While I’m depressing grassroots conservatives because there’s no serious, well-funded challenge to South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham on the horizon, I might as well really bum them out by pointing out that there’s not much action going on in Kentucky, either.

Senator Mitch McConnell’s team recently announced that 64 out of the 68 Republicans in the state legislature have endorsed his reelection.

Perhaps more significantly, Senator Rand Paul is discouraging a tea-party challenge:

Sen. Rand Paul is discouraging a tea party challenge to McConnell’s reelection campaign. “No one has asked me about running, I have not had any conversation with anybody running on the Republican side,” Paul told WHAS11’s Joe Arnold, “and so I think it’s unlikely that there will be a Republican challenger.”

“And you’re right, I am supporting Senator McConnell,” Paul continued.

Two little-known figures have filed papers to run against McConnell as a Republican. One is Roger Thoney, who ran for the U.S. House and lieutenant governor in 2000, 2002, and 2003; he received 4,784 votes in his 2002 House bid, or 21 percent. The other is Joshua Pike Mather, a sculptor.

There are other names being mentioned as possibilities, but no one has pulled the trigger yet. David Adams, a tea-party activist who worked with Paul’s 2010 bid, said on MSNBC he’s not running himself, but that he’s still looking for a candidate. John Kemper, a spokesman for the United Kentucky Tea Party, said in late March he’s gauging support; he received more than 349,000 votes as the GOP candidate for state auditor in 2011. Matt Bevin, a Louisville businessman, was also mentioned as a possible candidate, although the talk has died down a bit in recent days.

As our Katrina Trinko noted, by reaching out to various Republican groups, McConnell “has thus far successfully prevented any challengers from emerging.” Whoever jumps in will have to go up against McConnell, all of the traditional advantages of incumbency, and about $7.3 million in cash on hand right now.

Sure, sometimes you catch lightning in a bottle, and a Ron Johnson type comes out of nowhere, and the filing deadline isn’t until January 2014. But you have to figure that almost every current conservative Republican lawmaker in Kentucky has looked at McConnell and concluded that he’s not bad enough to replace, or that a bid to beat him in the Senate primary wouldn’t succeed.

Today’s graphic du jour, spotlighted in the Morning Jolt, stems from reports that Senator John McCain isn’t all that enamored with some of his younger Republican colleagues:

When I asked him if “these guys” — having just mentioned Amash, Cruz and Paul by name — are a “positive force” in the GOP, McCain paused for a full six seconds.

“They were elected, nobody believes that there was a corrupt election, anything else,” McCain said. “But I also think that when, you know, it’s always the wacko birds on right and left that get the media megaphone.”

Plus, those “wacko birds” keep smashing down the little structures he built for the eggs:

McCain has a point; they go way too far on defense cuts, particularly their recommendation to replace our nuclear arsenal with a giant slingshot.

Thanks to Jeff Dobbs, over at The Voice in My Head, for the visual to start the week!

The Thursday edition of the Morning Jolt features a contrast in government tours, helpful words from a critical reader, and then the big news of the day . . .

Rand Paul Goes to Washington

Rand Paul added a lot of big fans Wednesday.

A day that was supposed to be just another Washington snow day brought us something we haven’t seen in a long time: an honest-to-goodness, in-keeping-with-the-Constitution, old-fashioned filibuster, all over a basic, fundamental concept central to our founding: the power of the central government is limited, and the government’s authority to exercise lethal force must be particularly and specifically limited.

Actual headline in USA Today: “Rand Paul ends epic filibuster over Brennan”

He started speaking around 11:45 a.m. Wednesday morning. He finally ceded the floor at about 12:40 a.m. local time on Thursday.

Andrew Johnson & Nathaniel Botwinick give you the highlights of Rand Paul’s crusade:

Senator Rand Paul (R., Ky.) took to the Senate floor today to filibuster President Obama’s nominee for CIA director, John Brennan, as well as to challenge the administration’s policy on drones. Paul began speaking at approximately 11:47 a.m. . . .

