Fear! Fear! Fear the kookiness of Rand Paul!

Feeling the heat that Rand Paul is a real threat to beat him in the Republican primary, establishment pick Trey Grayson has resorted to personal attacks more than six months before the primary.

The move isn’t even a surprise. Being the son of Ron Paul has its downsides: the establishment hates you.

By raising over $1 million in the third quarter, nearly doubling the amount raised by the secretary of state, Grayson knows that young Dr. Paul will be able to get his name out there and be a force to be reckoned with.

Attempting to turn Rand Paul’s asset as an outsider on its head, Grayson earlier this month said, “He’s an outsider. He’s not a Kentuckian. You know, I’m a 5th generation Kentuckian, educated here in the public schools, raising my family here.”

“I’m a 5th generation Kentuckian.” As my friend Don Rickles would say, “Would you like a cookie?”

Something deep inside tells me that Grayson did not say the same thing to Alabama-born and ergo fellow outsider Mitch McConnell last month when the senate minority leader and 16 other Republican senators who supported last year’s bailouts threw a $500 per plate Washington D.C. fundraiser for him.

But Rand Paul, who has lived in the Bluegrass State since 1993, landed the real zinger in this verbal dust-up: “I’ve been a Kentuckian longer than Grayson’s been a Republican,” reminding voters that their Republican secretary of state was a Democratic delegate for Bill Clinton in 1992.

The other recent smear against Rand Paul is pure farce. It’s so bad . . .

In unison: “How bad was it?”

It’s so bad that if I didn’t know better, I would have suspected the Rand Paul campaign of making it up just so they could make their opponent and his supporters look foolish.

Trey Grayson can thank Breathitt County GOP chairman and campaign donor Mike Bryant for his cute website: Too Kooky For Kentucky.

The title itself is not surprising either. In “Fire Two!” after Rand Paul was smeared by the Voice Tribune of Louisville, I wrote in this blog that it won’t be long until Rand is branded as “just the kook son of chief kook Ron Paul.” Lo and behold, the picture at the head of Too Kooky for Kentucky has Ron Paul on the left and Rand Paul on the right with each of them wearing a dunce cap.

Interviewed on WTVQ-TV in Lexington we meet Mr. Mike Bryant. Rotund, bald, and donning squarish eye glasses, he kind of looks like me without the long sideburns.

After obviously searching for some coherent criticism, Bryant says, “Really, we don’t know yet what Rand stands for in a lot of cases.”

This complaint is laughable in a couple of ways.

Neither Trey Grayson nor any of his supporters have any ground on which to stand when they charge that they don’t know what Rand Paul stands for. As I’ve pointed out numerous times here, the Paul campaign website provides detailed descriptions of his positions whereas as Grayson’s campaign website, until very recently, was as bare as Mother Hubbard’s Cupboard when it came to the issues.

The other point here is that after only a brief survey of Too Kooky for Kentucky, one can easily conclude that the editor does clearly know what Rand Paul stands for. His claim on TV was, let’s say, excessively disingenuous.

He knows that Rand Paul is an antiwar Republican, he knows that he is against the Patriot Act, and he knows that he wants to end the War on Drugs. Of course, all of this makes him “kooky.” Kind of makes me wonder if Mr. Bryant would have dared call the late William F. Buckley a “kook,” who in the last years of his life expressed sympathy with each of those views.

And every post in Mr. Bryant’s little site is entered under the pen name “Ben Franklin.”

In an entry that is probably too ironic for the Too Kooky for Kentucky editor to get is when “Ben Franklin” writes “Like Obama and Kerry – Rand Paul Speaks out Against the Patriot Act.”

If I could get old Doc Brown’s time machine up and running again, I’d like to take this “Ben Franklin” so he can meet the original Ben Franklin. You know, the one who said, “Anyone who would sacrifice liberty for security will lose both.”

Examples like this could go on and on. It already has here.

So why fuss over Too Kooky for Kentucky, an obviously ill-conceived smear website? Well, if it was edited by a Joe Schmo Trey Grayson supporter, it wouldn't be worth any trouble.

But it's not run by a Joe Schmo. It's edited by a county party chairman who actually did the voters of Kentucky a huge favor. Grayson, who appears devoid of any discernible political philosophy, has been shown exactly what is expected of him as a senator.

He is expected to be a Bush Republican.

He is expected to do war, he is expected keep government appraised of our personal lives, he is expected to ignore the Constitution and he is expected to do war some more.

But this is also the Kentucky Republican Party strategy: Slime Rand Paul.

They cannot debate him on the issues. If they could, they wouldn’t have to call him a “kook” or disparage his outsider status. Or they could tell us about the “unkooky” ideas of Trey Grayson.

What they want is for Rand Paul to just go away. He’s inconveniencing Trey Grayson’s ascension as Mitch McConnell Jr.

But since Rand Paul insists on yapping his gums about antiquated ideas like the Constitution and balanced budgets and fiscal responsibility the Grayson people will have just one card to play:

The FEAR RAND PAUL CARD.

And they will play it, as they say in Kentucky, 'til the cows come home.

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Stick it to Trey Grayson, Mitch McConnell, and their lackeys by donating to a candidate with real ideas here.

Update: Call and Adams, the Voice-Tribune columnists who smeared Rand in August (here and here) issued him a back-handed compliment last week in this column. They write, "Traditional candidates must secretly envy guys like U.S. Senate candidate Rand Paul, who can raise big money over the internet from donors all over the country in events named 'money bombs.'" But notice their contempt when they say, "If Paul is smart, he'll use the extra time on his hands to campaign with Kentuckians who can actually vote for him."

