Michael Cooper
NY Times
November 2, 2010
The Tea Party victories by Rand Paul of Kentucky and Marco Rubio of Florida underscored the extent to which Republicans and Democrats alike may have underestimated the power of the Tea Party, a loosely-affiliated, at times ill-defined, coalition of grass-roots libertarians and disaffected Republicans.
In exit polls, four in 10 voters expressed support for the Tea Party Movement.In the case of Mr. Rubio and Mr. Paul, both of the new Senators-elect challenged far more established Republicans to win their primaries. Mr. Paul beat a Republican who was supported by Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, and Mr. Rubio’s spirited run forced Gov. Charlie Crist of Florida, a moderate Republican who was initially favored to win the Senate seat, to bolt from the Republican Party and run as an independent. And Democrats initially considered both so conservative — some Democrats called them “extreme” — as to be unelectable.
The primary victory of Mr. Paul, the son of Representative Ron Paul, a Texas Republican who ran for president on a libertarian platform in 2008, initially lifted the hopes of Democrats, who believed they could capitalize on some of Mr. Paul’s outside-the-mainstream views to help them win the Kentucky Senate seat. At first it looked like it might work.
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