KENTUCKY’S
KING
to victory. “I had locked up establishment support,” he recalls. “I
did all the right things.”
Ironically, if it weren’t for McConnell’s tireless work attending
Rotary Club functions and hotel
luncheons across the state, building up the party infrastructure
and filling Rolodexes, Grayson
might have had a Senate career.
Bu t the minority leader had developed the Republican brand into
such a force that it had become
big enough to invite an anti-establishment insurgency.
When tea party favorite Rand
Paul jumped into the GOP’s Senate primary, he didn’t just campaign against Grayson. He ran
against McConnell and Washington, and — shockingly — thumped
Grayson, 59 percent to 35 percent. On that election night in
May 2010, McConnell called his
candidate to offer his condolences
— and offer a bit of advice about
defeat. “It was important to accept it gracefully,” Grayson says
McConnell told him.
McConnell certainly has. He
traveled to Paducah to attend an
actual tea party hosted by the
county GOP on Broadway Street to
rally support for Paul in the general election. Since Paul won the
HUFFINGTON
08.11.13
Senate seat, it’s been the senior
senator who has made the greatest
concessions to his junior colleague
— whether by becoming a supporter of legalizing industrial hemp
or hiring Paul’s right-hand man
to run his own 2014 reelection
campaign. The joke among Washington insiders now is if you want
to know where McConnell stands
on an issue, just ask Paul. Quite a
turnaround — McConnell’s gone
from reformist, good-government
Republican to Ayn Rand fanboy.
Rand’s a Republican. The rest
doesn’t matter to McConnell.
“One of the things he always
talked about — you need to stick
together,” explains Kentucky state
Senate President Robert Stivers II
(R). “Sit down and work through
problems. But always stick together. Stay with your team.”
In Kentucky, McConnell has, in
a sense, created a GOP Frankenstein — letting loose a beast he
can no longer control. The Republicans taking up all the oxygen in
the state’s capital city of Frankfort
aren’t looking for ways to help the
state assuage its deepest and most
chronic deficiencies. They’re too
busy seeing United Nations conspiracies in education standards
and approving bills that would
supposedly nullify future federal
gun regulations. The Kentucky
Republican Party has become the