Rand Paul, diminutive and dour-looking, edges his way through the crowd at the Red, White & Blue Picnic practically unnoticed - and he seems to like it that way.
Despite surging to the fore of national politics by winning Kentucky's Republican Senate primary in May, the libertarian-leaning eye surgeon demonstrates little talent or inclination for the back-slapping pleasantries most politicians fine tune to win votes.
But Dr. Paul is unlike most politicians. He is the intellectual caution for a movement that has upended not just the Republican Party, but the entire American body politic. His election to the Senate would be the Tea Party's biggest coup yet, reverberating at least as far as the 2012 presidential contest. His mission is too big to rest on imperfect interpersonal skills.
By Nov. 2, Dr. Paul must persuade Kentuckians that his prescription for minimalist government offers a path to prosperity for the country's fifth poorest state. That his fight to slash federal spending will not hurt a have-not Kentucky dependent on Washington's largesse. That eliminating federal funding to combat the state's rampant drug problem, improve its public education system and keep its farmers afloat is in Kentuckians' best interest.
He may just do it. Pundits have almost unanimously predicted disaster for Dr. Paul's campaign each time he has uttered impolitic remarks - from questioning the Civil Rights Act's application to private businesses and criticizing the Obama administration's tough talk toward BP as "un-American" to opposing a federal role in domestic drug enforcement. But, so far, Kentuckians are cutting the novice candidate plenty of slack.
"It would have to be a huge issue to derail Dr. Paul at this point," offers Jody Wassmer, president of the Greater Owensboro Chamber of Commerce, which organized the all-candidates picnic in this western Kentucky city of about 55,000. "People are ready for something different. And they know Rand Paul is different. They know he has roots in the Tea Party movement, and they like that."
When he takes the stage to deliver his five-minute pitch to about 400 voters, most of them munching on burgers made from local beef, Dr. Paul suddenly shrugs off the wallflower mantle to assume that of a political prophet imploring Americans to mend their ways.
"There is a day of reckoning coming," he insists in a stump speech, whose pitch and pace he seems to have perfected during a summer of barbecues, fairs and Rotary Club functions. "Enough's enough. We have come to take our government back."
Dr. Paul, 47, is preceded to the stage by a surrogate for his Democratic opponent, Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway, who cancelled at the last minute due to an "out of state" engagement. Crit Luallen, a fixture of Kentucky Democratic politics and currently the state auditor, warns that Dr. Paul's "extremist views are out of touch" with Kentuckians.
"You want to know what's extreme?" Dr. Paul fires back. "What's extreme is a $2-trillion deficit."
He's off by about $700-billion, hardly a rounding error. But not even the Democrats in the crowd dare correct him. With the federal debt growing, according to Dr. Paul, by $1-billion every six minutes, Kentuckians are as worried as other Americans about their country's looming bankruptcy.
Dr. Paul's appeal seems to stem from the purifying elixir, in the form of fiscal rectitude, he is asking Kentuckians to swallow. The $13-trillion federal debt has become a source of national shame for many, a symbol of an America gone flaccid. Dr. Paul offers Kentucky's 4.3 million citizens a road back to self-respect.
Without outlawing deficits, Dr. Paul reckons, Congress will never take the tough steps needed to actually cut spending. His fight for a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution is the primary pillar of his campaign.
Dr. Paul also wants to pass a new law requiring the sponsors of bills in Congress to stipulate what part of the Constitution authorizes their legislation. This is red meat for Tea Partiers, whose penchant for tricorn hats is illustrative of their professed obedience to the Founding Fathers.
With the rise of the Tea Party, there has been a massive revival in Americans' hunger for intricate knowledge of their Constitution. Weekend seminars devoted to dissecting the founding documents, from the Declaration of Independence on down, are required "course work" for any self-respecting Tea Partier.
Sean Dysinger, 37, a stay-at-home dad and founder of the year-old Liberty Book Club of Daviess County, has set up a table at the picnic to sell copies of the most popular Tea Party texts. They include everything from the 18th century Federalist Papers to The 5000 Year Leap, a 1981 tome whose 28 "principles of liberty" are considered sacred commandments by self-described constitutional conservatives. They include Fox News host Glenn Beck, who urges his viewers to read it.
