The son also rises: Rand Paul's surprisingly successful campaign for Senate.

• Author: Antle, W. James, III

THE RALLY FOR THE Republicans at the Kentucky Fair & Exposition Center isn't your standard rubber-chicken campaign event. Frank Simon, a Louisville religious-right leader known for his strong opposition to gay marriage, leads the crowd of 800 in the Pledge of Allegiance. The Rev. Jerry Stephenson, a conservative black pastor, delivers the invocation, asking "Father God" to "help us start a revolution." Then the Grammy-nominated rock and reggae singer Aimee Allen, decked out in tattoos, patterned stockings, and high-top sneakers, performs a three-song set, culminating in an anthem helped along by the candidate's sons on acoustic guitars: "We don't want no war no more / Bring our boys home to our shore."

This improbable opening is topped off by the Rev. Jeff Fugate, the right-wing pastor of Clays Mill Road Baptist Church in Lexington, Kentucky. Unlike the previous act, Fugate doesn't sing about the PATRIOT Act or inciting a riot. Instead he gives a Falwellesque speech about restoring American values.

Nearly an hour later, the audience, which paid $25 a head, is treated to the main event: Rand Paul, a candidate for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate, making his first joint appearance with his famous father, Ron Paul, the libertarian presidential candidate and II-term GOP congressman from Texas.

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"It was a little weird," Rand Paul's campaign manager, David Adams, admits afterward. "But it also shows what's great about our movement. We are building a big tent that appeals to everyone from the civil libertarians to the Christian right." That tent covers a vast army of hippies, Birchers, don't-tread-on-me libertarians, Tea Party activists, conservatives clinging to either Bibles or guns, and blue blazer-wearing GOP regulars. Rand Paul has managed to tap into his father's national following of libertarians and anti-war advocates without (so far) alienating traditional Republicans in the Blue Grass State.

This highly unusual combination may make Rand Paul the most serious libertarian-leaning candidate for U.S. Senate in recent history. Self-styled "Ron Paul Republicans" have run for office before. A few of them--congressional candidates B.J. Lawson in North Carolina and Amit Singh in Virginia, for example--showed genuine promise in 2008 but were burdened by campaigning in deeply Democratic districts the same year that Barack Obama swept into the White House. Rand Paul is running in a political climate that has soured on Democrats, in a state where Obama was never popular to begin with. His familial relationship with the elder Paul isn't the only thing that makes him stand out from the pack of Ron Paul Republicans. Rand Paul might actually win.

'I Have to Win This Race on My Own' When the increasingly erratic Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.) announced his retirement last July, Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson was supposed to be the GOP nominee. Grayson had already set up an exploratory committee, apparently with Bunning's blessing. He was the first choice of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Republican leaders in Washington, D.C., and Kentucky preferred him even to Bunning, a former professional baseball star who had become cantankerous and unpredictable toward the end of his second term.

So when Bunning took himself out of the running--complaining bitterly that his fellow Republicans did "everything in their power to dry up my fund raising"--Grayson seemed like the natural front-runner. A Daily Kos/Research 2000 poll taken in late August and early September of 2009 showed him leading upstart Rand Paul by 15 percentage points. But by December, Public Policy Polling showed Paul drubbing Grayson by 19 points, 44 percent to 25 percent.

If Paul wins the primary, he will, as a Republican, be at least the slight favorite in the November election. He has outpolled both leading Democrat contenders in every public survey taken since December. In February, a Rasmussen poll showed Paul ahead of Attorney General Jack Conway by eight points--twice Grayson's margin in a survey taken at the same time--and leading Lt. Gov. Daniel Mongiardo by 11 points.

Paul also has been winning the money race, although that contest is closer. His grassroots-organized Internet "money bombs" patterned after a technique his father's followers used to great effect in the presidential race, have produced hundreds of thousands of dollars in single-day periods. Paul has raised nearly $1.9 million since last year, edging out Grayson's haul of more than $1.7 million,

Grayson's supporters--who include much of the state's GOP hierarchy, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell--are clearly irritated by this mm of events. After the Pauls' first father-and-son rally, Grayson campaign manager Nate Hodson issued a statement to the press blasting them both. "Maybe...