Yeah, he's "nothing like his father", even though Rand's fan club still can't cite a single major issue where Rand has vocally disagreed with dear old dad.
The reality is that their ideology is 99% alike, it's just the "tone" that's different. Ron goes on crazy wild eyed rants to fire up his cultists, whereas Rand talks about issues where there's wide consensus on, and presents himself as a mainstream Republican.
For many years, Jesse Jackson Jr. was far less polarizing than Sr. for the same reason. Then his true colors were shown.
Rand is trying to present an image that he is serious compared to Ron-Dad who was happy being that crazy cult hero libertarian.
Per this threads comments by him I had to think about why Rand would go out on a limb and depart from Ted (against a shutdown to make Reid Obama cave) when he knows how much grief it can bring him with talk radio audiences(and here)
Most likely:
1) He wants to run for POTUS, and he figures he’d never get the nomination if he trashes the majority of GOP senators.
2) He wants to be able to get GOP Senators to side with him in 2015 if GOP takes Senate back and he thinks getting them to hate him will keep that from happening.
Just my guess, these wont go well here, so Rand is with Ted, but then he is not exactly with Ted on positions