Paul said he would be happy to end it if he had reassurance from the Obama administration that drone-strikes would not be used on noncombatants. After Reid left the floor, senators Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania and John Cornyn of Texas joined in the effort.

Senator Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) took to the floor of the Senate this afternoon in support of Senator Paul. He thanked the senator for “defending the institution” of the Senate and its “constitutional obligation to ask relevant questions of public policy and get answers” through his filibuster.

The filibuster became a bipartisan effort when Oregon’s Democratic senator Ron Wyden joined Paul on the floor in its fourth hour. Wyden called for reining in the executive branch’s “serious, far-reaching” drone-strike program, saying that the targeted killings “should not be allowed . . . without any scrutiny.”

Three hours into Paul’s filibuster, fellow Republican senator Ted Cruz of Texas joined the Kentucky senator on the floor. Cruz praised Paul for his leadership on the issue of drones and the rights of American citizens, calling him a “modern Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” who is “surely making Jimmy Stewart smile.” Along with Cruz, senators Mike Lee of Utah and Jerry Moran of Kansas joined Paul on the floor at roughly the same time.

John Podhoretz: “Attention everybody in Washington: This is how you make yourself a star.”

Writing at Breitbart, the Ace of Spades declared it genuinely exciting:

I have the same feeling of receding cynicism I did when the Tea Party first exploded on to the scene and began doing things that just weren’t done in America anymore — taking politics seriously, taking the Founders’ legacy to us seriously, showing up at Town Halls to ask their once and future representatives some real questions, engaging, questioning, insisting, demanding.

There was a time 200 years ago when this was commonplace. Americans had just won their liberty and were enthused about it. They treated their civic duty not as a mere duty but as the highest aspiration of political man.

This filibuster excites me for the same reasons — a return to the Old Ways, the ways that actually work, the way American politics is actually supposed to be conducted, with Senators offering thoughtful defenses of their positions and, above all, insisting that this nation is We the People not We the Ministers & Lesser Bureaucratic Warlords of Whatever Current Government the Public Has Had the Folly to Install in Office.

Jon Henke: “Kinda shocking that it takes a filibuster to get back the right not to be killed by our own government without a trial.”

Dana Loesch: “The left just exposed their hypocrisy on waterboarding by supporting drone killing without due process.”

Meanwhile, Ted Cruz generated his own fireworks, getting Eric Holder to appear to concur that the drone policy, as currently stated, runs afoul of the Constitution.

On Tuesday, the Department of Justice sent shockwaves through the nation when Attorney General Eric Holder informed Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) in writing that the White House would be within its legal authority to execute an American citizen via drone on U.S. soil if that person was determined to pose a threat to national security. On Wednesday, testifying before a Senate panel, Holder was prodded repeatedly about this assertion by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX). Holder eventually admitted that it would not be constitutional to execute an American citizen without due process.

“In your legal judgment, does the Constitution allow a U.S. citizen on U.S. soil to be killed by a drone?” Cruz asked Holder pointedly.

“For sitting in a café and having a cup of coffee?” Holder replied. Cruz clarified that his hypothetical individual subject to a drone strike did not pose an “imminent and immediate threat of death and bodily harm,” but that person is suspected to be a terrorist.

“I would not think that that would be an appropriate use of any kind of lethal force,” Holder replied.

“With all respect, Gen. Holder, my question wasn’t about appropriateness or prosecutorial discretion. It was a simple legal question,” Cruz clarified.

“This is a hypothetical, but I would not think, that in that situation, the use of a drone or lethal force would not be appropriate,” Holder replied.

“I have to tell you I find it remarkable that in that hypothetical, which is deliberately very simple, you are not able to give a simple, one-word answer: no,” Cruz added. He said he think that his scenario would constitute a “deprivation of life without due process.”

