Feeling Randy, Part 4

Time's Jay Newton-Small takes a look at Rand Paul here in KY.

Rand Paul is either the Republican Party's best hope to keep a Senate seat in Kentucky or its worst nightmare.

Here's a little window into why:

"There are Tea Party-like candidates running across the country," notes Paul, who is running for the seat soon to be vacated by Jim Bunning. "Some people say I chastise the Republican Party too much. But I think it'll take an outsider. This is the year to do it. You need someone who will just say no. We could destroy our country with all these deficits. A lot of Republicans have been the problem. It's not all on [President] Obama, though he did make it a lot worse."

Paul, the Bowling Green ophthalmologist whose chief claim to fame is that his father is the world's most famous Libertarian, now leads a race he was never supposed to enter. And he leads it by as much as 20 points. In doing so he is upsetting not only expectations in Kentucky but overturning the local power structure: He's outraised Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson, the hand-picked favorite son of Sen. Majority leader Mitch McConnell.

And he has done so running nearly as much against the GOP as he is against the Democrats and Barack Obama. Not surprisingly, his campaign is being watched closely by Republicans who worry about the size and strength of the tea party movement — and the drain insurgencies such as Paul's could have on their coffers.

"The biggest crowds I've been to in Kentucky have been Tea Party crowds, they're two to three times bigger than any Republican crowds," Paul says.

Paul, 47, is not a terribly charismatic speaker and his political experience consists of filling in for his father on the 2008 campaign trail. If elected, Paul says he'd work to reduce the deficit, lower taxes, strip the regulatory code and introduce legislation to limit congressmen and Senators to 12 years in office — a move that would take a constitutional amendment to enforce, but the suggestion is always one of Paul's biggest applause lines. Sarah Palin and Steve Forbes have endorsed him.

To recap, Rand Paul argues that the Republicans haven't opposed Obama enough, and that the banks that nearly destroyed this country have too much oversight.   Once again he seems to be running on that tried and true Paulite formula:  30% good ideas, 70% nutbar insanity.  I like the term limit idea myself.  I'm all for that.  The rest...not so much.

But honestly, my fellow Kentuckians, do you honestly believe that the financial crisis was caused by too many laws regulating banks?

And as much as I think Trey Grayson's a slimy little git, he's not Raud Paul, thank god.  He's getting Scozzafavaed on a daily basis however, and the Hoffman Effect is going to give this seat to the Dems, hopefully.