McConnell wants to be majority leader, so he and the folks you call establishment repubs will be working hard to get RP Jr. and every other republican nominee elected in November.
I doubt it. McConnel and the GOP are peeing their pants trying to figure out what to do with Rand Paul and the rest of the Tea Party.
The emergence of the Tea Party and the hostility of its members toward the GOP establishment gives party leaders cause for concern because it reflects growing estrangement with the party base.
Many fiscal conservatives became disillusioned over the growth of government during former President George W. Bush�s administration. As a result, they sat out the 2008 presidential campaign, giving Democrats a crucial advantage.
A win by Paul, a Bowling Green ophthalmologist, would represent the first true electoral success of the tea party movement. Equally important, it would embarrass Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, whose political organization is running Grayson�s campaign, thrust onto the national stage a Republican with foreign policy views out of the conservative mainstream and, strategists in both parties believe, imperil the GOP�s hold on the seat now held by retiring Sen. Jim Bunning.
Recognizing the threat, a well-connected former aide to Vice President Dick Cheney convened a conference call last week between Grayson and a group of leading national security conservatives to sound the alarm about Paul.[i]
[Paul, the Bowling Green ophthalmologist whose chief claim to fame is that his father Ron is the world's most famous libertarian, now leads a race he was never supposed to enter. And he leads it by as much as 20 points. In doing so, he is upsetting not only expectations in Kentucky but also overturning the local power structure: he has outraised Kentucky secretary of state Trey Grayson, the handpicked favorite son of Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell. (See 10 potential Republican midterm surprises.)
And he has done so running nearly as much against the GOP as he has against the Democrats and Obama. Not surprisingly, his campaign is being watched closely by Republicans who worry about the size and strength of the Tea Party movement � and the drain insurgencies like Paul's could have on their coffers.
