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Inkblots
05-15-2012, 12:26 AM
A good write-up from Brian Doherty over at reason.com:


Rep. Ron Paul announced yesterday that he will no longer be actively campaigning in forthcoming primaries. While this announcement--as perhaps his team should have figured, especially with its injudicious use of past tense about "fought hard"--was widely played in the media as essentially "Ron Paul drops out", he in fact directly said his quest to rack up as many delegates as he can for the Republican presidential nomination will continue. In fact, the announcement was more or less merely a public declaration of what had been the campaign's style for the past few weeks, featuring few of the smaller public events that make up a full-fledged campaign and more just giant campus rallies. The campaign was indeed likely down to only about a million on hand, and seems ill-inclined right now to do more big calls for cash.

His campaign advisors have had to try to play damage control--many, though by no means all, Paul fans around the Internet were dispirited, especially the ones still wanting to rack up big vote totals in states like Texas and California, just to show the establishment what's what.

But as a further announcement from Paul's campaign website stated, "Asked if this is a dropout, Paul’s campaign manager Jesse Benton said ‘Absolutely not! We are focusing our efforts squarely on winning delegates and party leadership positions at state conventions.”

...

The most important reason Paul’s fans aren’t going away is that they believe that his very serious attempts to rein in government spending and function—his budget proposals are far stronger on instant spending cuts and debt reduction than Romney’s or any other past candidate's—are what the Party needs to focus on, in the wake of the still-dissatisfied Tea Party movement, and what the country needs to focus on, in the wake of our overwhelming and growing debt.

In 2008, Paul and his people ran an alternate convention called the Rally for the Republic that drew well over 10,000 dedicated fans. Paul has not made any promises to endorse Romney, and despite the studied cordiality with which the candidates have treated the other, he’s unlikely to. That won’t make the Republican Party powers any happier than were those people fussing in the Oklahoma and Arizona GOP conventions. But the activists Paul has energized won’t be going away until the issues of debt and government overreach that inspire them have been dealt with, and from their perspective that won’t be happening no matter who wins in November.

http://reason.com/blog/2012/05/14/the-republican-partys-ron-paul-problem