Ron Paul: quote of the day!

By Dr. Steven Taylor

January 9, 2008 - David Weigel at Reason reports the following statement:

“If you walked into this room tonight you’d think we won,” said Ron Paul campaign manager Lew Moore. “There was more energy in this room than in McCain’s party!”

And that line right there well encapsulates the Paul campaign and the Paul phenomenon: yes, there are a lot of very enthusiastic Paul supporters out there. They are passionate, they have energy and they care. The issue has never been whether the core Paul supporters have energy, it has always been how many Paul supporters actually exist. All candidates have some core of hardcore believers (although granted, some believers are more hardcore than others) - the real question is how many less energetic, less passionate, if not outright boring supporters one has when it comes time to cast votes. The problem with so many who support Paul (and certainly many who comment on blogs) is that they can’t fathom that their passion for Paul is limited to a small number of persons relative to the larger population.

So, in response to Mr. Moore quoted above: it is not the intensity of the party that matters, but content of the ballot box (not that he doesn’t ultimately know that). The problem arises, however, when supporters think there must be something wrong with the system when their enthusiasm doesn’t produce the results that they would like.

Of course, even Moore seems a bit self-deluded about what the energy means relative to the rest of the process:

“The lessons we can learn from this, what worked and what didn’t… I’m still putting that together in my head.”

Moore stressed a look forward to the next primaries. “The energy is starting to build,” he said, “and I think it’s a question of whether it builds fast enough to impact this front-loaded primary process.”

When one wins only 8% of the vote, the issue isn’t about learning lessoning, its about lack of sufficient support in the electorate.