RAND PAUL didn’t wait for the national media to frame his upset win in Tuesday’s GOP Senate primary. He went ahead and did it himself. “I have a message from the Tea Party,’’ the 47-year-old ophthalmologist told revelers at his hometown victory rally, after knocking off the establishment choice, Secretary of State Trey Grayson. “We’ve come to take our government back.’’ It’s hard to know who was more eager for this outcome, the candidate or a press corps hoping to imbue the victory with drama and import, and thereby perpetuate the year’s most exciting political story. If there was any doubt that Rand Paul is the face of the Tea Party, there shouldn’t be any longer.
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The idea that Rand Paul’s victory heralds an imminent Tea Party wave soon to sweep the country makes a great deal of sense if you’ve watched the proceedings unfold on television. But it doesn’t make nearly as much sense if you’ve been in Kentucky these last few days. Here, the GOP primary has been nearly invisible. You have to hunt to find a “Rand Paul’’ or “Trey Grayson’’ sign. Television ads are sparse, owing to Kentucky’s relatively expensive media market, which includes Nashville and Cincinnati. Independents and Democrats were barred from the closed primary, so they never tuned in. In Louisville and Lexington, the Senate primaries took a backseat to the mayoral race. In smaller towns and rural areas, they were eclipsed by patronage-producing local offices, like county judge and sheriff.
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Paul’s win is significant, and a high-water mark for the Tea Party. Unlike Doug Hoffman, who embraced the label in an upstate New York House election last November and lost, or Scott Brown, who won a Senate seat with help from Tea Party activists and then turned his back on them, Rand Paul embraced the Tea Party and won — and he’s not going to abandon it. Paul has established that the Tea Party can be a disruptive force. In Kentucky, as elsewhere, the Republican establishment is having fits. But whether Paul or any other candidate can carry a general election remains an open question. Until that happens, the notion that Paul’s victory portends a Tea Party wave is still cable news hype.
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2010/05/20/kentucky_primary_hype_tempest_in_a_tea_party/
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