The Senate can be an incredibly clubby institution. Senators will often commiserate over a steak dinner or huddle together in the Dirksen Senate Office Building, nurturing the types of personal relationships that are critical to pushing bipartisan legislation to the floor. Unlike the more populist and partisan House of Representatives, the Senate prides itself in being more level-headed, sober, and civil. Watch the senatorial proceedings on C-SPAN long enough, and you will often see senators on the floor laughing with each other and patting one another on the back as if they were old pals.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., is technically a part of the club. But compared to many of his colleagues on both sides of the aisle, he is a bit of a loner and a proud contrarian. He pushes the envelope when others in the chamber would much rather have smooth, painless proceedings so they can go home for a weekend of fundraising or constituent meetings. Earlier this year, Paul single-handedly shut down the federal government for several hours by delaying a series of votes on a massive funding bill that would have kept the lights on. To those on both sides of the political aisle, it was another stunt orchestrated by Paul to burnish his credentials as an independent voter. To Paul, however, it was about the principle of protesting an omnibus bill that made an already big deficit problem bigger.