Nothing better illustrates this than the journey of Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky., from outcast to party leader over the past four months. As Bloomberg's Brian Faler reports, back in March, when Bunning attempted to scuttle an otherwise routine extension of unemployment benefits, his own party renounced him. But times have changed.

Now, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky is leading the fight against the aid extension with the support of almost every Republican.

"Our party caught up with the people Bunning was already with," said New Hampshire Republican Judd Gregg.

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At the Republican Party headquarters in Russellville, Paul took the podium. Dimpled and handsome, 47 years old, with boyishly tousled salt-and-pepper hair, he surveyed the audience, a crowd of mostly retirement-age GOP stalwarts. Then, in a casual and articulate drawl, Paul committed an act of heresy that would have once doomed any Kentucky Republican: He attacked the state's senior senator, the minority leader, Mitch McConnell. The oratory opened with a display of subtle rhetorical agility worthy of Mark Antony.

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If conditions stay extremely favorable to the GOP, then it's very possible that control of the House of Representatives could flip. The universe of House seats that could be in serious play is larger than the margin between the two parties. On the other hand, the economy could start sinking again and it still probably wouldn't change control of the Senate. No matter how bad a year is ahead for Democrats, the structural constraints of senatorial elections make it virtually impossible for a change in party control -- especially given some recent developments.

Republicans need to pick up 10 seats in the Senate to install Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., as the majority leader. Even with the assumption that they knock off every possible target, and hold all of their vulnerable seats, it still looks like they'll need a wild card or two. And those seem to be slipping away.

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One race that's worth a new look is the contest for the seat of retiring Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky. GOP leaders pushed Bunning out last year in favor of the candidate they’d lined up, Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson. The Democrats have a couple of strong possible nominees, but it's a pretty solidly conservative state, and Grayson is an orthodox, if uninteresting, conservative choice. In other words, if it's July 2009, you’re betting on Grayson.

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That may have sounded nuts, but actually, the Capitol and its surrounding office buildings are filled with elevators that only elected members of Congress are allowed to use. By insisting on his right to ride up and down in peace, Bunning did a useful service and brought more widespread attention to one of the weirder perks lawmakers get.

As far as how he spent the rest of his time recently, though, Bunning easily qualified for "This Week in Crazy" honors. For five days, the former Major League Baseball pitcher held federal unemployment benefits hostage while he ranted about the need to find a way to pay for them. The bill that Bunning blocked also provided federal highway projects that employed 2,000 people, increased Medicare reimbursement rates for doctors, and allowed satellite TV operators to carry local channels in some rural areas.

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The first says America is paralyzed by a political system that is too democratic -- too responsive to citizens' whims. This is the religion of almost everyone in the permanent Washington elite, regardless of party. Its canon mixing paeans to noblesse oblige with shrill authoritarianism is most clearly articulated by high priests like the Washington Post's David Broder and the New York Times' Tom Friedman. The former has said democracy threatens to make "official Washington altogether too responsive to public opinion"; the latter dreams of Chinese-style dictatorship.

"One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages," Friedman recently gushed, adding that the chief "advantage" is the ability of despots to "just impose" policies at the barrel of a gun.

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The last couple of days -- with Bunning refusing to allow the Senate to move forward with a bill both parties agreed should pass, and an increasing number of Republicans coming to the floor to defend him -- couldn't have come at a better time for Democrats. Why? Because they're going to have to use the budget reconciliation procedure to finish work on healthcare reform. And the specter of Bunning leading an angry one-man effort to keep the chamber from doing anything makes for a pretty good backdrop from which to argue that the Senate's rules -- including the filibuster -- are easily abused. Reconciliation would let Democrats pass fixes to the healthcare bill with a 51-vote majority.

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But that's not the end of the saga of Jim Bunning that's been unfolding in recent days. The senator has also put a hold on all of President Obama's pending nominees -- several dozen of them, the majority leader's office has said. 

Bunning is the gift that keeps giving to Democrats lately. Ever since Bunning began blocking the unemployment billlast week, Democrats have been working hard to make political hay out of his obstructionism, and to tar his fellow Republicans with it.

