With Sen. Jim Bunning of Kentucky retiring, his seat is open in the 2010 election. The most interesting candidate to replace Bunning is Ron Paul’s son, Rand Paul. Rand is running to be the Republican nominee against a more establishment candidate, Secretary of State Trey Grayson. The Democrats have a competitive primary shaping up, as well, between Attorney General Jack Conway and Lt. Gov. Dan Mongiardo. Chris Bowers asks a question.
Rand Paul is in a reasonably close primary for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate in Kentucky. According to the two polls on the campaign, he trails Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson by an average of 13%. With the money bombs that the Paulites will send his way, with the teabaggers looking to become a force in Republican primaries, and with the general anti-establishment mood in the air right now, he could really win that nomination.
Given this, as a progressive, I have to wonder if there is a good reason why I shouldn’t be contributing to Rand Paul’s campaign for Kentucky Senate. My quick analysis suggests that such a contribution would be for the good of the cause.
First, if Rand Paul wins the Republican nomination for Kentucky Senate, current polling indicates that it would improve the chances of the Democratic nominee to win the campaign. In every poll, Paul performs worse than Grayson against both potential Democratic candidates.
Second, if Rand is anything like his father–and he certainly seems to be–then even if he were to win the general election, he would defect and vote with Democrats more often than any Republican Senator outside the state of Maine. On the votes that matter, Rand Paul’s father, Ron, votes with progressives more often than any other Republican in Congress– except for Rodney Alexander who was a Democrat until mid-2004 (Ralph Hall, third among Republicans who vote with progressives, was a Democrat until 1995). With a lifetime progressive crucial votes ranking of 23.50%, Paul even leaves supposed Republican moderates like Mike Castle (15.40%) and Mark Kirk (10.30%) in the dust. Paul towers over life-long Republicans when it comes to voting with Democrats.
Grayson, by contrast, would just be another drone in the Republican Borg collective, who we could count on for exactly zero votes of any importance. Paul would legitimately be much, much better than Grayson.
Money can be spent in a variety of ways, but spending it on Republican primaries doesn’t rank high on my list. Even though I don’t disagree with Bowers’s basic analysis, he is overlooking something. If the assumption is that Rand is going to vote and behave in a similar manner to his father, it matters a great deal that we are discussing a Senate seat, rather than a House seat.
Take a look at any number of House roll calls and you’ll notice something a bit odd. Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul are very frequently listed as voting with the opposition, even though they are ideologically on the far wings of their respective parties. Kucinich is unlikely to vote for any defense spending, no matter which party crafted the bill, but he takes any number of idiosyncratic stands against his own party. Ron Paul is unlikely to vote for any exercise of federal government power, and he doesn’t care if it is the Republicans who are pushing that power.
In the House, these tendencies mean next to nothing. But the Senate works by unanimous consent. And a Senator Kucinich or a Senator Ron Paul (using the same strategies) would be the least likely members to grant their consent. If Rand Paul is like his father, he’d probably become the most obstructive senator in the history of that body. A single senator, by repeatedly refusing to grant their consent to proceed to the next order of business, can dramatically reduce how much work gets done in the Senate in any given year. When a senator refuses their consent, it takes sixty votes to override their objection, and it takes a couple of days before the Senate is allowed to vote for the override. This is what is colloquially referred to as a Hold (which need not be secret). When a senator objects to a nomination, for example, they signal this by telling the Majority Leader that they will refuse to give their consent for a vote on their confirmation. The reason this so often results in killing off a nomination is that it costs a couple of valuable legislative days to overcome their objection, and with dozens of nominees, only the most urgent are worth the effort.
If Rand Paul is anything like his father, his antics would bedevil the Republicans (when they are in power) as often as they would bedevil the Democrats. But, either way, the hassle would not be worth the satisfaction of getting a few cross-over votes.
