Mr Tea

The last time Republicans retook control of Congress, in 1994, the face of the revolution belonged to the party’s leader in the House of Representatives, Newt Gingrich. This year the standard-bearer is a less obvious figure: Rand Paul, the newly elected junior senator from Kentucky. Not only is Rand not part of the leadership, he is the son of Ron Paul, a maverick former presidential candidate who is considered a pariah within his own party. But this is an outsider’s hour in American politics, and the younger Paul is everywhere hailed as the paragon of the Tea Party revolt.

That revolt has been directed as much against the Republican establishment as against Barack Obama and the Democrats. Grassroots conservatives first drew blood from the Republican centre and left, defeating many of the leadership’s candidates. That was the case in Kentucky, where the Republican Senate leader, Mitch McConnell (who is also the state’s senior senator), backed a moderate, Trey Grayson, against Paul in the party’s primary.

Political logic dictated the choice: Grayson was an experienced politician, Kentucky’s secretary of state. Paul was a neophyte. Who would be more likely to win in November’s general election? Heading into the Republican contest, Grayson had McConnell’s clout and the national party’s fundraising connections at his disposal. Paul had Tea Party activists and his father’s legion of small donors. That was more than enough: Paul crushed Grayson by almost two to one.

The next day, triumph almost turned to disaster when Rachel Maddow, a left-wing commentator, attempted on live television to push Rand into saying that he did not support the 1964 Civil Rights Act, a position that would have put him firmly outside the pale of acceptable opinion. The view Paul gave echoed his father’s libertarian philosophy: he insisted that he ‘abhorred’ racism, and supported the banning of racial discrimination in government, but added that his strict interpretation of property rights meant that it was not for the government to say that private businesses could not racially segregate their properties.