RON PAUL’s CHANCES
From: mtgriffith1@yahoo.com
<<< I know it is a long shot but I’d love to see Ron Paul win!! >>>
Ron Paul’s chances are looking better every day. He recently won the Virginia Republican straw poll by a resounding margin, even though three of the other candidates had some big names there to speak for them.
Ron Paul has now raised more money this quarter than any other GOP candidate, even more than Giuliani or Romney have raised. Dr. Paul has already raised over $10 million this quarter, and he’ll probably raise at least a couple more million before the end of the quarter.
Congressman Paul is routinely drawing larger crowds than the other GOP candidates, and his websites continue to get more hits than the other candidates’ websites.
We won’t know the true level of Dr. Paul’s support until people actually start voting. I don’t trust a lot of these polls. Polls in Iowa before the Iowa straw poll had Ron Paul down at 1 or 2 percent, yet in the straw pull itself he got 9 percent, and that was back when his campaign was just getting started and had very little money. In the Virginia straw poll, Congressman Paul got 38 percent, and his closest rival was Fred Thompson at 23 percent. Even some "mainstream" polls now have Ron Paul in double digits in New Hampshire. I suspect his support is at least that strong.
This is just one case, but I can tell you that at the Virginia straw poll, we had more volunteers manning our Ron Paul booth than all the other campaigns combined had at their booths. Plus, all the materials that we gave away at the booth were purchased by local volunteers, not by the campaign itself. And from everything I’m hearing from Ron Paul groups elsewhere, it’s like that all over the country.
Another example: The crowd that showed up to cheer Ron Paul after the last debate was several times larger than the crowds that came to support the other candidates. In fact, Rudy Giuliani turned to Dr. Paul and expressed surprise at how many people had come to show support for him.
So let’s don’t be too quick to buy into the news media’s assumption that Ron Paul has no real chance to win. The news media want people to think Ron Paul can’t win. Many elements in the media are doing everything they can to marginalize or attack Ron Paul. I actually find that to be a good sign, because they wouldn’t be doing that if he truly had no chance.
I saw a segment on ABC News’ "This Week" a couple weeks ago where George Will said that veteran political observers in New Hampshire were telling him that Ron Paul was going to surprise a lot of people by the strength of his showing in the New Hampshire primary, and that anywhere you go in the state you see more Ron Paul yard signs and bumper stickers than any others. Interestingly, my daughter in Utah told me something similar about what she’s seeing in Utah: She said there are Ron Paul yard signs "everywhere" in her area, that for every one sign of another candidate there are three or four Ron Paul signs.
Mike Griffith
Ron Paul website
http://ourworld.cs.com/mikegriffith1/RonPaulPage2.htm