The views of the framers of the Constitution were influenced not only by the Bible, Mr. Dysinger explains, but by the fact that they "had just finished fighting a long and costly war against a government that could do anything." Hence, he adds, they provided for strict limits on the federal state.
Linda Hardesty, wearing elephant earrings and a button that reads "I miss President Reagan," nods heartily in agreement. Though she had to drop her health insurance when the monthly premium became too expensive, she is dead-set against President Barack Obama's health-care overhaul, which would subsidize insurance for people like her.
"Sweetheart, we depend too much on government," she chimes. "Our country has always fared the best when we have small government at the federal level."
In Dr. Paul, constitutional conservatives have found a worthy, if somewhat humourless, torch bearer. He lacks the halcyon demeanour that has made his father, Texas congressman and 2008 presidential hopeful Ron Paul, likeable to even his adversaries. Nor does he possess high-spirited combativeness of Tea Party-darling Sarah Palin, who endorsed him in the primary and headlined a Thursday fundraiser for him in Louisville. But for Tea Partiers, he makes up for it all in ideological purity.
Sort of. He is for religious freedom but opposes the proposed construction of a mosque near the site of the World Trade Center; he opposes "legislating morality" but would ban abortion; he rails against federal spending but is against cuts in Medicare fees paid to physicians like him.
Still, Dr. Paul has encapsulated his small-government credo in a series of aphorisms that resonate with a broad swath of Kentucky voters, whose historically deep Democratic roots seem to fray with each election cycle.
"The most freedom for the most people," is how Dr. Paul puts it for the Owensboro crowd. "The way we grow our economy, the way we grow our country, is by maximizing freedom."
The pitch is not purely philosophical. Bread and butter concerns round out his speech. Dr. Paul capitalizes on suspicion of Mr. Obama's health-care law, warning "ObamaCare is going to mean higher premiums for everyone."
From the orchard where Dr. Paul addresses the picnickers, you can see the towering chimneys of the local coal-fired power station. It is a reminder of the Kentucky economy's dependence on the carbon-emitting culprit, which remains in the crosshairs of liberal Democrats in Congress.
Kentucky, the third-largest coal producing state, derives 94 per cent of its electricity from its official state mineral. The cheap power is responsible for thousands of direct and indirect aluminum industry jobs within a short radius of Owensboro. All day long, barges carry coal up the adjacent Ohio River to the dozens of power plants along its banks. Threaten coal and you threaten Kentuckians' very way of life.
"And what does the President want to do? He wants cap-and-trade," Dr. Paul says of a bill, passed by the House of Representatives but stalled in the Senate, which would impose limits on carbon emissions, likely increasing the cost of coal-based power.
This has made the task of Mr. Conway, Dr. Paul's 41-year-old Democratic challenger, all the tougher. A telegenic champion of the underdog - think John Edwards before he was engulfed by scandal - he would be a compelling candidate in a state that still has a soft spot for worker-friendly Democrats. He even professes to oppose many of Barack Obama's signature policies, from cap-and-trade to proposed tax increases for wealthy Americans. But Dr. Paul has no intention of letting his opponent shake off Mr. Obama that easily.
"Why won't Jack campaign with the President?" Dr. Paul asks the picnic crowd. "Because the President is wrong on every major issue."
There are few in this crowd who seem to want to quarrel with that. Mr. Obama captured only 41 per cent of the Kentucky vote in 2008 and his popularity has declined sharply since then outside greater Louisville, home to the most of the state's progressives and its 350,000 African-Americans.
But Nancy Howard, a petite brunette who is attending the picnic with her husband, a retired farmer, quietly voices her skepticism "I think people would vote for Rand Paul because they want a miracle," she confides. "They just think someone new and different could do it."
In 2010, in Kentucky, hope and change have taken the form of an anti-Obama who may just hold the fate of an entire movement, and the future direction of the Republican Party, in his hands.
Konrad Yakabuski