Rand Paul Takes Heat for Shutdown

When Rand Paul took control of the Senate floor just before 6 p.m. Eastern, virtually every one of his Republican colleagues grimaced. Five years ago, they would have cheered him.

THE BIG IDEA: Republicans are all Keynesians now, but not Rand Paul. As he forced a brief government shutdown overnight to draw attention to his party’s hypocrisy on deficit spending, Kentucky’s junior senator was the personification of William F. Buckley’s definition of conservatism: standing athwart history, yelling stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.