How Rand Paul, Tea Party Darling, Learned to Love Mitch McConnell and the GOP Establishment

This article was reported in collaboration with The Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute.

When Rand Paul launched his Tea Party-branded candidacy for Kentucky's open U.S. Senate seat, he was seen as an upstart challenger to the authority of senate minority leader and senior Kentucky senator Mitch McConnell, who had backed another candidate. But today, the two are joined together in the bonds of political pragmatism, as Paul battles Democrat Jack Conway, the state attorney general, in a tight race -- a race that has required a lot of money to keep him viable. Establishment money. Republican money. Money in coffers to which McConnell holds the keys.

And McConnell needs Paul to win that Senate seat this year, not just to bolster Republican numbers up there, but to ward off intimations of his own political mortality down here, which were almost impossible to ignore at the annual Fancy Farm picnic, the traditional kick-off for statewide campaigning in Kentucky.

It was 94 degrees in the shade on the second Saturday in August, a bright and muggy day in the tiny town of Fancy Farm, when McConnell, the longest-serving senator in Kentucky history, took the podium -- and got roundly booed. Not just razzed, but really booed, so much so you almost could not hear him speak. A retired teacher sitting in the bleachers with me leaned over and said, quietly, “I hate that sumbitch.”

Along with a healthy slice of the national press, we were all there to see whether this year’s Tea Party anger might make the Fancy Farm picnic, an old-fashioned, tub-thumping display of political conviction and spittle-flecked speechifying, go off like a powder keg.

Some in the media expected Conway, opponent of Tea Party darling Rand Paul, to face a severe hazing from angry, overwhelmingly white, deficit-angered Kentucky voters. But the Tea Party was barely visible at Fancy Farm -- just one sign and two guys dressed up, one as the “Death Tax” (a “threat to family farms!”) and one as George Washington.

The tar and feathers were destined instead for Mitch, as he's known here. There’s a revolution going on in Kentucky, all right, just like there is all around the country, but make no mistake: its chief target, from the very beginning, has been the Republican leadership.

That’s the real meaning behind Rand Paul’s 60-point victory last May over McConnell’s handpicked protégé, Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson, a lawyer and local banking heir. Grayson, following tradition that has primary losers often addressing the event, was at Fancy Farm, too, but he fared little better than his mentor. When Grayson spoke past his allotted time, provoking the band to cut him off mid-sentence with a rendition of “Rocky Top,” well more than half the crowd broke into spontaneous catcalls, chanting, “Na-na-na-na, hey hey hey, Goodbye!”

Tradition Blues

It is not a good year to be a traditional Republican in Kentucky. And if there’s one thing you can’t accuse Rand Paul of being, it’s traditional.

Beginning with his ignorance of Kentucky culture through the revelations of a college prank that had him tying up a co-ed and making her pray to a mock deity called Aqua Buddha, Paul is an odd bird on the bluegrass landscape. What keeps his candidacy chugging along seems to be his identity as insurgent -- the man who beat the pick of the party boss. Yet as the Republican nominee, Paul is finding the line between insurgent and standard-bearer difficult to straddle, dependent as he is on the largesse of the man rebuked by Paul’s very candidacy.

Paul's deference is paying off -- not only in direct campaign funds from the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), but more than $1 million spent on his behalf by groups run by establishment Republicans. Meanwhile, he continues to rake in tens of thousands from Tea Party-allied groups, as well.