Representatives in the November 2010 elections.

Critics, such as progressive and environmental groups, say Paul is a disruptive ideologue.

“We feel that overall he’s been a destructive force when it comes to the environment,” David Goldston, a director of government affairs for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said of Paul’s ongoing pushback against several Environmental Protection Agency regulations.

Supporters say Paul’s blend of work ethic and theatrics makes him an effective lawmaker.

“To be an effective advocate you have to be both a workhorse and a show horse. Whether on Fox (News) or on the floor, Rand has proven he can be both,” said Trygve Olson, a GOP political consultant who served as the National Republican Senatorial Committee’s field consultant to the Kentucky Senate race and now works for the presidential campaign of Paul’s father, Rep. Ron Paul of Texas.

As of last week, Rand Paul has either sponsored or co-sponsored 135 pieces of legislation, a record that outstrips many of his freshman Senate colleagues. At the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington earlier this year, McConnell praised Paul, calling him “one of the great freshman conservatives,” and said the newly elected senator was “already taking strong, principled stands in the Senate.”

Paul acknowledges that many of those stands failed to result in passed legislation. However, he prides himself on throwing up procedural roadblocks to force the Senate to focus on issues he champions – such as his successful requirement for testing older pipelines as part of a pipeline safety bill, or his vocal opposition to President Barack Obama’s intervention in the Libyan civil war.

“We lost, but without me being here I don’t think it would have come up,” Paul said in an interview.