This is gonna be a long day. The interwebs basically have nothing except endless dissections of Tuesday’s primary races, about which I have nothing new to add, so instead let’s take the low road and just gossip a bit. Here’s Josh Marshall on tea party crank Rand Paul, son of ur-crank Ron Paul, who won his race against Trey Grayson in Kentucky yesterday:
I couldn’t help notice something about his brief acceptance speech and I’m curious to hear whether any of you had a similar take. I don’t think I’d ever seen Paul speak at any length. Or if I did I don’t have a clear recollection of it. And he came off to me as arrogant, bellicose and even a little messianic in his demeanor. To put it baldly, he sounded like a jerk.
News came out overnight that Paul allegedly refused to take Trey Grayson’s concession phone call last night. I think this last charge requires a little caution. The one making the charge is Grayson’s campaign manager, who obviously is far from a neutral observer. And Paul’s campaign manager says it wasn’t a sleight. He was just “in transit and could not take the call.” So who knows?
But I am getting the impression that Paul — aside from just being very unlikeable in personal terms — may be a much more divisive figure than one might from any Tea Party candidate who snatches away a nomination from an establishment party figure….A poll out yesterday showed that Grayson supporters in Kentucky simply hate Rand Paul in a way that goes way beyond the normal aftermath of a contested primary….I get the sense there’s a whole issue of personality (and messianism) that’s going to be in play in that race beyond quite apart from ideology narrowly construed.
That’s what I like to hear: I think it would be great if the tea party cranks lost big in November just because they’re a bunch of stubborn, unlikeable, messianic crackpots. It probably won’t happen, but I can hope. More like this, please.
UPDATE: And before you say, “Hey, at least Rand Paul is good on civil liberties” — well, it turns out he’s not, really.
