“I smile when I think of what we can do together in the Senate if the people send me,” Mr. Paul wrote.
Mr. DeMint related the note to the crowd of 300 people at the evening rally, in Erlanger. He said he himself smiled at the thought of “not just us two but eight or 10 senators” being elected and going up against the Republican establishment to push the Tea Party goal of limited government.
But Mr. DeMint’s smile may have vanished by morning. During a nationally televised debate on Fox News Sunday, Mr. Paul said that if he were elected to the Senate, he would support Senator Mitch McConnell, also from Kentucky, to keep his job as Republican leader.
Pressed to say whether he would choose him over Mr. DeMint, Mr. Paul said that he would vote for whomever Republicans chose as their leader and that he assumed it would be Mr. McConnell.
It was one more sign that no matter how devoted Mr. Paul is to Tea Party principles, he may be forced to yield periodically to some realities of the old-school politics that he denounces.
This also occurred last month, when Mr. McConnell set up a fund-raiser in Washington for Mr. Paul with several Republican senators who, like Mr. McConnell, had supported the $700 billion bank bailout in 2008; during the primary, Mr. Paul said he would not accept donations from anyone who had done so.
With the election just a month away, Mr. Paul’s wide lead in the polls over Jack Conway, his Democratic opponent, has narrowed, but he still appears ahead. And Mr. Paul may be acting a bit more cautiously these days to hold on to his lead, which is par for the course for many candidates after they emerge from a party primary and face the broader electorate.
“His approach has changed,” said Trey Grayson, the secretary of state, who lost in the primary to Mr. Paul. “He’s acting more like an incumbent. His tone is designed more for a general election audience and swing voters.”
But, Mr. Grayson quickly added, Mr. Paul still gets across his points. “He still, at the end of the day, talks about shrinking the size of the government,” Mr. Grayson said. “Those things haven’t changed, and that’s why he’s ahead in the polls.”
During the spring primary, Mr. Paul invariably opened his speeches by declaring that “a Tea Party tidal wave is coming.” His “randslide” win of the Republican nomination was the movement’s first major success on the national stage.
Now, his references to the Tea Party are fewer and farther between. On a trip last week through eastern Kentucky, the trademark yellow “Don’t Tread on Me” flags of the movement were gone. Mr. Paul did not sound his earlier battle cry that he would shut down Congress for a week if it failed to amend the Constitution to require a balanced budget. In fact, he did not mention the Tea Party at all.
Almost inconspicuous in a dark blue button-down shirt and cotton pants, Mr. Rand began his short speech in London by reciting in a soft voice the names of the other small towns he had just visited.
“I haven’t met one person on the entire trip who is in favor of President Obama or any of his policies,” he said. Even Democrats, he added, “realize that this is the most anti-Kentucky, anti-coal president we’ve ever had.”
He put in a slight dig at his opponent, Mr. Conway, whom he did not name and whom he rarely mentions, saying that the Democrat had once supported the cap-and-trade legislation, which is much loathed in this coal-producing state. “He was for it before he was agin’ it,” Mr. Paul, who is an ophthalmologist, said.
At Saturday’s rally, Mr. Paul did acknowledge the Tea Party — his campaign had bused in several dozen members of a contingent from northern Kentucky, who were having a convention nearby. Mr. Paul shared the stage with his father, Representative Ron Paul, the Texas Republican and 2008 presidential candidate, and with Mr. DeMint, and they were more overtly whipping up Tea Party sentiment.
The Conway strategy has been to cast Mr. Paul as out of the mainstream (in one advertisement, some seniors say he is “off the wall” and question “what planet” he is from). They also portray him as being unfamiliar with the state. Indeed, Mr. Paul focuses chiefly on national issues, like the debt and spending.
But Danny Briscoe, a Democratic consultant here who is not part of the Conway campaign, said this approach had not worked so far. Mr. Paul has “managed to appear normal,” Mr. Briscoe said, particularly with other controversial Tea Party-backed candidates, like Christine O’Donnell in Delaware, taking over the national stage.
Analysts here say the race appears to be Mr. Paul’s to lose. It seems he would have to make a blunder of gigantic proportions to alienate his supporters, and neither candidate appeared to make many in the debate on Sunday.
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