Rand Paul has trounced his opponent Trey Grayson in the Kentucky Republican Primary. David Boaz of the Cato Institute writes at the Politico
Rand Paul’s landslide victory in Kentucky over a likable-enough, establishment-backed candidate is a big loss for the neoconservatives and big-government Republicans who tried hard to stop him. As Jonathan Martin reported in POLITICO in March, Vice President Cheney’s circle were desperately warning conservatives and Republicans about “Rand Paul’s troubling and dangerous views on foreign policy.” Cheney issued his first 2010 endorsement to Trey Grayson a week later. David Frum and other defenders of the Bush-Cheney foreign policy piled on. Mitch McConnell pulled out all the stops. Grayson ran an ad featuring the clash between Giuliani and Ron Paul over the causes of 9/11, and Rudy endorsed Grayson. And Rand Paul appears to be beating Grayson by 25 points. That’s a real poke in the eye to the Republican establishment and the neocons in the Cheney orbit.
The Wilsonian conservatives desperately want to stifle any real debate on perpetual intervention within the Republican party. That’s why they tried so hard to stop a Republican Senate candidate who questioned the war in Iraq and the surge in Afghanistan. But that debate may yet break out.
As I've said elsewhere, a victory in the general election would insure that
...the Ron Paul Revolution would continue. While the elder Paul continues to inspire, he is 74 years old. When he’s retired, all the energy that his movement has brought together will need a major office holder to remain relevant on a national scale. Rand is only forty-five and if he gets elected to the US Senate is probably at least a shoe-in to win the CPAC Straw Poll the first year his father decides not to run.
