Here is John Avlon's take on last night's results in Kentucky:

In Kentucky, Tea Party scion Rand Paul picked off Trey Grayson, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's hand-picked candidate, in a blowout. Paul's win marks a major milestone in the Tea Party movement's evolution to elected politics. His victory speech summed up both sides of the movement. The good: he castigated “those special interests who think the federal government is their ATM.” And the bad: he condemned President Obama for attending the Copenhagen climate change summit alongside leftist dictators Hugo Chavez and Robert Mugabe.

Now hang on just one minute. The "bad" aspect of the Tea Party is giving President Obama a small rhetorical slap over Copenhagen? That's strange coming from Avlon, who's written something close to a weekly screed for the better part of a year accusing the Tea Party movement of being comprised of a bunch of hateful, racist, Nazi-like, right wing whackos.

But Avlon doesn't mention a word about any of this in his "analysis" of last night. Instead, Avlon's biggest concern appears to be that Paul's election sets up "the possibility of a Ron Paul-ite libertarian dynasty in Congress." Last week the Tea Partiers were racists, now they're libertarians?

Indeed, Avlon is not alone: the same group of journalists who spent months declaring that the Tea Party movement is driven - to some degree, if not primarily - by a racial animosity toward the President are now writing in far more favorable terms about the "anti-establishment" nature of Paul's victory. There's nary a word to be found about racism in any of the analysis.

But the logic is inescapable: if the Tea Party movement is composed of a bunch of racists - as Avlon, Frank Rich, Eugene Robinson, Keith Olbermann, and countless other left wing pundits have asserted over the past year - and Rand Paul was unabashed about his affiliation with the Tea Party movement which was by all accounts the overwhelming force behind his victory last night, shouldn't Avlon and Company be condemning Paul for being an elected leader of a group with such views?

Instead, Avlon writes:

Barack Obama seems to be slightly less a lightening rod than the specter of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid as Republicans try to build on independent voters' deficit-hawk impulses and dislike of unified control of Washington. [snip]

While both parties will try to spin Tuesday night as a victory for their fortunes this fall, all incumbents have been put on notice. The anger at both big government and big business is real; small businesses feel forgotten in the shuffle. The most indelible message of Election Night was articulated by Joe Sestak in his victory speech: “this is a win for the people over the establishment.”

So, John, maybe the Tea Party movement isn't driven by racism after all?

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