Posted on 04/20/2010 9:10:59 AM PDT by Maelstorm
LOUISVILLE — Rand Paul sounds nothing like any major candidate for the U.S. Senate in Kentucky ever has, let alone a front-runner for the Republican nomination.
He complains as much about actions of those in his own party as he does about Democrats. He has said he doesn't need the Republican power structure to win the party's May 18 primary or the November election to replace U.S. Sen. Jim Bunning. And he rarely mentions Kentucky in stump speeches.
Instead, he sticks to his big-picture message of slashing spending, constraining federal powers and imposing term limits on members of Congress. And he brought with him into the race his own constituency of frustrated voters.
"I am seen as being pro-Tea Party movement, a part of the Tea Party movement," he told a crowd of hundreds last week at the Louisville Tea Party Freedom Rally. "This is a national referendum. If we win, it will be the biggest Tea Party victory in the country."
It also would mark quite a leap for a first-time candidate to win a U.S. Senate seat, although Paul is in no way a stranger to politics.
He is the son of longtime Texas congressman Ron Paul, whose 2008 bid for the Republican presidential nomination helped stir attention and concern about the national debt that became the foundation of the Tea Party movement.
The younger Paul, 47, has built on that.
"In my area, the Rand Paul message is the one that people want to hear coming from people running for office this year: We've got to shrink government and cut spending," said state Rep. Jim DeCesare, R-Bowling Green. De Cesare said he isn't endorsing in the primary because of his friendships with Paul and his rival, Trey Grayson, the secretary of state.
Paul's brand and frequent appearances in the past year on national news networks have helped him tap a campaign donor base from around the country on the way to raising more than $2.4 million.
Grayson has raised a similar amount, and both have used their coffers to take televised slugs at the other.
Grayson has tried to portray Paul as a kooky candidate with "strange ideas," especially on foreign policy issues, while Paul has sought to paint Grayson as the tool of political insiders ill-equipped to reform federal spending.
Growing up Paul
Randal Howard Paul, the third of five children, went by Randy until shortening it to Rand when he moved to Kentucky in the early 1990s, his father said.
At age 13, Rand accompanied his father, then in his first-term in Congress, to the 1976 Republican National Convention where Ron Paul was among four congressmen to back Ronald Reagan over Gerald Ford.
Rand Paul said watching his dad do that taught him one of his first political lessons that has guided him since: "The principles that you stand for are more important than gaining power."
"By going against the establishment, he chose a much more difficult path," he said.
Like his older brother, Ronnie, Rand Paul swam competitively in high school and later at Baylor University. He then followed in the footsteps of his father, who is also a doctor, by attending Duke University School of Medicine.
It was during his general surgery internship in Atlanta that he met Russellville native Kelley Ashby, who was working for Sprint at the time. After they married, they moved to Bowling Green, where Paul launched his ophthalmology practice.
He was quickly drawn into Kentucky politics. Within a year of Paul's arrival, the state legislature passed a health-insurance bill that imposed a provider tax on doctors.
"It's like, well how did I get so special that there was a special tax for me? ... How can that be constitutional?" Paul said. The legislature later repealed the bill.
Still, it prompted Paul to found the Kentucky Taxpayers Union, an advocacy group that circulated a no-tax pledge to candidates and awarded lawmakers who opposed taxes.
Paul said the group helped Brett Guthrie, now a Republican congressman from Bowling Green, win his first state Senate race in 1998 by 130 votes. "We put several thousand dollars worth of ads on saying that his opponent wouldn't take the taxpayer pledge, and he won a very close election," he said.
Rand Paul is exactly what we need in the Senate. Just like Chuck Devore, just like Ken Buck. We say we want a revolution but then we men not fit to clean latrines. The left has been winning because we are not radical enough in our commitment to our principles. They get a compromise and we lose ground every time. We need more like Paul who will not compromise his principles.
What?
Nut. Tree. Fall. Nuf said.
Government Unions
I was going to ask that. Plus, since when is Ron Paul the reason for the tea party movement?
Oh, the Ronulans would like people to think that, and they’d like to try to grab onto that groundswell of populism, but then their true kook nature comes out, and they find themselves stamping their feet on the sidelines yet again, whining about how THEY’RE the only **true** conservatives, yadda yadda yadda....
Sounds good to me.
Yeah but what has his dad ever done beside voting rat 18% of the time?
I'll applaud that sentiment. How and where?
After Clinton-Bush-Obama I can almost accept a little nuttiness in a candidate who commits to the "No Tax Pledge" over one who won't.
Oh? What are Rand Paul's foreign policy views?
Stick to the Constitution is what I ask for. I don’t care what your last name is.
fyi
Sorry word got lost typing on phone. We elect men not fit to clean latrines. :-)
He is not the reason. However show me any candidate as vocal about cutting government?
What is kooky about cutting government?
He opposed closing Gitmo. He is promilitary.
So Rand is for cutting government. McCain is for increasing it.
McPalin firmly supports both.
Hmmm...
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