Ron Paul certainly has some Internet buzz going, but whenever he does surprisingly well in some straw poll or other, the talking heads of received political wisdom attribute it to dedicated spammers in the Paul campaign. But whatever you say about the capacity of spam, it does not raise money. In politics, you have to raise money the old-fashioned way. With that in mind, it looks like the Paul campaign has another major surprise waiting for everybody. Check this out.
For those who are surprised at how well he is doing, the explanation is not long in coming. The establishment Republicans have sold out on so many fronts that it is hard to even know how to list the examples. Paul is a principled constitutionalist, and that is a breath of fresh air. And in addition to his die-hard supporters, I suspect that there are a number of others who are sympathetic but fearful of wasting their support. In other words, they “know” that Ron Paul cannot win, and so they want to bet on the right horse early in the race. But even for this group, support for Paul right now makes sense. The better Paul does in the primaries, the more the establishment party is going to realize that they have alientated a great many people indeed, and this will bring the party back to some sort of functional awareness of the concept of limited government. Think of Paul this go-round as Goldwater revividus. Under the Republicans our foreign policy has become swollen beyond belief, and our domestic policy is bloated beyond recognition. Just think — the daydreaming is delicious — a president who would veto everything.