What Happened When Rand Paul First Got Into Politics

When Rand Paul pulled off a surprise win in Kentucky’s Republican Senate primary, he bragged that he was carrying “a message from the Tea Party” that Washington was in for a shake-up. Less than 72 hours later, the ophthalmologist turned political phenom wasn’t sending out messages so much as hiding out in a state of radioactive embarrassment. A day after his win, Paul had mused that the forced integration of Southern lunch counters by the 1964 Civil Rights Act was an unacceptable federal intrusion into the private sector. The following day, Paul announced that the Obama Administration’s tough response to BP over the Gulf Coast oil spill was “un-American” and offered that “sometimes accidents happen.”

By that time, Paul himself was starting to seem like an accident. Democrats gleefully chased the media ambulances as GOP leaders scrambled to distance themselves from the gory scene. But however this newcomer performs in the coming months, the fact remains that he is part of a larger family–literally and figuratively–of like-minded conservatives reshaping Republican politics and giving an unexpectedly complex twist to the 2010 election. Even if Paul keeps stumbling over his shoelaces, the antigovernment ideas that have inspired him and fueled his campaign aren’t going away–and they may gain strength as the U.S. debt problem deepens.