The Weekend Interview with Rand Paul and Roy Blunt: The Grand New—and Old—Party

By MATTHEW KAMINSKI

A 'Crazy' Reformer

Bowling Green, Ky.

'I don't plan on being bashful," says the next junior senator from Kentucky with an ever-so-mild drawl. "I'm not someone who's sort of still trying to figure out what I believe in. I don't think I'm really open to having Washington change me."

The morning after the election, Rand Paul's suite at the Holiday Inn is littered with Mello Yello and Dr. Pepper cans, a day-old fruit plate and mostly-finished plastic cups of wine. He's been up since before dawn, hitting the national morning news shows, and by 8 a.m. his voice is hoarse and his face looks drawn. In a few hours, Mr. Paul will be off on vacation, "at an undisclosed location," but not before he can send his future colleagues a message. He may be the lone pure tea party stalwart to enter the Senate, but he represents the new zeitgeist on the American right. Don't count on him to sit quietly in the back benches.

His first speech on the floor, he promises, will be on "the out-of-control deficit." But since, "as Mark Twain said about the weather, that everybody is talking about it and nobody is doing anything about it," Mr. Paul plans in his first legislative act to introduce a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced federal budget. And, he adds, he'll force a vote on it, too: "People don't like to vote against something that's so incredibly popular." He also wants to look hard at steep cuts in defense and entitlements, the largest chunks of federal outlays, and in one swoop antagonize many Democratic and Republican lawmakers.

Next on his docket are term limits. He jokes that the Soviet Politburo saw more turnover than Capitol Hill. He also wants to "sunset" all regulations until approved by Congress. "Let them write all the regulations they want," he says. "They do anyway, but in two years they're gone unless they get voted on by Congress."

Another tea party favorite is the Read the Bills Act, which he's keen to move on. He wants a "one-day waiting period for every 20 pages" of a proposed bill. I must betray a smile. "People laugh," he says. "But they need smaller bills and they need time to read bills." This is supposed to be an incentive.

He says that the public stands behind this reformist agenda. Tuesday's Republican sweep, he says, reflects "concerns about the debt and . . . an out-of-touch Washington."

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Terry Shoffner

Fresh faces in the Senate: Roy Blunt from Missouri (left), and Rand Paul from Kentucky.

Yet other prominent tea party candidates—Sharron Angle, Christine O'Donnell and Ken Buck—failed in their Senate bids. Mr. Paul doesn't blame the tea party, or anyone else, for their losses, except to note that the election in Nevada was all about Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid's "power of incumbency." Other new faces who'll join Mr. Paul in the Senate include businessman Ron Johnson in Wisconsin, who got his start at a tea party rally but didn't embrace the movement to the same degree. Marco Rubio served in the Florida state house for nearly a decade and considers himself above all a Republican.

Mr. Paul puts "the movement" (in his words) above partisan loyalties. "I'm somebody who believes that the issues are more important than the party," he says. "People in the tea party will tell you that the movement is about equal parts chastisement to both parties. You'll often hear that Republicans doubled the debt and Democrats tripled the debt."

Rand Paul comes with softer edges than his father, Ron Paul, who first won a seat in Congress in 1976. The difference was apparent on election night. At the convention hall next to the Holiday Inn, here in Mr. Paul's hometown, Rep. Paul introduced his son by Skype, hailing him as a politician "who stands for something" and is supported by a movement that is vigorous because "it is outside the party." No note of compromise with the Republican establishment there.

Father and son, age 47, have different styles. Asked what he wanted to do in Washington in a Wednesday morning television interview, the senator-elect said that his kids were hoping to meet the Obama girls. He has made other concessions to the mainstream. He now avoids his dad's talk of shuttering the Federal Reserve and abolishing the income tax. In a bigger shift from his campaign pledge to end earmarks, he tells me that they are a bad "symbol" of easy spending but that he will fight for Kentucky's share of earmarks and federal pork, as long as it's doled out transparently at the committee level and not parachuted in in the dead of night. "I will advocate for Kentucky's interests," he says.

So you're not a crazy libertarian? "Not that crazy," he cracks.

Soon after his surprise primary win this spring, Mr. Paul nearly self-destructed. He mused about the constitutionality of the 1964 Civil Rights Act on MSNBC, looking extreme and, to some, racist. He then cut back on national interviews, regrouped and duked it out in a hard-hitting campaign. In the end he won by 12 points over state Attorney General Jack Conway.

The Republican leadership, which shunned him, now makes nice. One of the first congratulatory calls came from senior Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate leader. Though Mr. McConnell backed the other candidate in the primary, Mr. Paul says that "people will be surprised that we actually get along and do many things together." As for the GOP leadership, "They're all saying they want new blood up there. They think that I'll be a refreshing face. They might just be being polite, but I take them sincerely."

