UPDATE: Rand Paul of 'tea party' movement wins GOP primary in Kentucky
Defeat of Trey Grayson, the Republican Party's handpicked candidate, shows the movement's arrival as a political force.
Political novice Rand Paul cruised to victory in Kentucky's GOP Senate race Tuesday, delivering the anti-establishment "tea party" movement its biggest win in the midterm elections. He defeated the Republican Party leaders' handpicked candidate, Trey Grayson. Early returns showed Paul with a double-digit lead.
Paul's win was a significant breakthrough for the small government anti- Washington tea party movement and underscores the movement's arrival as a national political force.
Even as the polls closed in Kentucky, final votes were being cast in key contests in other states where voter discontent was the dominant theme.
All signs point to Tea Party favorite Rand Paul defeating Establishment favorite Trey Grayson in today's Kentucky primary.
On the eve of Rand Paul’s likely primary victory over Trey Grayson, I want to make a few observations about the importance of Paul’s candidacy and the apparent failure of party and movement establishment figures to defeat him. First of all, Paul is one of a very few Republican candidates in the country who is truly serious in his desire for fiscal responsibility. In his hostility to expansive government and reckless spending, he does not make exceptions for military spending, and he is appropriately skeptical of government power whether it comes in the form of military adventurism and empire-building or sweeping social legislation and bailouts. Paul is the candidate of both austerity and peace, which is why he is particularly terrifying to David Frum, who has spent many years arguing for an agenda that values neither.
It is possible that Paul’s positions will be too fiscally conservative and too sensible on national security for his state’s electorate, but it is also quite possible that Paul could be representing Kentucky in the Senate next year ... The Kentucky Senate seat is not going to be in jeopardy if Paul wins tomorrow, nor are we on the verge of a massive Republican blowout in the midterms driven by a public backlash against government spending. Virtually everyone on the right is investing election outcomes these days with far more ideological meaning than they actually possess, and to the extent that there is an ideological message in the backlash going on right now almost everyone is misinterpreting it.
What Paul’s likely win tomorrow suggests is that the close identification of national security conservatives with the party leadership significantly blunted the impact of Grayson’s attacks on Paul on these issues. If the Kentucky primary electorate is in a fiercely anti-establishment, anti-Washington mood, what could be better for Rand Paul than to be denounced on a fairly regular basis by establishment Republican politicians and pundits? ... The efforts to misrepresent many of Paul’s views on social issues also seem to have backfired and weakened the effectiveness of the overall negative campaign against Paul. The push to derail Paul’s candidacy because of his insufficiently hawkish views should also remind rank-and-file Republican voters that national security hawkishness trumps all other issues.
Nation-building is a dying ideology. Not to mention the Establishment is very unpopular (to say the least).
Rand Paul Racing Toward the Finish Line
"Rand Paul's remarkable success is one of the biggest stories of the 2010 election cycleso far," said Dean Debnam, President of Public Policy Polling, in a release accompanying the poll results. "It's a clear sign ofunhappiness within the Republican Party and should have establishment candidate facing primaries nationwide a little nervous about their prospects."
Notice too, it's the Establishment who resorts to lies. Not the people they libel as "crazy."
KY Senate: Rand Paul headed for victory in GOP primary
Even though Trey Grayson is still embracing the establishment, tossing out attacks and complaining about Fox News, Rand Paul seems to be headed for victory in the Republican primary for United States Senate in Kentucky:
Unless there has been a polling fiasco that rivals the Great New Hampshire Primary Debacle Of 2008, Rand Paul will emerge tomorrow as the GOP nominee in Kentucky. This is an astonishing development: If I were to take the wayback machine to last summer to tell 2009 Sean Trende that Rand Paul was to be the GOP nominee, 2009 Sean Trende would probably have voluntarily committed himself to a mental hospital to get ahead of what appeared to be his forthcoming break with reality.
You see, the GOP got its favored candidate when Secretary of State Trey Grayson, one of two Republicans holding statewide office, declared for the seat of retiring Senator Jim Bunning. Ron Paul’s son, Rand, later declared for the seat, and was seen as something of a gadfly.
Paul has turned out to be anything but a gadfly ... he was an anti-establishment candidate in an anti-establishment year. And finally, he was fortunate enough (or clever enough) to run for the Senate in the Year of the Tea Party. Indeed, if you run down Paul’s issues list, you see a veritable cornucopia of Tea Party keywords: Bailouts, national defense, inflation, taxes, debt, liberty, sovereignty, the Fed, and so forth.
I am beginning to wonder if many of the Republicans that have come out against Rand Paul are going to get behind him in the general election. For example, despite the polling and all signs pointing to him winning, David Frum, one of the more notable neo-conservatives, is still swinging away at Paul.
Many of the neo-conservative attacks leveled by Grayson’s campaign and his neo-conservative friends were aimed at his opponents father, Ron Paul. It looks like Kentuckians are going to see past that tonight.
Rand Paul is a genuine Tea Party candidate!
Rand Paul Won’t Run Away From The Tea Party (VIDEO)
Rand Paul, a Republican running for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by retiring Senator Jim Bunning, said he will not "run away from the Tea Party" if he wins the Kentucky GOP primary nomination.
At a rally downtown Bowling Green, Paul said that there is a "Tea Party tidal wave coming," and that Kentucky is next.
Rand Paul on Laura Ingraham 5/14/2010 (audio)
Republican Liberty Caucus Endorses Kentucky Candidates
Blowout so far...52/34....still have lots of votes to count but that's a big repudiation of the Cheney crew.