. . . When Cruz was about to abandon his line of questioning after a number of equivocations from Holder, the attorney general clarified that he was saying “no” such actions would not be constitutional.

Our Charlie Cooke: “I’m very disappointed. Rand Paul has been speaking about foundational American values for hours but he hasn’t yet mentioned contraception.”

Before anyone starts chanting Rand Paul 2012 . . .

U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., will be in Iowa next month to speak to the state’s Republicans about the tea party’s role in the 2012 presidential election and congressional efforts to deal with the federal budget deficit and national debt.

“I can promise you that he is not running for anything,” said Paul spokeswoman Moira Bagley. “His dad would probably not appreciate that.”

Perhaps the problem with our discussions of the debt is the suffix “illion.” Because most of us aren’t millionaires, the concepts of a million dollars, a billion dollars, and a trillion dollars all blur together to mean “a whole lot.”

I’m not the first to make this observation. Saul Alinsky, mentor to the mentors of President Obama, wrote in Rules for Radicals: “The moment one gets into the area of $25 million and above, let alone a billion, the listener is completely out of touch, no longer really interested, because the figures have gone above his experience and almost are meaningless. Millions of Americans do not know how many million dollars make up a billion.” Of course, it’s not like this sort of thinking influences the decisions of the president, right?

I thought of that when I saw this:

President Obama’s budget director Jack Lew in a Sunday opinion piece outlined some off the “tough choices” Obama is willing to make to cut spending in his 2012 budget request due out on Feb. 14. In total, the $775 million in detailed cuts fall far short of demands by congressional Republicans and will do little toward tackling the deficit, which is estimated to be $1.5 trillion this year by the Congressional Budget Office. The cuts are in addition to a five-year spending freeze which the administration says will save $400 billion over the next decade.

(HT: Ace of Spades.)

Removing the “illion”s, we can illustrate it as thus:

The projected deficit for this year:                     $1,500,000,000,000.00

Total federal public debt:                                  $14,099,823,671,305.06

Cuts proposed in Obama’s 2012 budget:                   $775,000,000.00

Obama’s budget freeze, over 10 years:                $400,000,000,000.00

One-year cut proposed by GOP:                           $100,000,000,000.00 (disputed)

One-year cut proposed by Rand Paul:                   $500,000,000,000.00

One of these numbers is much bigger than all the others, and one is much smaller . . .

Jack Conway feels the full wrath of Aquabuddha. Congratuations, Senator-elect Rand Paul.

Dan Coats beats Brad Ellsworth in Indiana.

For the fifth year, I will spend Election Night behind the desk on Cam Edwards’s show, heard on SiriusXM’s Patriot Channel and over the Internet at NRANews.com.

You may recall that I loathed Jack Conway’s “Aqua Buddha” ad and his entire approach of suggesting that Rand Paul is not a Christian, and then immediately insisting that he wasn’t questioning Paul’s religious beliefs.

Apparently the Aqua Buddha has sent some bad karma Conway’s way.

Public Policy Polling puts Paul up, 53-40.

Fox News/Rasmussen puts Paul up, 50-43. More significantly, “While Paul was viewed favorably by 48 percent of voters and unfavorably by 41 percent of voters, only 38 percent had a positive impression of Conway while 51 percent held an unfavorable view.”

In this morning’s Jolt, you can see Jack Conway has rapidly become one of my very least favorite candidates this cycle.

Finally, a Candidate Who Will Drive the Aquabuddhists Out of America

Mason Dixon offers their first poll of Kentucky, and so we can’t compare this to a previous one by the firm to get a sense of the trend. But the 5-point lead they see seems rather modest compared to polls in August and September, when Rand Paul often led by double digits.

