Many people remember, for example, Ron Paul's rousing performance in a 2008 Republican presidential primary debate in New Hampshire, in which he denounced the Iraq War and the ideology of preemptive war. Rand campaigned extensively for his father that year.

But during his Senate campaign, Rand Paul has conspicuously deemphasized foreign policy, telling National Review in July, "I’m not thinking about Afghanistan; foreign policy is really a complete non-issue." He likely felt vulnerable to attack on the issue; Democrats did attack him on other libertarian positions, like cutting federal drug enforcement.

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What I didn't know at the time was what happened outside the debate just before it started. It was there that a female activist from MoveOn, who was attempting to deliver a facetious award to Paul for his corporate-friendly views, was set upon by Paul supporters and knocked to the ground -- at which point one of the Paul backers stomped her head. The whole scene was captured on video by a local Fox station, with the footage leading its late newscast. So while Paul probably avoided generating any damaging headlines during the debate, his supporters, it seems, did the job beforehand. Footage of the attack (and an interview with the victim) is below:

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Take, for instance, the subject of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Unless you've been in a coma for the past six months, you remember Paul's notorious interview with Rachel Maddow back in May, when he objected to Title II of the act, which outlawed discrimination in restaurants, hotels, motels and other establishments that engage in interstate commerce. "Had I been around," Paul told Maddow, "I would have tried to change that." Only later, after a torrent of criticism rained down upon him, did Paul publicly state that he would have supported the entire '64 Act.

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This year's real conditions for Democrats are certainly threatening, but there are indications that the impending repudiation will not be as devastating as suggested by the current narrative. Whatever ultimately happens in the House, where a Republican takeover appears likely if not inevitable, the Senate will probably remain under Democratic control -- despite enormous spending by "independent" groups such as the Club for Growth, the voice of Wall Street conservatives; American Crossroads, the Karl Rove outfit; and the Chamber of Commerce.

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OK! Good on you, Rand. That's true fiscal conservatism. Of course, that means you'll have to single-handedly close a $1.3 trillion budget gap in one year. So ... good luck with that one, I guess. You'll need to get rid of like 10 Departments of Agriculture.

Oh, wait, there's one other very small problem: Senators can't filibuster budgets.

Paul continues to prove my theory that he's just kind of dumb.

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TPM digs in and finds that Paul supports mountaintop-removal coal mining. He thinks, of course, that it should be left up to private landowners, but he also thinks that flattening mountains makes them prettier and creates some really nice land that can be used to make a "sports complex."

But I found this bit much more illuminating. Driving through Harlan County, the site of a hundred years of bitter, bloody labor disputes, Paul reveals the breadth of his knowledge of Kentucky history:

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"I'm always going to put Kentucky first. I'm not going to come up with a risky scheme," Attorney General Jack Conway said in a feisty joint appearance with his tea party-backed opponent in one of the country's most closely watched races.

Appearing before the state Farm Bureau Federation board of directors, Paul denied that he favors elimination of the Agriculture Department and steered well clear of saying he wanted to get rid of farm support programs despite Conway's accusations that he did.

Instead, Paul said free trade would benefit farmers and jabbed at Conway. "I won't be afraid to stand up to the unions who oppose" pending agreements with Colombia, Panama and South Korea, he said.

The two-hour event occurred little more than 100 days before the election. Most polls show Paul holding a modest lead in the wake of his surprising primary victory last spring over the hand-picked candidate of the state's dominant Republican, Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell.

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The comments came in response to blistering criticism by Democratic opponent Jack Conway at their first appearance together. Conway blasted Paul for saying in late May that Obama's stance toward BP was un-American and anti-business. Those and other comments by Paul led to a backlash at the time that caused the Republican to retreat from the national scene for a couple of weeks.

Paul said Thursday that BP should pay for the Gulf cleanup, but that Obama administration's sharp rhetoric could help imperil the company.

