Ron Paul - the strength of ten, for his support is pure.

Donklephant » Blog Archive » Ron Paul: Will Online Turn Into Offline?: "

“I think that’s what’s the most fascinating … how Ron Paul will do,” says Julie Germany, deputy director of George Washington University’s Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet. “His supporters have overwhelmingly been on the internet,” where blog rankings, YouTube videos and enthusiastic forum participation make his support appear “two or three times what it really is.”

Again, I think this could either be a turning point for Paul or a sign that he may need to think about running on a 3rd party ticket. Somehow I think it’s going to be the latter, given how much Romney is spending…"

The comments show something I've been noticing for some time now; even the reasonable political junkies simply do not understand that whatever you think of Ron Paul, his support comes from what may as well be an unseen paralell universe. While his polling may be low, there are two factors that make those numbers questionable at best - first, many RP supporters don't have landlines. Second, a huge percentage are not and never were "Likely voters."

For myself, I tend to analyze things like this from a different perspective; I figure for everyone motivated enough to go out and stand in the cold waving a sign, there are probably ten that will be motivated enough to vote for Ron Paul in a nice warm voting booth- if only as a seeming "none of the above" vote.

Hell, it's about the only choice for Republicans that want to be able to sleep at night - and he's attractive to Conservative Democrats as well. The accusations of racism haven't hurt him at ALL in that quarter. Sadly, it's quite possibly a very significant quarter.

Read the comments at the link above; this is a voting bloc that is not going away. It won't fade out, and it will continue to strongly impact the political process, whatever the "politics as usual" folks think about it. If Ron Paul drops out, the movement will pick someone else - and it could easily be Dennis Kucinich, seeing as Paul has all but personally endorsed him. This is a movement that concentrates on principles, not "opportunity politics."

And overwhelmingly, it demands wholesale, PRINCIPLED reform of the political and governmental process.

From my perspective, Ron is far from my ideal candidate, and I'm on record stating why, but the Ron Paul Revolution itself is largely independent of candidate, campaign, and established parties, which is it's power and it's saving grace.

Given that the overall results of the election will likely put a solid majority of Democrats in both houses of Congress, possibly even a Progressive plurality, Ron Paul is likely to be even more attractive to Independents as being a solid Constitutional Conservative and a natural check on the "tax and spend" governance that many fear, reasonably or not.