And the Lexington Herald-Leader thinks that the modest lead might just be a result of that infamous ad that made many Democrats cringe: “The number of undecided voters could reflect uncertainty about a TV ad Conway launched last weekend regarding Paul’s behavior in the 1980s as a member of a secret society at Baylor University called the NoZe Brotherhood, said University of Louisville political science professor Jasmine Farrier. The ad, which has gotten mixed reaction from many Democrats, raised questions about Paul’s religious beliefs and referred to an anonymous woman who alleged Paul tied her up and forced her to worship a god called ‘Aqua Buddha.’ Paul, a Bowling Green eye surgeon making his first bid for public office, has said the accusations are ‘all lies’ and ‘completely untrue.’ The anonymous woman, who has been quoted by The Washington Post and GQ magazine, has disputed Paul’s assertion.”

One of the disturbing trends in modern politics is how some figures can vehemently deny doing something while they’re still doing it. (I think I blame the audacity of “I did not have sexual relations with that woman.”) Jack Conway’s defense, when local media asked him about the fallout of the ad was, “When asked about any fallout from Sunday’s debate or the recent attack ad about Rand Paul’s college days, Conway says he’s not questioning Paul’s faith.”

The ad text, once again:

Mr. CONWAY: I’m Jack Conway. I approve this message.

Narrator: Why was Rand Paul a member of a secret society that called the Holy Bible a hoax that was banned for mocking Christianity and Christ? Why did Rand Paul once tie a woman up, tell her to bow down before a false idol and say his god was Aqua Buddha? Why does Rand Paul now want to end all federal faith-based initiatives, and even end the deduction for religious charities? Why are there so many questions about Rand Paul?

The whole ad is asking questions about Paul’s faith, and then Conway has the stones to add, “In the days remaining he wants to focus on the issues, especially jobs.”

And then the earth opened up, the Devil himself popped out of the crevice, saluted Conway for his brazen style, and carried him away. Okay, not really, but that’s what should have happened.

Well, presuming the ad is in part responsible for the narrower margin, we can thank the people of Kentucky for providing all of us a valuable lesson. Unsubstantiated charges and attacks on an opponent’s religion — particularly the suggestion that he’s not a real Christian, or that his true faith is strange or alien or perhaps some sort of pagan blasphemy — always work.  And thank goodness for us, huh? Finally, in Jack Conway, we have a candidate who is willing to stand up to the menace of Aquabuddhists. If there’s anything American stands for, it’s looking at strange, perhaps entirely fictitious religions and declaring their practitioners unfit for public office. Isolating and demonizing people of different religious beliefs has a long and proud history from Armenia to the Balkans to Constantinople. If Jack Conway is this tough on Aquabuddhists, imagine how tough he’ll be on Mormons.

I hope you’re proud, Democrats. Way to go.

From this morning’s Jolt:

Go Away, Conway.

It’s never fun to lose a race. And at this point in the election cycle, many, many candidates know, deep down, it’s coming. When they look in the mirror, first thing in the morning, unshaven and bleary-eyed from the previous late night’s increasingly tense meetings and increasingly desperate fundraising calls . . . the reflection whispers that they’re going to lose on November 2.

(SPOILER ALERT: Among those experiencing a variation of this slow-motion doom right now are Joe Sestak, Lee Fisher, Russ Feingold, Dan Onorato, Dan Maes, and Charlie Crist. Carl Paladino does not experience this; every morning his reflection stares back and him and cackles madly, and after a moment he joins in.)

Also probably under a perpetual black cloud is Jack Conway, allegedly once a Democrat with a promising future. Kentucky hasn’t been a particularly warm environment for Democrats in recent years, but he’s been state attorney general, and that’s usually a natural stepping stone to higher office, helping to build a resume full of busting gangs and abusive nursing homes and whatnot. And after winning the primary, he’s handed an absolute gift; one day after winning the GOP nomination, Rand Paul offers a long, thoughtful, philosophically complicated and multilayered answer on the value of the Civil Rights Act. When asked whether one supports the CRA, the correct answer for anyone ever aspiring to high office is “Yes.”

