Al Cross Thinks "Rand Paul MAY Ride The Wave To The Senate".
Rand Paul may ride the wave to the senate
By Rand Paul
Two months before the primary election, Kentuckians are waking up to the prospect that their most likely next U.S. senator is a snarky nonconformist who's never run for office before but is riding the national tea party wave and confounding the leader of his own party.
Rand Paul could still flame out during his primary battle with Secretary of State Trey Grayson, or as the nominee in a general election. But he could also be this year's version of Ron Lewis, the unknown Baptist minister and Christian bookstore owner who signaled the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994 with a special-election victory in Kentucky's 2nd District.
That landmark triumph was engineered by U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell, now Republican leader of the Senate and the chief behind-the-scenes supporter of Grayson. McConnell's record of helping Republicans beat Democrats for federal office is excellent, but his intraparty record is not so good.
In 1991, his choice for governor was then-Rep. Larry Hopkins, who proved to be a poor candidate — and would have even lost the primary if surprise opponent Larry Forgy had put a more reasonable voluntary limit on individual contributions to his campaign.
In 1995, McConnell stayed out of the governor's race and Forgy lost the general election by 2.2 percentage points. If they had been true allies that year, the result might have been different.
In 1999, he dissuaded any credible Republican from running for governor, saying the public subsidy at the time made it impossible to beat Democratic Gov. Paul Patton. That's debatable, but his argument also served to prevent the rise of a competitor for influence in the state GOP.
In 2003, McConnell got then-Rep. Ernie Fletcher into the governor's race, which Republicans were primed to win after 32 years of Democratic rule and Patton's sex scandal. Fletcher won the primary and general elections, but his demise from a hiring scandal showed why people who have to be talked into running for governor shouldn't.
This year's election is for federal office, not state office, so McConnell and his allies are more conversant with the issues and voters' feelings about them. But it is also a primary, in which the conservative core of the Republican Party holds sway, and circumstances have given Paul a good grip on that core.
His firm positions against deficit spending and for term limits, and the fact that he is an outsider running against an insider, fit hand in glove with the tea party movement and the anti-establishment feelings generated by a poor economy and Washington dithering.
Grayson, who fairly reeks of the Republican establishment, has found himself trailing in every recent poll. He has assured worried supporters that he has the money and the ammunition to regain the advantage, and about 10 days ago he began firing — saying “Rand Paul has strange ideas” about national security, such as closing the Guantanamo Bay prison and sending terrorists back to the battlefield.
Paul now says he wants to keep the prison and its military tribunals, but audio and video of his words live on, on a Grayson Web site where you can feel the terror-level alert. The background is orange, and Paul, pictured in a turtleneck in front of concentric circles, looks like a cult leader broadcasting from a spaceship.
The message, of course, is not just that Paul has strange ideas, but is just plain strange. And there is probably more to come, given Paul's previously libertarian-leaning stances on drugs and abortion.
A Paul reply ad anticipates such, casting him as a compassionate, “pro-life” eye doctor. Another ad, which casts Grayson and President Barack Obama as “dangerous allies,” is a trick that uses Grayson's words out of context and seems to presume that voters are dumb. But it also reflects that fact that Grayson is still a blank slate to many voters.
That fact figures in the most interesting thing about Grayson's commercials: He makes the attacks himself, speaking directly to the camera, in the same format as his other ads. That flies in the face of the long-held belief that candidates need to take a low profile in their attack ads to limit voter backlash against negative campaigning. But federal law now requires candidates to say they approved the message, so Grayson and his advisers may think that he might as well do the deed, in the introductory format.
It's a gamble. Since Grayson is still virtually unknown to many voters, he risks being identified primarily as an attacker who uses scare tactics. If his messages don't persuade, they will backfire. Grayson surely has polls showing that Paul loses support when voters are told about Paul's views, but what you tell a pollster may not predict what you will do in the voting booth.
National security remains an important issue, but voters are much more animated and driven by economic issues, and that's unlikely to change, absent a terror attack or national-security crisis.
Grayson and his Washington advisers who worry about a libertarian, non-interventionist senator are smart people, but they are reminiscent of the old myth about the fox and the hedgehog, and a Greek philosopher's analysis: “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing” — how to confound the fox. Right now, Republican primary voters know one big thing: Paul would be their anti-spending, anti-government, anti-incumbent tribune in Washington. What one big thing does Grayson have to offer them?
Al Cross, former Courier-Journal political writer, is director of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues in the School of Journalism and Telecommunications at the University of Kentucky. His e-mail address is al.cross@uky.edu. His views are his own, not those of the University of Kentucky.
