Book: The Tea Party Goes to Washington
Author: Rand Paul
Opening line: “November 2, 2010, was an historic night.”
Closing line: “Thomas Jefferson believed that the price of liberty was eternal vigilance—and now the Tea Party must prove it.”
Synopsis: The title says it all. In his first book, freshman Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., tows the reader alongside him as he recounts his unlikely journey from ophthalmologist to one of the world's most exclusive political clubs, all while touting his party—neither Democrat nor Republican, but the tea party. Half-autobiography, half-ideological handbook, it's a call for constitutional conservatives to continue what Paul sees as a (so-far) successful insurgent revolution. The tea party isn't extreme, Paul insists, just purist when it comes to interpreting the Constitution.
Publication Date: February 22, 2011
Number of Pages: 249
List price: $21.99
Birthday Sentence: (01/07/1963) 1+7+63 = pg. 71: “[Kentucky's then-Sen. Jim] Bunning asked if I had [South Carolina's Sen. Jim] DeMint coming in to Kentucky to give his endorsement, adding, ‘If push comes to shove, I want you to win.’”
Takeaway: OK, so maybe it's a bit of a stretch to put Rand Paul on our bookshelf alongside potential presidential candidates. But hey, the current president was a first-term senator when he got elected. And many fans of Paul's father, a two-time White House contender who will turn 76 during the next presidential campaign, are now touting the younger Paul as a standard-bearer. A founding member of the the Senate Tea Party Caucus, Paul paints himself as the maverick leader of a movement that's undergoing a bit of an identity crisis as grassroots outsiders become Washington insiders.
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