Mr. Paul says he thinks that Republicans, tea party enthusiasts and even Democrats can make this all work if they form creative "coalitions" behind the changes that the public seems to demand. He brings a message of government reform and could yet find his niche in the chamber. Alternatively, Mr. Paul may end up short of friends, with many a lonely night ahead.

Senator Earmark

Washington

By Thursday morning, fresh off his victory in the Missouri Senate race, Roy Blunt fields calls at his corner suite in the Rayburn House office building. In the reception area is a flag that flew above the Capitol his first week as majority whip in January 2003, with a warm note attached from then-Speaker Denny Hastert. Photos with George Bush and Nancy Reagan hang on the walls. Someone from the maintenance staff stops by to discuss the congressman's move, after 14 years in the House, to the other side of the Hill.

What's different about the next job? "Don't know," Mr. Blunt says.

As much as Rand Paul is a tea party revolutionary, Mr. Blunt is a Republican stalwart on the Hill. He isn't the only incoming senator with long experience in Washington to make the jump over to the Senate in this election. Pennsylvania's Pat Toomey, Ohio's Rob Portman and Indiana's Dan Coats served in Congress before doing something else and then winning their seats this time around.

Mr. Blunt, who is 60, took no detours. His résumé includes his 10-year stint as a powerbroker during the party's previous House majority. He was right-hand man to former Majority Leader Tom DeLay and in his own right a powerful dispenser of patronage and influence. Mr. Blunt engineered tough votes for the 2003 prescription drug benefit and, in the last months of the Bush term, the financial bailout. He was an effective whip. To others, he epitomizes the transactional K Street politician who uses the prerogatives of office to protect incumbents—hence the nickname "Mr. Earmark."

In other words, Mr. Blunt seems like just the kind of career politician that the tea party movement was created to devour. A slate of tea partiers challenged him in the primaries. Even his Democratic opponent campaigned against him as "a Washington insider" and "Mr. Bailout." Mr. Blunt won the open seat by 14 points.

Relaxed, in a open-collar blue shirt, Mr. Blunt starts off by pointing out that he was a hard budget hawk before it became popular. "I led the only fight we had in 10 years to cut the mandatory spending programs," he says, referring to the congressional budget debate in late 2005. As whip, he recalls no one ever called to thank him. Republicans only wanted him to save their pet projects. "I think the country's come a long ways in these five years," he adds.

And how has he changed in the last five years?

He waves the query away with, "Hey, well, I've been a pretty conservative member of congress," and then he changes the subject.

His opponent, Robin Carnahan, didn't let the past slide. Her campaign portrayed Mr. Blunt as a Team DeLay insider overly cozy with lobbyists. His family was dragged in. His son was governor of Missouri; his daughter is a lobbyist, as is his second wife, Abigail. "Roy is the life of the party in D.C.," went an ad from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. "His wife? Great! A powerful tobacco lobbyist."

The senator-elect says that the attacks failed to sway Missouri voters because the prominent Carnahan family has been tied to politics for three generations, even longer than his. "I was the first Blunt ever elected to anything," he adds, while Ms. Carnahan's grandfather served in the House.

Among free-marketeers on the right, Mr. Blunt is remembered for his role in the Republican leadership that rebuffed President Bush's push to reform Social Security. He has no regrets. "I'm not sure the country was ready for that at the time," he says.

Ask Mr. Blunt what he learned from the DeLay experience in Congress—which ended up with the Republicans losing the majority in 2006—and he says that the party needs to make sure it "communicates well" with an electorate newly engaged by the tea party. Looking back, he says the loss in 2006 was mostly about an unpopular war in Iraq started by an unpopular president. "I don't think a lot at that point was spending, though I think we spent too much."

In that race, voters "gave the Democrats a chance," he says. "I think they now decided the Democrats were worse than Republicans. But they're just hoping that the Republicans are better than the Republicans were. I do too."

He calls the new conservative grass-roots enthusiasm "a huge benefit for Republicans." For every seat lost by a Christine O'Donnell, "you could find four seats in the House or Senate" the Republicans picked up thanks to the tea partiers.

Mr. Blunt says Republicans are happy to embrace most tea party causes. He'd back a balanced budget amendment and endorses term limits—à la Rand Paul. And earmarks? Mr. Blunt pauses. "Rand doesn't agree with his dad on that. His dad is a leading advocate of earmarks on this side of the building. I'll let the Pauls work that out and then I'll see where they come down." We share a laugh over that.

The elephant, as it were, in the room is how well the Republicans can get along with tea partiers who are energized by their ideas more than the party. Cue Mr. Blunt. "I'll repeat again: communication, so they understand. You got to keep talking to people who have these expectations so they understand what the fight is about at the moment." He adds that Sens. Rubio and Paul are "great" to have in Washington, but "I think everything will not turn out the way they think it will."

With our half-hour up, Mr. Blunt stands in mid-question, claps me on the back without offering a hand in farewell, and says, "See ya."

Mr. Kaminski is a member of the Journal's editorial board.

via online.wsj.com