Specifically Not Feelin' Randy, Part 4

The Atlantic's Josh Green tries to find out why Rand Paul is doing so well in Kentucky and completely making an ass of himself in the other 49 states, and comes up with two reasons:  Rand's not ready for prime time, but neither is Kentucky's really lousy political journalism.

The first is that the Rand Paul who emerged post-election--questioning the Civil Rights Act, exonerating BP for the oil spill, and generally setting off grenades in the national media--is nothing like the Rand Paul who campaigned and won the Kentucky GOP primary. What Paul spoke about on the stump was mostly the size of the deficit, his desire for a balanced budget and term limits, and his belief that a lot of what Congress does has no basis in the Constitution. Paul's favorite example was health care, not civil rights. But the interesting thing to me, as I wrote on Monday, is that he took care to emphasize those parts of the Tea Party agenda that appeal (he claimed) to independents and moderates. There was no talk of race, civil rights, secession, birtherism and general Fox News lunacy. "The Tea Party is not about extremism," Paul said again and again. The impression in the broader media, including the liberal blogosphere, that Paul is an angry, unlikeable nut was not borne out by my experience on the campaign trail.

The second point, which gets directly to why Rand Paul is suddenly flailing, is that the local Kentucky media--in particular the newspapers, and especially the flagship Louisville Courier-Journal--has been decimated by job cuts, as has happened across the country. This came up several times in discussions with Kentucky politicos and local journalists. The reason it matters is that because there is no longer a healthy, aggressive press corps--and no David Yepson-type dean of political journalists--candidates don't run the same kind of gauntlet they once did. They're not challenged by journalists. And since voters aren't as well informed as they once were (many are "informed" in the sense of having strongly held views about all manner of things--they're just not "well informed"), they can't challenge the candidates either.

Thus, when Rand Paul appeared on "Maddow" and the other shows, I expect he was prepared to offer the same sermon I heard on the trail. Problem is, he was encountering an aggressive, experienced press corps that appropriately had its own agenda and was eager to challenge Paul to elaborate on his views.

In other words, Rand Paul got softballed by a Kentucky star chamber press all along, which is exactly what Yellow Dog's warning about this morning.

The Herald's playing catch-up to the Courier, which first exposed Paul's Bircher tendencies back in April. The Herald also has to make up for endorsing Paul in the republican primary, when the Courier called a pox on all repug houses.

Paul could be the acid test for Ryan Alessi's new cn\2politics, and as a veteran of small-town reporting I want to believe that someone at the Bowling Green Daily News is muckraking in hopes of making her career.

If Kentucky MSM fail, Media Czech and Jake will never let up.

The irony is the weak-ass Kentucky papers made no real effort to jump on Rand Paul during the primaries, meaning when he went national (you have balls if you're a Republican going on Rachel Maddow, I'll give Paul that much) he got blitzed by people who knew what they were doing.

The double irony is that I'm pretty sure that may actually make Paul more popular here in Kentucky unless Jack Conway's people get on the ball and fast.