By Rand Paul
Two months before the primary election, Kentuckians are waking up to the prospect that their most likely next U.S. senator is a snarky nonconformist who's never run for office before but is riding the national tea party wave and confounding the leader of his own party.
Rand Paul could still flame out during his primary battle with Secretary of State Trey Grayson, or as the nominee in a general election. But he could also be this year's version of Ron Lewis, the unknown Baptist minister and Christian bookstore owner who signaled the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994 with a special-election victory in Kentucky's 2nd District.
That landmark triumph was engineered by U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell, now Republican leader of the Senate and the chief behind-the-scenes supporter of Grayson. McConnell's record of helping Republicans beat Democrats for federal office is excellent, but his intraparty record is not so good.
In 1991, his choice for governor was then-Rep. Larry Hopkins, who proved to be a poor candidate — and would have even lost the primary if surprise opponent Larry Forgy had put a more reasonable voluntary limit on individual contributions to his campaign.
In 1995, McConnell stayed out of the governor's race and Forgy lost the general election by 2.2 percentage points. If they had been true allies that year, the result might have been different.
In 1999, he dissuaded any credible Republican from running for governor, saying the public subsidy at the time made it impossible to beat Democratic Gov. Paul Patton. That's debatable, but his argument also served to prevent the rise of a competitor for influence in the state GOP.
In 2003, McConnell got then-Rep. Ernie Fletcher into the governor's race, which Republicans were primed to win after 32 years of Democratic rule and Patton's sex scandal. Fletcher won the primary and general elections, but his demise from a hiring scandal showed why people who have to be talked into running for governor shouldn't.
This year's election is for federal office, not state office, so McConnell and his allies are more conversant with the issues and voters' feelings about them. But it is also a primary, in which the conservative core of the Republican Party holds sway, and circumstances have given Paul a good grip on that core.
His firm positions against deficit spending and for term limits, and the fact that he is an outsider running against an insider, fit hand in glove with the tea party movement and the anti-establishment feelings generated by a poor economy and Washington dithering.
Grayson, who fairly reeks of the Republican establishment, has found himself trailing in every recent poll. He has assured worried supporters that he has the money and the ammunition to regain the advantage, and about 10 days ago he began firing — saying “Rand Paul has strange ideas” about national security, such as closing the Guantanamo Bay prison and sending terrorists back to the battlefield.
Paul now says he wants to keep the prison and its military tribunals, but audio and video of his words live on, on a Grayson Web site where you can feel the terror-level alert. The background is orange, and Paul, pictured in a turtleneck in front of concentric circles, looks like a cult leader broadcasting from a spaceship.
The message, of course, is not just that Paul has strange ideas, but is just plain strange. And there is probably more to come, given Paul's previously libertarian-leaning stances on drugs and abortion.
A Paul reply ad anticipates such, casting him as a compassionate, “pro-life” eye doctor. Another ad, which casts Grayson and President Barack Obama as “dangerous allies,” is a trick that uses Grayson's words out of context and seems to presume that voters are dumb. But it also reflects that fact that Grayson is still a blank slate to many voters.
That fact figures in the most interesting thing about Grayson's commercials: He makes the attacks himself, speaking directly to the camera, in the same format as his other ads. That flies in the face of the long-held belief that candidates need to take a low profile in their attack ads to limit voter backlash against negative campaigning. But federal law now requires candidates to say they approved the message, so Grayson and his advisers may think that he might as well do the deed, in the introductory format.
It's a gamble. Since Grayson is still virtually unknown to many voters, he risks being identified primarily as an attacker who uses scare tactics. If his messages don't persuade, they will backfire. Grayson surely has polls showing that Paul loses support when voters are told about Paul's views, but what you tell a pollster may not predict what you will do in the voting booth.
National security remains an important issue, but voters are much more animated and driven by economic issues, and that's unlikely to change, absent a terror attack or national-security crisis.
Grayson and his Washington advisers who worry about a libertarian, non-interventionist senator are smart people, but they are reminiscent of the old myth about the fox and the hedgehog, and a Greek philosopher's analysis: “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing” — how to confound the fox. Right now, Republican primary voters know one big thing: Paul would be their anti-spending, anti-government, anti-incumbent tribune in Washington. What one big thing does Grayson have to offer them?
Al Cross, former Courier-Journal political writer, is director of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues in the School of Journalism and Telecommunications at the University of Kentucky. His e-mail address is al.cross@uky.edu. His views are his own, not those of the University of Kentucky.
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