Packer warns:

Less than a few decades ago, Republican voters would never have defied their most powerful politicianin this case, Mitch McConnelland nominated a party outsider like Rand Paul. It’s almost certain that Paul will win in November, and when he gets to Washington he’ll make Jim Bunning seem like a dull, go-along-to-get-along insider. The prototype for Republican senators these days is no longer McConnell, and it certainly isn’t an aging centrist like Richard Lugar. It’s Jim DeMint of South Carolina, who holds office not to legislate but to blow things up, who doesn’t need to make party elders happy because he can create his own base of support by making himself irresistible to cable news. Rand Paul will up DeMint’s ante, and “the world’s greatest deliberative body” will continue its descent into mass-media hell.