And Jack Conway is going to be known as the guy who didn’t merely fail to beat Rand Paul; he has never come that close! Somewhere Martha Coakley is turning to Creigh Deeds and scoffing, “even I could have gotten some traction with that.”

When you know you’re going down, you can go down in one of three ways. One, you can lose with dignity; try to preserve the possibility of some future bid. You can also throw caution to the wind; there was something liberated about Bob Dole in his final weeks of the campaign, and he actually closed some ground. Or you can just attempt to burn the place down on your way out.

Jack Conway has decided to follow that last path, offering a late attack ad that basically suggests that Rand Paul is not merely not a Christian, but such a weirdo with so many troubling stories in his past that he might as well be a member of the Hale-Bopp Comet Suicide Cult. Of course, the ad conflates Paul’s garden-variety wariness about faith-based initiatives, fearing the hand of the state meddling in matters from above, with a variety of outlandish, unverified tales from anonymous stories.

. . . William Jacobson, writing at Legal Insurrection, observes, “Democrat Jack Conway’s advertisement asserting that there are ‘questions’ about Republican Rand Paul’s Christianity, raises in interesting issue. Substitute Barack Obama for Rand Paul, tweak a few of the allegations, and you would have an advertisement as to which the mainstream media and left-wing blogosphere would scream ‘Racist!!!’ and ‘Islamophobic!!!’ But it’s Rand Paul, so there is a mix of opinion on the left, with many taking the view that all is fair in politics, including questioning someone’s Christianity. The Internet has a long memory.”

Obi-Wan checks in, briefly:

“So think about it. As we discussed, the Democrats had exactly two pieces of good news in September. First, there were some polls putting Barbara Boxer ahead by 6, 7 or 8 (L.A. Times/USC, PPIC, CNN/Time). Second, there was a poll in Kentucky showing Rand Paul only ahead by 2.

“First, Rasmussen puts Paul up by 11; if he’s had a slide, it’s negligible. Now SurveyUSA has Boxer ahead by 3 and Rasmussen has her ahead by 4. Boxer’s back in the margin of error and even when she got some separation, we had some doubts about the samples.

“Boxer’s numbers never really moved from the mid-to-high 40s. She just bombarded Fiorina.”

Now Fiorina’s up on the air statewide again, with heavy NRSC backing.

Obi Wan continues, “The day after Politico, the Washington Post and New York Times do their third or fourth round of ’the Democrats are surging back,’ out come the Gallup numbers. Bad timing, fellas . . . But, wait, Rasmussen had the GOP lead down to three. Was he picking up something or was it just Sunday-night polling on a three-day average? (Michael Barone, who is maybe the smartest political guy in the history of smart political guys, has parsed the Gallup and Rasmussen disparity.)

“So, oscillations happen. Let us pay attention though, over the next week. Is there going to be some pullback in the GOP numbers? Doesn’t it have to happen at some point?

“Another question: is the Dem strategy of ‘going negative’ in so many states actually working? Or has it come way too early and is now dissipating? We saw that in the big buys against Bob McDonnell, Chris Christie, and Scott Brown. Changed the numbers but only temporarily.

“Also, Republicans need to do a couple of things. More on that later.

“And is Dick Morris right? Is the real danger GOP ‘under-confidence’? Just in case he’s right, will somebody please try some ads against Chuck Schumer? His numbers are far from impressive and the guy running against him is credible. Image a Schumer-free Senate.”

(I can hear readers murmuring . . . “Wait a minute. I thought Obi-Wan might be Dick Morris or Michael Barone.”)

An interesting new rule of thumb from Nate Silver:

Senate candidates who have a lead of between 6 and 9 points in the simple polling average, with 30 days to go until the election — about where Mr. Toomey’s lead stands now — are undefeated since 1998.

