Rand Paul, son of 2008 Republican candidate Ron Paul, has just won the Kentucky Republican primary for the U.S. Senate race in November.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/19/us/politics/19elect.html
It's not clear who he will be facing on the Democratic side, as I don't think the results of that election are in yet.
As my friends know, I supported Ron Paul in 2008, writing a great many letters to likely primary voters in several states on his behalf. One of them even wrote back. His letter started out with "are you nuts" and accused Ron Paul of being some Perot-like figure, even though he repeatedly said he would not run on a third-party ticket.
As we all know, Paul ultimately lost, and lost badly (he won very few delegates and no states), but although he failed, the network the father established may well have helped the son out significantly. The younger Paul's political opponents tried to make a big deal about how he was heavily supported by people from out of state, but that didn't seem to work this time.
All that remains to be seen now is if he can win in November. That would be rather cool, as he represents the side of the Republican Party that is fiscally conservative and sticks to it, unlike the GOP of the Bush years that helped run up an ungodly amount of debt. He also is a big fan of restricting government surveillance powers and improving citizens' privacy, something the GOP appears to have forgotten with the Patriot Act and the statist attitude that no honest citizen has anything to hide.
I wonder how the winning Democrat will campaign against him. Paul's Republican opponent had a site called "Rand Paul's Strange Ideas" which tried to make him sound like a lefty moonbat. It would be highly entertaining if the Democrat ended up trying to out-conservative him.
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I'm glad that genuine fiscal conservatives are winning, although I am somewhat concerned about his position on abortion. I will repeat my previous comment that I'm at least glad the GOP is only unseating "moderates" for "extremists" in relatively "safe" territory, a message that seems not to have reached the Dems.
ReplyDeleteI think the early triumph of McCain in the Republican Presidental Primaries in 2008 derailed Ron Paul's plans.
ReplyDeleteI always felt that Paul knew there was no way to win, but I am convinced that had the nomination been close, Paul could have had enough delegates pledged to him to broker a deal - "I release my delegates to you, you grant me 15 minutes prime time to address the convention" - or something like that.
Unfortunately, McCain had such an overwhelming delegate lead this scenerio did not come true.