A commenter says [my emphasis below — Dymphna]:

The Republican party was not the active participant in the routing of the Democrats as many want to believe. I do not give them any credit for the election’s outcome. It was the voters and particularly those motivated to stop the willful destruction of the country who were the agents of the change. You could say that the Republican party was a passive participant and that those elected were shoved from behind by an infuriated electorate. Now that they have been thrust into a position to do something, will they act? Or will they remain passive?

This is a succinct summing-up of the sensibilities of so many angry voters, including the Baron and me. The only difference between the two of us regarding our concerns for the future is that I still believe in “hope… the thing with feathers”. However the Baron has discerned, with sadly few (and not enough) exceptions, that the only feathers to be seen in the halls of Congress are those of vultures. Not coincidentally, Cathartes aura flocks are variously called wakes, committees, venues, kettles, or volts. How fitting is that?

Here is one angry Senator, complaining back in 2012 about the lack of integrity to be found in the Senate:

Senator/Doctor Paul, is the son of another Senator/Doctor — Ron Paul. In other words, the good news is that neither he nor his father is or ever has been a lawyer. That gives them both a leg up among voters.

Paul père is famously isolationist; Paul fils is not. He is the new generation Southern Republican: articulate, consistent, and one of the few of the anointed whose political philosophy is in alignment with the Tea Party populists. This has not endeared him to the Republican National Committee, but since he wins elections in Kentucky the RNC needs him more than vice versa.

Here is a thoughtful essay that begins by addressing the problems he and other Republicans face in their new reign. If Senator Paul has his way, a new term will be applied to GOP ideas regarding foreign policy, one you’re likely to hear more frequently as we move on towards the next (sigh) presidential election:

Conservative Foreign Policy Realism

Freshly ascendant, Republicans face a triple bind.

• First, though energized, the GOP lacks principled cohesion. Not even self-described conservatives are in firm agreement on how best to conceptualize — much less approach — key issues.
• Second, Tuesday’s astonishing triumph puts extreme pressure on Republicans to coalesce prematurely around ideas and policies that seem the easiest to mobilize from an institutional standpoint.
• Third, the one area where Republicans diverge most broadly is the one where they stand to regain the most of their damaged reputation: foreign policy.

That’s the lead paragraph in a new essay from the Right about Senator Paul.

Then, In searching for a final map of the Senate Republican victories on Tuesday, this popped up:

The # 1 Most Interesting Person in Politics.

Whaddya know?! Left-leaning Politico chose Paul for first of fifty important personages, a list which includes the Pope:

A civil liberties-loving peacenik with millennial appeal? Who’s willing to show up even at a midsummer NAACP convention to talk to a near-empty room? There’s no doubt Rand Paul is turning out to be a different kind of Republican, bringing libertarian — and contrarian — ideas to the national stage in a novel and calculated blurring of Washington’s otherwise rigid ideological battle lines.

Paul, the 51-year-old ophthalmologist son of libertarian gadfly Ron Paul, has made a concerted move from the political fringes over the past year; now he’s on a mission to remake his party, too. The GOP must “evolve, adapt or die” in the wake of two successive national defeats, the Kentucky senator insists. And, more than any other potential Republican presidential contender, he is taking his own advice.

Paul’s ideas offer an utterly different Republican [he should have said “Libertarian”] approach to questions of equity, education and fairness in America’s treatment of minorities, for instance — a post-partisan theme he has emphasized by teaming up with Cory Booker, the African-American former mayor of Newark turned freshman Democratic senator. Paul’s instinctive libertarianism, meanwhile, plays well with America’s pro-pot, pro-gay marriage younger generation, and the senator is aggressively wooing free-market millionaires for political support (and donations) in traditionally liberal Silicon Valley.

Notice the smooth move there — aligning Rand Paul with the “pro-pot, pro-gay marriage” voting block as though he were in agreement with Politico on those issues. He’s not in their camp; Paul is a civil libertarian whose philosophy of government is “Leave Me Alone”. You can see him explain that very briefly to an entitled, angry young man at Howard University, here.

So think again, y’all.

For more on his point of view, visit You Tube and type in a search for Rand Paul. Skip the boring TV segments where hostile MSM jornolists bite his ankles while he refuses to rise to their bait.

An interesting man.