That is a fantastic way of looking at things for Pat Toomey, as well as for Roy Blunt in Missouri, Rand Paul in Kentucky, Kelly Ayotte in New Hampshire, Ron Johnson in Wisconsin, Marco Rubio in Florida, and Dan Coats in Indiana.

Oh, and John Boozman in Arkansas, John Hoeven in North Dakota, and incumbents Richard Burr in North Carolina and David Vitter in Louisiana, but . . . come on. Those races have been effectively over for a while.

It’s ominous news for Carly Fiorina in California and Christine O’Donnell in Delaware. As for the rest of the big Senate races — Nevada, Washington, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, and West Virginia . . . well, we’ll have to wait and see.

The DSCC cancels their advertising buys in Kentucky that would have helped their man Jack Conway against the GOP’s Rand Paul.

Of course, it’s not over until it’s over, etcetera, etcetera.

But let’s face it. If the DSCC doesn’t see much point in advertising, then it means they don’t put much stock in that poll that had Paul up by 2. And if that one’s an outlier, then the other ones putting Paul up 7 to 15 offer a more realistic look at the electorate.

So shortly after midnight, October 1, the Campaign Spot Decision Desk can now project Republican Rand Paul the winner of the Kentucky Senate race. 

I exaggerate. Slightly.

UPDATE: A reader in the television business is telling me that the DSCC, recognizing the morale and narrative impact that the cancellation is having, is scrambling to re-buy the ad time. So how much are they willing to spend?

CNN has some new poll numbers out in some key Senate races; earlier in the day, they touted them as being “surprising.”

They’re surprising because they’re different from other polls in these races. And they’re different, I suspect, because much of the other polling is among likely voters, while the guys at CNN still haven’t applied a likely-voter screen.

They find Kentucky tied. Most of the other polls of likely voters put Rand Paul up by a healthy margin.

In Florida, they find Rubio 36 percent, Crist 34 percent, Meek 24 percent. I’m sure the Rubio folks will warmly greet any poll that has them in the lead, but again, I can’t help but suspect that a likely-voter screen would weed out a lot of unmotivated Democrats and independents.

Finally, in California, Barbara Boxer leads Carly Fiorina, 48 percent to 44 percent. But there are some quite odd numbers in the internals. Boxer is winning men, 47 percent to 46 percent. Boxer is winning independents, 45 percent to 40 percent. Perhaps most strangely, 18 percent of self-identified conservatives are backing Boxer; 77 percent back Fiorina. Meanwhile, 88 percent of liberals back Boxer, only 5 percent back Fiorina.

UPDATE: For contrast, Survey USA’s most recent California poll had conservatives backing Fiorina 87 percent to 8 percent.

My problem with PPP’s North Carolina poll is replicated in their Kentucky poll, showing Rand Paul tied with Jack Conway, with 43 percent each.

In 2008, exit polls showed Kentucky’s electorate splitting 47 percent Democrat, 38 percent Republican, 15 percent independent. Today’s PPP poll splits 52 percent Democrat, 37 percent Republican, 11 percent independent. (They also have a slightly more female sample than 2008; in the last presidential election it split 54–46; in their sample it splits 55–45.)

Democrats will make up a significantly larger share of the electorate in what is largely regarded as a good year for the GOP? I suppose it is possible that the controversy surrounding Rand Paul’s remarks might drive some Republicans to stay home. But enough for a five percent swing when there’s a consensus among pollsters that Obama’s approval rating is pretty darn low in the Bluegrass State? Color me skeptical.

I don’t doubt that Rand Paul will have a tougher time this year than your average Republican. But I have a hard time believing that he’s going to single-handedly repel GOP voters eager to send a message to Washington.

A primary bounce that’s good for the GOP:

Rand Paul, riding the momentum of his big Republican Primary win on Tuesday, now posts a 25-point lead over Democrat Jack Conway in Kentucky’s U.S. Senate race, but there’s a lot of campaigning to go.

