Unless this is your first day here, you know that we love Sens.-elect Marco Rubio and Pat Toomey, and expect them to be the conservative core of the incoming Senate freshman class.
I’ve also had a good number of conversations with conservative and libertarian-leaning friends about how much fun it should be to have Rand Paul in the Senate, even if we won’t agree with him on every issue. (Heck, one left-leaning friend even expressed the hope that Paul might replace Russ Feingold on the odd issue — he had opposition to Sen. Schumer’s triumphalist banning of Four Loko in mind.) Most importantly, we expect Paul and Toomey and Rubio will join the likes the Senator DeMint (R., S.C.) in his brand of damn-the-torpedoes fiscal conservatism.
But one freshman who probably isn’t getting enough attention on this front — perhaps because he was in a safe race — is Sen.-elect Mike Lee of Utah. This is a guy who has rocked the Federalist Society with constitutional wonkery, vowed not to vote to raise the debt ceiling, and floated the idea of cutting the budget 40 percent to eliminate the deficit.
Welcome to the Hill, Sen.-elect Lee!