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Democrats have spent the day blasting the Kentucky Republican, whose personal filibuster against extending unemployment benefits past Monday's expiration date means about 400,000 Americans are in jeopardy of not getting checks they're entitled to. But the GOP is trying pretty hard to make sure they don't get stuck with the blame for Bunning's antics, either.

Bunning's relationship with Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, also from Kentucky, is extremely hostile. A senior Senate GOP source tells Salon Bunning gave Republicans no advance warning before he launched his stunt last week. McConnell and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., had already agreed on how to move forward with temporary legislation extending unemployment benefits (and other federal spending), but Bunning -- taking advantage of the Senate's sometimes preposterous rules -- objected, blocking the whole thing. The GOP, though, says Reid should have been able to avert the problem in the first place. Instead of passing a tourism bill last week, Republicans say Reid should have filed for cloture on the unemployment extension; that way, Bunning's delay wouldn't have pushed the bill past Monday, and no deadlines would have been missed.

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On Monday, Bunning got in a little confrontation with reporters who were asking him about his decision to block that legislation. He reportedly gave the middle finger to one producer from ABC News, and then he headed to an elevator generally reserved for senators, where he got into an on-camera argument with reporters. Video of that is below. (If you notice, Bunning refers to it as a senators-only elevator, which it is, technically, but reporters and others can always be invited on by a senator, and often are.)

This year will be Bunning's last in the Senate. Fed up with him, and worried that he put what should be a safe seat at risk, Republican leaders -- especially Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell -- put a lot of pressure on him not to run this year.

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While even Bunning’s fellow Republicans dislike him intensely, none of them cares enough about the unemployed to tell him to sit down and shut up. That has been left to the Democrats, who should make Bunning the poster boy of the right-wing filibuster — a symbol of obstructed democracy and discarded humanity.

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Would other looming intra-party ideological throw-downs confirm the Tea Party takeover of the Grand Old Party? We may get an answer to that over the next year. In the race for one of Florida's Senate seats, former state House Speaker Marco Rubio is carrying the right-wing standard against the establishment heavyweight, Gov. Charlie Crist. In California's Senate race, state Assemblyman Chuck DeVore recently earned the conservative stamp of approval -- including the endorsement of Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C. -- over moderate GOP rival Carly Fiorina.

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Senate Republicans, including Texas Sen. John Cornyn, who heads the party's Senate campaign committee, have been actively looking for someone else to run in Bunning's place for some time now. At one point, when the candidate recruiting became public, Bunning even threatened to sue the National Republican Senatorial Committee if they supported a primary challenger. But at the time, Cornyn said he'd support Bunning if he ran.

That's not the way the veteran Kentucky senator sees it. In a statement, he put his decision not to run again squarely on the shoulder of his party's leaders, saying:

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On Monday, though, the same day Bunning got in trouble for saying he expects Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg -- who has cancer -- to die within the year, he also scored the support of a key colleague. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, who heads the National Republican Senatorial Committee, told the Washington Post that the NRSC will back Bunning, even in a contested primary, as it does all Republican senators. "My position is that this is Sen. Bunning's decision to make, and as long as he says he is running I will be supportive of him," Cornyn said. His comments were especially interesting given that they'd come just days after a potential challenger had gone to the NRSC to discuss the possibility of his mounting a primary campaign against Bunning.

Bunning, meanwhile, is doing his best to ensure that Cornyn keeps his word, though he's probably not making any friends in the process. On Tuesday, he told reporters that he believes he'd have grounds for a lawsuit against the NRSC if the organization supported a challenger over him. "In their bylaws, support of the incumbents is the only reason they exist," Bunning said.

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More substantively, the incumbent would agree to only one debate with his Democratic challenger, state Sen. Daniel Mongiardo. And the rules Bunning negotiated were bizarrely rigid: The encounter could not be live; the taping has to occur in the afternoon, not the evening; no audience could be present in the studio; and, under threat of legal action, Mongiardo could not use any sound clips or video of Bunning's debate performance in campaign advertisements.

This apparent fear of the spontaneous has spurred rumors in Kentucky that Bunning, a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame, is suffering from some sort of dementia, perhaps Alzheimer's. Bunning has declined to release his medical records. But until now, there was nothing hard to suggest that the one-term Republican senator was anything but a crotchety, occasionally confused, or arrogant old man.

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