"I don't want them to go out of business when they can't pay for the mess, and that's what that kind of rhetoric could do," he said. "I want BP to be in business so it can afford to pay for the mess."

BP said this week it has spent $3.12 billion so far in response to the spill, including attempting to contain oil, paying claims and reimbursing the U.S. and local governments. By comparison, BP posted $17 billion in profit from its vast operations around the globe last year.

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The money taken up between April and June was slightly higher than the amount Paul collected in the third quarter of last year, when he edged past $1 million in contributions, the Paul campaign said Thursday. The tea party favorite exceeded $600,000 in contributions in each of the prior two quarters.

The recent quarter included a final push for cash before Kentucky's late May primary, when Paul easily beat Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson for the GOP nomination. It also gave an early glimpse of Paul's fundraising prowess ahead of the November vote.

Paul campaign official David Adams told The Associated Press that contributions to Paul, a Bowling Green eye doctor, poured in from "regular people who just want the government to balance the federal budget and follow the U.S. Constitution."

But the amount also included money raised from a high-profile fundraiser last week hosted by Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell, a fellow Kentuckian, at the National Republican Senatorial Committee in Washington. Tickets went for $1,000 per person, with sponsorships up to $5,000 per group.

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Three of this year's Senate contests are poised to test the durability of this rightward movement, with the fates of Marco Rubio in Florida, Rand Paul in Kentucky and (assuming she wins Tuesday's GOP primary) Sharron Angle in Nevada set to provide a clear indicator of whether going hard right is a viable electoral strategy.

This trio has two things in common. First, they're all Tea Party favorites who have toppled (or are poised to topple, in Angle's case) GOP establishment favorites. And second, because of their arch-conservatism, they are — at least on paper — less electable than the more mainline Republicans they vanquished.

Given the climate of 2010, Republicans were staring at near-certain victories in Florida, Kentucky and Nevada. But with Rubio, Paul and Angle, these states will essentially be toss-ups.

Nominating them amounts to a high-risk electoral strategy.

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Now, there's no way that Republicans aren't going to have a good November in absolute terms. But a sign here and a sign there are starting to suggest that it might not be the stellar midterm that the minority party has been dreaming of and getting ready for. The president can point to some successes, with healthcare, financial reform and signs of economic recovery, for one thing. For another, it looks like we can count on Republicans to figure out a way to screw it up for themselves.

The latest example of Republicans finding an opportunity to miss an opportunity comes in Illinois. The Senate seat once held by Barack Obama is a major prize, and Republicans badly want to win. Everything seemed to line up just right. Democrats nominated a damaged candidate in state Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias, and scandal was hanging over the incumbent party anyway thanks to the collapse of the Rod Blagojevich administration. Republicans, meanwhile, got their dream nominee: Rep. Mark Kirk, from the Chicago suburbs, is the rare true suburban centrist Republican to survive the collapse of his wing of the party. He's staved off a couple of tough Democratic challenges, managing to become one of only seven Republicans to represent a district carried by John Kerry in 2004. In a state where moderate Republicans have thrived, but conservatives have been trounced repeatedly by mediocre Democratic hacks like Blagojevich, Kirk seemed to be just the ticket.

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The reason is simple: The Tea Party movement -- also known as the GOP base -- isn't that interested in working with the Republican Party establishment. In one key race after another, this could result in the GOP fielding candidates in the fall who are ideologically pure but electorally deficient.

The prime example of this is in Kentucky, a conservative state that never much cared for Barack Obama in 2008 and that has turned even more sharply against him, and against the national Democratic Party, since his presidency began. This, coupled with the feeble economy and the basic buyer's remorse nature of midterm elections, should make the contest to replace retiring Sen. Jim Bunning a cakewalk for the GOP.

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When the controversy over Rand Paul's non-support of the Civil Rights Act blew up, we posted this famous video of Kentucky Democrats having an important and serious discussion of national politics, and sometimes using the "N-word." It turns out that these people are perhaps outliers.

