| Yesterday was Guy Fawkes' Day, and to commemorate the day, Ron Paul supporters raised $4.2 million dollars in 24 hours, a new Republican fundraising record and giving Paul a substantial amount of cash on hand in the presidential race.
Comparisons to Howard Dean's 2004 presidential bid are being made, of course, and not in a positive light. Mostly the message is, like Dean, Paul's just an Internet oddity, comprising only a handful of devoted online followers, and is lacking broad support in the polls. (Of course that Dean is now running the DNC and many Deaniacs are now some of the most influential lefty activists doesn't seem to influence much commentary.)
Paul is the anti-establishment candidate, the one you support if you're angry with the establishment candidates, and who won't stand up to much scrutiny. Glenn Greenwald:
While Barack Obama toys with the rhetoric of challenging conventional wisdom, Paul's campaign -- for better or worse -- actually does so, and does so in an extremely serious, thoughtful and coherent way. And there are a lot of people who, more than any specific policy positions, are hungry for a political movement which operates outside of our rotted political establishment and which fearlessly rejects its pieties, even if they disagree with some or even many of its particulars.
(JEFF, on the other hand, calls him the "neo-confederate racist who doesn't believe in the separation of church and state, would dismantle the federal government, and is loved by spammers.")
Still, Jerome Armstrong, for one, is impressed. Four point two is a lot of money to raise in a single day, and sees lessons for lefty candidates:
...rather than having to develop these costly platforms that take up valuable time, or rely upon closed vendor systems that use laggard technology, the campaign just uses the existing infrastructure built by others for that specific vertical. There is no RonPaul2008.com community. Instead, it exists out on the web, outside the campaign website walls. So rather than all their own supporters talking to eachother, they are forced to congregate in places where others that don't support Paul gather. Evangelize. Outreach.
And the way Paul's campaign has done it, by not setting up a social networking account on every new-fangled socnet site, but by targeting a few and then expanding, is also the way to go. The Paul campaign recognizes decentralized, organic signs of Paul community, and then officially sanctions the congregation through post links on their website-- start going here. The Paul campaign didn't directly create ThisNovember5th.com, but they did create embrace the environment where it could happen.
Love him or hate him, Paul's campaign is definitely adding a splash of color to the 2008 race. |