A primary bounce that’s bad for the GOP:

Democratic Congressman Joe Sestak’s victory over longtime Senator Arlen Specter for his party’s nomination Tuesday has given him a bounce in support in Pennsylvania’s general election for U.S. Senate. The latest Rasmussen Reports statewide telephone survey of Likely Voters shows Sestak picking up 46 percent support over Republican nominee Pat Toomey’s 42 percent.

From the Thursday edition of Morning Jolt:

He Should Be Ready for Rand-dumb Questions

Well, that didn’t take long. For a long while I thought that the reason we were supposed to not like Rand Paul was because he was crazy and because his father resembles Ray Walston circa “My Favorite Martian”. But it took less than 24 hours after his primary victory for the mainstream media to determine that perhaps he has problems on the issue of race: “Paul has suggested in the past — and been attacked for suggesting — that the federal government has no place regulating private business decisions, even on issues like race and accomodations for the disabled, and was pressed on the question — three times — on NPR just now: “What I’ve always said is, I’m opposed to institutional racism, and I would have — if I was alive at the time, I think — had the courage to march with Martin Luther King to overturn institutional racism, ad I see no place in our soc for institutional racism,” he said in response to a first question about the act.”

[It’s the Politico, they’re too cool and buzz-worthy to spell-check “accommodations” or write out the words ‘and’ or ‘society.’]

Okay, fine, I’ll quote Allahpundit: “I don’t like to go back-to-back on the same subject but a hot rumor hit Twitter as the last post was being published that Paul told NPR he would have voted against the 1964 CRA. (Much like certain Democrats who are still serving in the Senate did.) As you’ll see, it’s not true. The reporter, smelling blood, badgers him about it, but Paul never quite gives him a straight answer. And he qualifies his response with enough virtue – he opposes institutional racism, would have marched with MLK, likes a lot of what was in the CRA – that there’s really no wound inflicted here. His reservations about the law have to do not with the ends but with the means of federal compulsion; he wants business owners to serve everyone but clearly prefers using boycotts and local laws to pressure them. It’s not a question of being pro- or anti-discrimination, in other words, it’s a question of how federalism and civil-rights enforcement mesh. The left’s going to give him plenty of grief for that – expect questions soon about whether he would have voted to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment – but the “closet Klansman” narrative that NPR’s going for here is D.O.A.”

Doug Mataconis, writing at Below the Beltway: “I doubt that this story is over. The left will try to pin Paul as a racist, which is absurd, and the press will ask him the question again. Here’s hoping he’s ready for it this time.”

The first, and least surprising, win of the night is Rand Paul. “Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson has conceded Kentucky’s Republican Senate primary to Rand Paul.”

I noted yesterday that Rand Paul is not his father, or at least not quite his father, in terms of foreign policy. If Rand Paul is an isolationist, or a skeptic of current tactics in the war on terror, he wisely focuses on the elements of nation-building most likely to furrow the brow of the average voter. His tone is measured, almost casual. His style wears easier that his father’s strident combativeness.

I’d also note that while a lot of hawkish conservatives recoiled at the thought of Ron Paul as commander-in-chief, the Paul-ian vision is not so unusual or outlandish that it doesn’t deserve a hearing in the halls of Congress. Even if the Ronpaulians drove me batty during the days of the 2008 campaign, they deserve a seat at the table and a chance to make their case.

Also note that for a fringe candidate, Rand Paul has a strange habit of beating all Democrats in head-to-head matchups…

Sometimes I’m really right (Massachusetts special Senate election) and sometimes I’m not. I see things similarly to John Miller.

My sense of how things play out today:

Pennsylvania Senate primary, Democrats: Joe Sestak 52 percent, Specter 48 percent. I’m less confident of this one than I was a few days ago. Almost all of the momentum is on Sestak’s side, the crowds for Specter’s events have been small, and the White House is reportedly preparing for a Specter defeat.