I wonder if they had the same advice for Trey Grayson, the recent beneficiary of a $500/plate D.C. fundraiser. Since it was in Washington D.C., I'm sure there were only Kentuckians there scratching checks for Grayson. Oh, and according to the Paul campaign, their August "money bomb" had an average donation of $86 with 70% of the donations under $100. Just some food for thought about the "big money" Rand Paul gets on the internet.

The Rand Paul Revolution?

With Republicans still spinning their wheels trying to figure out just what went wrong, the Democrats are setting their sights on the Kentucky senate seat currently held by Hall-of-Fame pitcher Jim Bunning. There is pressure building for the 77-year-old senator to retire from his seat and allow a more viable Republican to run in his place.

Jim Bunning, who has won two senatorial elections, each by the narrowest of margins, is perceived as the weakest Republican up for reelection in 2010. While he has voted against bailouts proposed by his own party, his manner has been awkward, bordering on bizarre. Incidents include refusing to debate his opponent in 2004 and threatening to resign earlier this year so that Kentucky’s Democrat governor Steve Beshear could appoint a member of his own party to his seat. Of course, calling the state’s most powerful Republican a “control freak” probably has not helped Bunning’s cause either.

On the May 17, 2009 broadcast of “Fox News Sunday,” host Chris Wallace asked the senate minority leader and "control freak" Mitch McConnell if he would endorse Jim Bunning. After getting nowhere, Wallace questioned, “So you’re not endorsing him?”

Perfectly evading the question, the professional pol replied, “It’s not clear who the players are going to be yet.”

But even though the 2010 elections are almost a year and a half away and even though the Kentucky GOP establishment was noncommittal, he actually has already made his pick: Trey Grayson, Kentucky’s secretary of state.

The Politico, quoting an anonymous Republican aide said, “For the first time, we now know who the Republican nominee will be next November and that’s Trey Grayson. He’s by far the best-positioned Republican to be competitive and hopefully win in the fall. It’s not even close.”

From an establishment point-of-view and principles-be-damned- we’ve-got-to-win mindset, Trey Grayson is probably the obvious choice among current Kentucky Republican office-holders. After scandal-plagued Governor Ernie Fletcher was unceremoniously drummed from office in 2007, Secretary of State Grayson was one of only two Republicans (former University of Kentucky basketball star Richie Farmer was the other) to survive and he won at a 14-point clip.

But like an always-campaigning politician, Secretary Grayson has re-vamped his website telling everyone, “I look forward to traveling across the Commonwealth and hearing how best to address the problems that face our country. As I explore this opportunity to continue serving you, I am committed to representing all Kentuckians and the issues that are important to you.”

If you read that opening statement carefully, one might be compelled to ask, Does Secretary Grayson have any political principles? Does he really need to travel across the state in order to determine what the country’s problems are? Does this mean he doesn’t have an actual agenda and is going to shape his platform according to what he discerns the people want to hear? Not from a politician!

But there is another option, an outsider.

Rand Paul, an ophthalmologist residing in Bowling Green, Kentucky (my hometown) has recently declared his intent to run for the U.S. Senate by forming an exploratory committee. If the name looks a little familiar, it is because Dr. Rand Paul is the son of Dr. Ron Paul, the only GOP presidential candidate that generated ANY significant support among young people. If anyone heard Ron Paul speak in person during his run for the presidency, there is a good chance that they would have also seen or heard Rand Paul, as his son was a constant companion on the campaign trail.

Outside of his exposure to politics through his father’s political career, Rand’s only other political experience has been as the chairman of Kentucky Taxpayers United, a group that rates legislators' tax honesty and that is dedicated to generating tax reform in the Bluegrass State.

Over the past several months, Rand has already been traveling across Kentucky delivering his message of freedom for the individual through less interference from the government. In a departure from his potential opponent, Rand already has his message. It’s liberty. It’s not about making government more efficient or “getting government back on the side of the people,” as Sarah Palin said ad nauseum, but by making our lives more efficient by getting government out of it.

Whereas Trey Grayson’s website is remarkably vague on where the man stands on the issues, a brief tour through Rand Paul’s website will demonstrate that young Dr. Paul has thought about the issues and has specific stances on them. One look at his position on the Federal Reserve shows that Rand is not only skeptical of central banking (it must be in his blood), but knows Nobel Prize-winning economists who can back him up. Instead of just uttering vague platitudes about “change,” Rand Paul is enunciating what he would do in order to inaugurate change in Washington.

So, in an era where government is continually reaching into the private lives of American citizens, there is a little glimmer of hope in Kentucky. But since Rand will be running on a platform very similar to his father’s and since he is clearly not the establishment’s first choice, Rand definitely has an uphill climb. The inevitable smear brigades are likely warming up as we sit here.

There’s a chance for a liberty candidate to represent the good people of Kentucky. Can Rand do it?


Postscript: One of the downfalls of Ron Paul’s presidential campaign is that many of the people who liked him didn’t feel like they could really support him because he had no chance of winning the GOP nomination after primaries in all 50 states, especially with the big Republican field of 2008. But all that Rand Paul has to do is win one primary against perhaps only one other contender.

And one of the most effective weapons Ron Paul’s supporters wielded were their grossly (intentionally?) misinterpreted “money bombs” where grassroots activists hit up supporters to make small donations on a specific day. Instead of chasing down a few fat cats to make big donations, the Ron Paul supporters got small donations from LOTS of people. Through such efforts, Ron Paul amassed quite a campaign war chest, despite being designated a “second-tier candidate.” Since Rand only needs contributions in one state, how much easier will it be for him to acquire enough funds to satisfactorily challenge the Kentucky GOP establishment? As of this writing, Rand has already received over $20,000 . Of course, the nomination is only the first step.