It’s hard to ascertain the impactof Senate candidate Rand Paul’s honest, impolitic statement that he’d consider backing Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) over Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). The latter man would, of course, be Paul’s colleague from Kentucky if he does make it to the Senate. Trey Grayson, the Republican secretary of state who’s having a rather hard time asserting his frontrunner status in the race–he ties or trails Paul in the polls–is jumping on it as an example of Paul’s “carpetbagger” campaign, relying on donations from out-of-state libertarians. And it’s apparently a dicey enough situationthat Paul had to break bread with McConnell over it. At the same time, Paul is never going to out-Kentucky his opponent. He’s one of the 2010 upstarts casting his campaign as part of a nationwide movement to clean up Washington and radically roll back government.