But the polling shows a high number of undecided voters – at least 10 percent in most polls -  and I wonder if those folks just stay home. Sestak’s had plenty of time to make the sale to these folks, and has advertised heavily. He’s caught up close to Specter, but you would figure in this environment, running against an 80-year-old five-term incumbent who was a Republican up until about a year ago, he should be able to roar ahead. I’ll stick with my original prediction, but if Specter ends up eking out a victory by the skin of his teeth, thanks to a better organization, I won’t be surprised. And, of course, Pat Toomey will be pleased.

Arkansas Senate Primary, Democrats: Blanche Lincoln 49 percent, Bill Halter 47 percent, Other 4 percent. This one is rather moot, as it will probably go to a runoff, but I think that Lincoln is safe in a primary this year. Again, Halter’s had a lot of time to close the sale in an anti-incumbent year, and still trails most polls.

Arkansas Senate Primary, Republicans: Rep. John Boozman way ahead of everyone with 47 percent; he and Gilbert Baker are in a runoff.

Kentucky Senate Primary, Democrats: Daniel Mongiardo over Jack Conway. Yeah, you don’t care about this one.

Kentucky Senate Primary, Republicans: Rand Paul over Trey Grayson. Won’t be close, something like 56 percent to 44 percent.

Pennsylvania’s 12th District Special House Election: Republican Tim Burns over Mark Critz by a hair. I feel more confident knowing that Cook Political Report’s Dave Wasserman is making the same call. There’s more enthusiasm on the Republican side, but Critz is running in a district with a lot of Democrats. Independents appear to be breaking pretty heavily to Burns. Critz hasn’t been that bad a candidate, but he’s in a district where Obama’s approval is low, Pelosi is disdained, the health care bill is hated, cap-and-trade is seen as a job killer, and unemployment is high. What is he supposed to talk about? What is he supposed to campaign on?

Looking ahead to tomorrow’s Kentucky GOP Senate primary, Patrick Ruffini asks, “Does Rand Paul’s success mean that national security is no longer a voting issue for the GOP primary base?”

If Rand Paul is in agreement with his father on foreign-policy issues, he obscures it well. Back in February, the Paul father-and-son duo did an interview with Wolf Blitzer, and the CNN host fished for a contradiction in their foreign-policy views. But if the younger Paul has an isolationist streak, it manifests itself in a much more soft-spoken skepticism of particular tactics, expressed in a way that would leave your average hawk nodding:

The most important thing that the federal government does is take care of our national security, bar none . . . It’s something that we can’t privatize, it’s something that we need the national government to do . . . It’s not enough to just say our national security is threatened, we need to have a full-scale debate on when our national security is threatened . . . The actual decision on troop deployment is the prerogative of the commander-in-chief and not necessarily of Congress . . . In the overall picture, we have to ask the important questions. For example, it troubles me and many veterans that I talk to that we’re paying the Taliban. We have a works program for the Taliban. We pay them $8,000 per fighter not to fight. We pay the Taliban to take their weapons back from them, and I had a Marine tell me recently, here in Kentucky tell me, he says, “Look, I’m a Marine, I’m trained to take weapons from our enemies, I’m not trained to pay for them.”

When discussing national defense, Paul avoids the now-moot question whether we should have invaded Afghanistan and Iraq and hits red-meat points: a moratorium on visas from about ten rogue nations, support for military tribunals at GITMO, and a preference for congressional declaration of war.

Paul’s campaign manager indicated he’s not for immediately pulling out all of the troops of either Iraq or Afghanistan: “He is not for wholesale withdrawal. Rand has advocated better defining the mission, but now that we’re there we have to win.”

I suspect that if Rand Paul had articulated his doubts about either mission in his father’s unparalleled blunt style, Trey Grayson might have been more able to paint him as out of the GOP mainstream. But the younger Paul sounds like a cautious and wary skeptic, not a forthright isolationist.