Ron Paul Raises $4.3 Million in One Day
by James Buchanan
Ron Paul just raised 4.3 million dollars in one day. Ron Paul has just outperformed every single Republican competitor with this one day fund drive. What’s even more extraodinary is the fact that these are ordinary Americans giving a little more than $100 each on average. Whenever Giuliani or Romney has a big fund-raiser, it invariably involves the country club elite giving $2,300 checks. The great thing for Ron Paul is that his army of supporters can give another $100 in another fund drive while Giuliani and Romney have “maxed out” the donations from their rich, country club friends.
This fund-raiser comes on the heels of a very important poll. The London Daily Telegraph reports “(A Pew Research) Poll gives Hillary Clinton (a) big lead over Giuliani. …a new poll… places her ahead of Rudy Giuliani in the event of a presidential contest between the two. The survey, conducted by the respected Pew Research Centre, is one of the largest taken during the campaign, involving 2,000 prospective voters. It placed the former first lady eight percentage points ahead of the Republican former New York mayor - by a margin of 51 per cent to 43 per cent.”
What this means is that Republicans desperately need to re-think who is the best man to beat Hillary in 2008. They can’t afford to back an Open Borders candidate like Giuliani or Romney or Huckabee. They can’t afford the Iraq War “albatross” around their necks as they head for the election. Only one Republican candidate is taking a populist stand on bringing our troops home and opposing Amnesty, and that man is Ron Paul.
While Ron Paul was hauling in four million dollars in one day, Mike Huckabee was “celebrating” the fact that he raised $100,000 in the first five weeks of the fourth quarter. A number of Christian evangelicals have reportedly jumped on Huckabee’s bandwagon. There’s just one little problem. Huckabee’s bandwagon has no wheels. A viable candidate needs to be able to raise MILLIONS of dollars, not just a puny $100,000. This is already the fourth quarter of 2007. There is no time to establish a fund-raising machine. You either have one or you don’t. Huckabee doesn’t.
One key factor casting a shadow over the 2008 election is how believable are the polls? It’s very easy to fake or heavily skew polling data, but you can’t fake fund-raising. If we compare Ron Paul to the closest other Republican in fund raising ability (at least before the Money Bomb), that would be John McCain. Ron Paul should have roughly the same percentage support (17 percent) as John McCain. In fact it could be argued that Ron Paul donors are mostly ordinary Americans, giving small donations. McCain in contrast has a lot of big money donors from his long political career. This suggests that Ron Paul should have MORE people supporting him than McCain.
There have been two recent polls showing Ron Paul at five percent, which is at least thankfully up from the miserable two percent figure. A Gallup/USA Today poll showed him at 5 percent in October. Most recently a CNN poll shows Paul at five percent, but the CNN poll admits it used only “likely” Republican voters, which could easily miss the massive Libertarian (and even Democrat) cross-over vote to support an anti-war candidate. Many Democrats are completely disgusted with Hillary, and a large number will likely register Republican to vote for the only viable anti-war candidate in either party, Ron Paul.
It would be the height of stupidity to assume that the 2008 GOP primary will have the exact same crowd voting as the 2004 GOP primary. There was no anti-war Republican candidate in 2004 running for president so anyone who disapproved of the war most likely stayed home. Unfortunately many pollsters are sticking to a strict formula that tells them “It’s the exact same people voting in each primary.”
If a Ron Paul supporter tells a pollster that he’s voting in the primary, he will be there. You can take that to the bank. Ron Paul supporters are highly motivated. If someone wants an accurate poll for the Republican primary, they should drop all the fudge factors and mark downs for the Ron Paul vote. They should also make sure they include people outside the normal Republican base. A lot of Democrats and Libertarians are registering Republican. If a pollster isn’t taking this into account, they are going to be a mile off target.
Despite this huge 4.3 million dollar windfall, the Ron Paul campaign has its work cut out for it. The most important thing is to lose the fear of running nation-wide ads. You don’t have to horde money like you’re never going to collect anymore. For crying out loud, you just raised four million dollars in ONE DAY. Start spending money on national advertising!!!!
The Ron Paul campaign produced several 30 second ads for a four state ad blitz. They should now develop a good ten or fifteen second ad. Advertising time is bought in 30 second chunks, but it’s possible to run two or three short ads during one TV show instead of just one long ad. Nation-wide ads will enable Ron Paul to grow his base. Maybe in another two or three weeks another “money bomb” fund-raiser will bring in eight million dollars.
Not long ago, Ron Paul had only 11 percent name recognition. This is a critically serious problem. No doubt Paul has raised up to 20 percent name recognition after the Jay Leno interview, but a huge percentage of America knows almost nothing about the Ron Paul Revolution. Paul needs to talk directly to the nation and that is what advertising will do for him. Sure he should do more interview shows with Oprah, David Letterman, etc., but he must start running his campaign nationally, and he can afford to do this now!!
Ron Paul should also pay an independent pollster to do some realistic polls for the GOP primary. It shouldn’t cost more than a couple thousand dollars for a poll to be done. A good poll can make a huge difference politically. AfterDowningStreet.org commissioned an impeachment poll that asked Americans “If Bush lied us into the Iraq War, should he be impeached?” That poll got a majority response for impeachment and there was a lot of talk about the poll in the mainstream press. If the Democrat Party weren’t so gutless, they could have ridden the momentum and started hearings.
The claim that Ron Paul is polling in the single digits must be decisively refuted. It is deceitful, inaccurate and it gives the propagandists at Fox News a club they can hit Ron Paul with whenever they want to demean him or belittle a major accomplishment. A pollster could target a few hundred people chosen at random (not just people who voted for Bush in 2004). The pollster could ask “Do you plan to vote in the GOP primary? Who do you want? And how likely is it that you will vote on a scale of 1 to 100?” I strongly suspect that a lot of the Giuliani and Romney voters are more like a “20″ when it comes to their motivation to vote while the Ron Paul people are all near “100.”
The polling issue is so important; it may be worthwhile for ordinary Americans to do their own amateur polls. Anyone can call two or three hundred people over a weekend. Ask them the questions in the above paragraph, and see what happens. An activist with a cell phone can call people in all 50 states free on the weekend.
The “money bomb” has gotten some mention in the mainstream media and some more serious national attention for Ron Paul. The “money bomb” has just proven that when Ron Paul says “Please give” a dump truck full of cash will back up and bury him in donations. It’s high time Paul kicks this campaign into high gear with national advertising before people become too distracted with Thanksgiving and Christmas.