LA Times
Well, it's official, ladies and gentlemen. Believe it or not, Rep. Ron Paul, the 72-year-old Texan who hardly ever gets mentioned in Republican political news and the one-time libertarian who always gets the least time on TV debates if he isn't barred completely, was, in fact, the most successful Republican fundraiser in the last three months of 2007.By a Texas mile.
By the thousands Paul's fervent followers donated $19.95 million to the "Ron Paul Revolution." He spent $17.75 million and at year's end had $7.8 million cash on hand, making him the only Republican candidate to increase his fundraising totals in every quarter of 2007. According to his website, Paul's Paulunteers have contributed another $4.1 million this month to fuel the strict constitutionalist's travels and advertising campaign.
Compare that impressive financial success with, say, the late candidate Rudy Giuliani, who raised only $14.4 million from Oct. 1 to Dec. 31 and spent $18.2 million. Or the departed Fred Thompson, who collected $8.9 million and spent $13.9 million.
Or even the newly-minted Republican frontrunner Sen. John McCain, who raked in only $9.9 million, spent $10.5 million and had only $2.9 million cash in hand.
The candidate with the most campaign contributors ... polls the worst and receives the least votes. Is this inconsistency evidence that the media controls the election by anointing "Front-runners" and manipulating polls, or is it the simple reality of the electoral process in a modern democracy?
2 comments:
Your dead on right, the media decides who is heard and who is not. The media is also responsible for making the election about "firsts" and "change" while the pundints or the canidates hardly ever talk about real issues. If this truly was a change election the two nominated canidates would have be Kucinich Vs. Paul.
Ron Paul's success belies the notion that the media is decisive. What determines the outcome is the acceptablity of the candidate to embedded interests. Ron Paul exposes the lie that is the Republican Party. They've made their peace with the social welfare state established by FDR and have embraced the military Keynesianism of Truman. Paul threatens this. He also doesn't embrace the religious leadership. His outlook is truly secular and is more in the tradition of Goldwater than Reagan. If you're against gay marriage you can't afford to have Paul as your president because such things would be decided on a local level and we know what would happen. Also downsizing the military is out of the question. The Constitution is too flabby to put up much of a fight against religious and corporate domination.
But that doesn't mean change can't happen. One thing that my reading of history shows me is that agents for change don't necessarily have to be confrontational and they respond to the times. Abraham Lincoln, for example, was definitely not an abolitionist. LBJ did not have special regard for blacks. Yet both were vessels for the greatest changes which benefited black people. So you can't automatically write anyone off.
What surprises me much more than Paul's fundraising prowess is the spectacular self-immolation of Rudy Giuliani. I always knew he sucked but damn!
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