A Few Words About Fancy Farm

I just saw video of the speeches from Jack Conway and Rand Paul at Fancy Farm last Saturday. Conway really kicked Rand Paul's butt. Paul is a pretty weak public speaker who wasn't saying much of anything about anything. He wasn't talking about his own ideas, he wasn't talking much about the Obama administration, and he wasn't talking much about Jack Conway. Pretty much all Paul did was recite the number of pages in the tax code and federal regulations and recite the names of President Obama, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi.

It was lame and fell flat.

The question, though, is whether any of this makes any difference though. Political scientists have argued for years that campaign managers, political consultants and ad agencies have become the principle figures in political campaigns rather than candidates. Rand Paul's campaign takes this one step further. Given that Paul has by-passed the Republican campaign infrastructure, his campaign is being driven primarily by Fox News.

Conway referred to Paul as trying to be the "prince of cable tv."

It's more accurate to view Rand Paul as the "puppet of cable tv."

I'll be volunteering and giving money to the Jack Conway campaign

Rasmussen on Conway/Rand Paul Race

The Rasmussen polling organization came out today with a poll showing Rand Paul eight points ahead of Jack Conway in the Kentucky state senate race. Rand Paul's staff was probably more cheered, but they can't feel really secure until Rasmussen has them 28 points up. That's because Rasmussen has developed such a Republican tilt in his polling that he can't be counted on to accurately gauge support for Democratic candidates. PPP polling had Rand Paul and Jack Conway tied. My assumption would be that the race is somewhere between tied and Paul being two points ahead.

Jack Conway Did Several Things Well During Forum

Democratic Senate candidate Jack Conway did several things well during the candidate's forum with Rand Paul. If he could only find a more exciting, charismatic way to do them though. I'm going to focus on one idea here--the idea of locating oneself in Kentucky.

At the beginning of his prepared remarks, Conway did a good job of locating himself in the context of first his family, then Union County where his father is from, and finally the general population of Kentucky.

It's too bad that Conway didn't contrast himself to Rand Paul on this point though.

Paul is an eye surgeon in Bowling Green. But I've never heard him make a reference to Bowling Green, Warren County, or Western Kentucky. There's a reason for this. Rand Paul's primarily an ideologue who locates himself in relation to debates within libertarian circles on things like the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the justification or lack of justification for government regulation, and the constitutionality of the income tax. It's in these kinds of extremist circles and their hypothetical debates where Paul feels most at home. It used to be conservatives who were most rooted in the politics of specific geographical locations and the traditions of those locations. But Rand Paul isn't connected to traditions and he's not connected to traditions and Jack Conway should have hammered this home in the process of locating himself within Kentucky places and traditions.