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Had this come from former KKK leader David Duke it would not have been news, but it made headlines, coming as it did from the winner of the Kentucky Republican Senate primary, the son of libertarian cult hero Rep. Ron Paul of Texas and a tribune of the Tea Party movement. According to the younger Paul, "the hard part about believing in freedom" is that while it was all right for the 1964 Civil Rights Act to outlaw racial discrimination by public entities, it was tyrannical for the federal government to require businesses like restaurants, hotels and stores to serve non-white customers.

As a native of Texas, where white-only businesses were legal until the Civil Rights Act passed, where interracial marriage was illegal until the Supreme Court issued its holding in Loving v. Virginia in 1967, and where private racial discrimination in housing was legal until President Johnson pushed through one of his personal obsessions, the Fair Housing Act of 1968, I can suggest a book that Rand Paul and like-minded libertarians really ought to read: John Howard Griffin's "Black Like Me."

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It must be thrilling for a political novice like Paul to win such a resounding victory in a Republican primary while maintaining his posture of ideological purity. The guy is clearly not prepared, however, for bridging the difference between a primary and a general election. Talking to George Stephanopoulos on Friday, he complained, "For an entire 24 hours, I’ve suffered from them saying, 'Oh, he wants to repeal the Civil Rights Act.' But that's never been my position." Stephanopoulos tried to clear through Paul’s frenzied deflection, to point out that Paul is obviously lying about his own clearly-stated beliefs. There comes an amazing moment at 1:40 of this video, where Stephanopoulos announces that he's going to read a letter to the editor Paul wrote in 2002, and Paul has to jump in and start filibustering. It's a rare sight: a candidate for federal office flailing to keep his own words off the air.

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Paul ruffled feathers earlier this week when he expressed misgivings about the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Fresh off a lopsided victory in the Kentucky's primary election, Paul told MSNBC host Rachel Maddow that he abhors racial discrimination, but suggested the federal government shouldn't have the power to force restaurants to serve minorities.

The Bowling Green eye doctor and son of former libertarian president candidate Ron Paul didn't mention the civil rights flap in remarks inside GOP headquarters. He refused to answer questions afterward.

About 20 protesters gathered outside, some with signs accusing Paul of racism.

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That may be fair. But in my defense, it's been hard to know exactly what the Tea Partiers want to do. Cut taxes? President Obama did that. From the left, my friend Robert Scheer published a slightly ill-timed homage to Kentucky GOP Senate candidate Rand Paul on Thursday, hailing the rise of Paul and others like him as a development that might help put the brakes on the corporate control of America. "What's wrong with cutting back big government that mostly exists to serve the interests of big corporations?" was Scheer's kind of rhetorical question. (I don't think there's broad agreement on the left that big government "mostly exists to serve the interests of big corporations.") Scheer rightly points to the positive alliance between Rep. Ron Paul, Rand's dad, and Sen. Bernie Sanders, a libertarian and a socialist, respectively, to audit the Fed. That's a good start.

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"Racist" has come to be synonymous with a belief in black inferiority, and with holding other noxious stereotypes about black people, or other minorities. Someone could conceivably not be "racist" in that sense, and still hold political views that will ultimately perpetuate the second-class citizenship of people who aren't white; in most cases, African-Americans. I think they could. I accept that it's possible.

So: I am willing to take Kentucky GOP Senate nominee Rand Paul at his personal word that he is not a racist, whatever it turns out he really believes about the 1964 Civil Rights Act. I don't know the man, I can't see into his soul. All I know is that we seem to differ, hugely, about the impact that centuries of slavery, legal segregation and discrimination have had on African-Americans, and on what to do about it.

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To start off, there's Paul's opposition to the Civil Rights and Americans with Disabilities Acts. As our editor Joan Walsh noted last night, he's revealed himself as a true turn-back-the-clock reactionary (as well as surprisingly weaselly). Not that it's shocking, but at one point in his explanation of opposition to the Civil Rights Act, Paul tries to bring up the "commerce clause" of the Constitution.

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