Newly crowned Kentucky Republican senatorial candidate Rand Paul is in hot water over comments or lack thereof regarding civil rights. Washington and New York elites are in a delighted uproar because Paul has conveniently handed them a sledge hammer with which to bludgeon him and by extension all candidates claiming a Tea Party connection.
If the bloody waters that appear in the midst of such a shark frenzy make you uncomfortable, better get used to it. Odds are good that Paul is only the first of many Tea Party linked candidates whose inexperience in political combat with the media will spark such bloodbaths in coming months.
No such flap enveloped Scott Brown in Massachusetts probably because he had some prior experience as a Republican state senator in dealing with a hostile media in Massachusetts.
But many more of the Tea Party endorsed candidates who will gain visibility in the congressional campaign in coming months will, like Paul, be making their first-ever foray in seeking elective office. Like babes, they will go into brutal hand-to-hand combat with Establishment GOP, then Democratic opponents and their sympathetic journos, all of whom are seasoned veterans.
Such campaigns are often not pretty, and more than a few of the first-time office-seekers will go away from their experiences embittered and more angry than ever.
For the Washington and New York sophisticates, however, there will be endless opportunities to howl in grinning protest, as there always are for city slickers when the hayseeds come to town and have no idea that those signs saying “Tea Partiers Need Not Apply” are meant for them.
Of course, even having some level of experience at the state or local level of politics is no guarantee of easy campaign cruising at the national level, as former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin quickly discovered and has since vividly demonstrated.
But the real fun will start the day after the votes are counted because some of those Tea Party hayseeds will win, perhaps even a bunch of them. Then we’ll see who gets the last laugh. You betcha!
