Landslide Rand and Prescient Palin

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W. James Antle, III writes in The American Spectator Wednesday about Rand Paul's landslide Tuesday night GOP primary victory in Kentucky. The younger Paul, Says Antle, rode voter anger at Barack Obama, bipartisan bailouts of private industry, and the growth of the federal leviathan to a big electoral win. But Rand was also successful in part because he knew which of his father's policy positions to adopt and which of them to discard. Which makes the Kentucky Paul a pretty shrewd political poker player.

The electorate didn't fall for the attempts by Trey Grayson and his supporters to distort Rand Paul's views on social issues, explains Antle, so when Grayson tried to do the same with foreign policy issues, voters didn't buy that one either:

The Grayson campaign enlisted Dick Cheney, Rudy Giuliani, and Rick Santorum, among other supporters of a neoconservative foreign policy. Yet their attacks did not move the polls -- and here Rand Paul did not completely follow his father's playbook.

Which makes Sarah Palin's endorsement of Rand seem all the more prescient today. At the beginning of February, when Gov. Palin made the endorsement, there was no shortage of "experts" who claimed that it was a bad move on her part. It only took a hundred days or so to prove them wrong.

But the Palin backing for Rand Paul has benefits for the governor beyond demonstrating that she picked a winner. Most importantly, it allows her to distance herself from the neoconservatives. The great neocon failure was to focus so intently on the war in the Mideast to the exclusion of nearly everything else. This myopic view tarnished neoconservatism to the point where it is a largely discredited theory today, and frankly, we're delighted to see it fall out of favor on the right.

We've always preferred an across-the-board conservatism as practiced by Ronald Reagan and his political disciples. Sarah Palin is one of those disciples, and she battled with the Republicans in her own state legislators as governor to try to keep spending down and budgets from ballooning. Reagan Conservatism is enjoying a resurgence in popularity, despite the efforts of the neocons to characterize it as dated and "not in tune with the times." Balderdash! Reagan was always one to acknowledge the positive influence on the conservative philosophy by fiscal libertarianism, and Sarah Palin has that same respect for libertarian Republican principles. Hence, her endorsement of Rand Paul. In fact, we believe that Gov. Palin has long wanted to reassemble the Reagan coalition, and what better way to reunite the conservative and libertarian branches of it than to give her nod to Paul the younger? As Antle writes:

Paul united his father's national army of libertarian followers, who became his avid fundraising base, with a much larger group of rank-and-file conservatives who were ready for someone who would fight for limited government. It was a union of Ron Paul Republicans and Rush Limbaugh Republicans. In April, an exit poll taken at the Tea Party protest at the National Mall showed the demonstrators' favorite politicians were Sarah Palin and Ron Paul. Rand Paul, with his focus on the size of government, unified both wings of the Tea Party movement.

So much for the neocons and the squishy Republican establishment. As for the liberal Democrats, Rand Paul has a message for them as well:



As Antle says, "Washington has been put on notice." Rand Paul, Sarah Palin and an army of outsiders are coming to take their government jobs away.

- JP