What's the deal with Ron Paul?
On Monday, a group of Paul supporters helped raised more than $4.07 million in one day — approaching what the campaign raised in the entire last quarter — through a Web site called ThisNovember5th.com, a reference to the day the British commemorate the thwarted bombing....Mr. Benton [a Paul spokesman] clarified that Mr. Paul did not support blowing up government buildings. “He wants to demolish things like the Department of Education,” Mr. Benton said, “but we can do that very peacefully, in a constructive manner.”
Link. As a quick aside, though I think it's probably the case that we could "demolish" the Department of Education with relatively--note, relatively--little collateral damage, I don't see how we could do so "in a constructive manner."
Still, Paul is proving to be a high-intensity candidate, and when people like him are able to gin up grass-roots support, other people get inspired, and then the media begins to pay attention. But that may be the only actually interesting thing about the Paul phenomenon--which might as well be called the Dean phenomenon--and that at the end of the day, Paul is a guy who has several thousand supporters with idiosyncratic tax and immigrant obsessions, and several thousand more who really hate the Iraq war, who see in their candidate a man who has no problem putting himself on the line for all of these issues.
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The GOP party strategists must be having a migraine over Paul. If the crazies, wingnuts and other assorted malcontents gather in support of Paul in the primaries, probably half of the Bush base becomes unpredictable - and they are supposed to be obedient sheeple, not mavericks.
I think a larget part of the anti-Iraq war voices of Pauls' support are Dems , Independents, and Libertarians, not hard-core, primary-voting, GOP faithful. But since Paul won't win the nomination, I doubt those Dems/Indies are going to stay with the GOP in the general election.
You know, I really believe Ron Paul is a dangerous loon. But here in Washington, we have both caucuses and a primary. The Dem primary doesn't count at all, as all delegates will be selected in the caucuses. On the Republican side, 51% of the delegates will be selected in the primary, 49% in caucuses.
I'm very tempted to vote in the Republican primary, for purely monkey wrenching intents. The only danger is if it works too well.
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