Why Ron Paul is like Howard Dean

by folkbum

One sad lesson I learned (of many) from the Dean campaign of 2004 is that most candidates have a lot of people who will show their support by giving money, and exponentially more people who show up to vote--or caucus as the case may be. That was not true for Howard Dean, and it will not prove true for Ron Paul.

Dean raised a lot of money from a lot of people, and I'm willing to be that pretty much every single one of those people showed up to vote, but not many more. John Kerry had poor fundraising but made up for it in, you know, actual voters.

Ron Paul's supporters (often willingly blind and deaf to the candidate's racist past, and his otherwise general nuttiness) certainly can raise the money. And I have no doubt that everyone who gives will show up to caucus/ vote/ participate. But Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney aren't raising that kind of cash and will far out-poll Paul everywhere, starting tomorrow in Iowa.

Ron Paul supporters everywhere will learn the same thing in the next few weeks that I learned in 2004.