Ron Paul has left the building, and soon the race? by Mark Silva< and updated.
Ron Paul is not here. Well maybe he is. Talking about saving his congressional seat.
He was nowhere in this posting, not to be seen in the halls of the Washington hotel where the Conservative Political Action Convention wraps up today.
Mike Huckabee is here, along with a few dozen mostly young supporters waiting with signs at the door to greet the former governor of Arkansas, the last of the Republican candidates for president to speak here. Paul spoke the other day. So did Mitt Romney, as he was quitting the race, leaving the contest for the party's nomination, apparently, to Sen. John McCain.
The question is, when the contest is finished, where will these people go?
Where will the people who conspired to raise $6 million for Ron Paul in one record day of Internet-fundraisng in December go? Will they settle for McCain, who drew boos among the cheers as he appeared here this week, his party's nominee-apparent?
Will they stay with their party? Or will they move to the third or fourth presidential candidate on the ballot in November? The candidate like Paul, in 1988, when he ran as the Libertarian. He appeared on the ballots in 46 states and drew 431,750 votes, less than one percent.
Now Paul is here: He has ruled out running as a third-party candidate this year, saying in Texas that he is continuing to campaign but also must pay attention to not losing his party's primary for his congressional seat. He wrote on his Web-site that he is cutting his national staff and must focus on keeping his House seat.
"With Romney gone, the chances of a brokered convention are nearly zero," Paul wrote. "But that does not affect my determination to fight on, in every caucus and primary remaining, and at the convention for our ideas, with just as many delegates as I can get."
Paul's latest entry on his Web site also included a request that supporters not neglect his other "priority," which is making sure that he keeps his office. ""If I were to lose the primary for my congressional seat, all our opponents would react with glee, and pretend it was a rejection of our ideas," Paul wrote. "I cannot and will not let that happen."
So, will the people who have campaigned so fervently for the Huckabees and Pauls of the party become one-percenters in November? Or will they rally to their party's cause?
Their candidates may be gone, but the decisions they make in November will have a significant bearing on the outcome of the election on which everyone is so focused here, this cold grey morning in Washington on which Mike Huckabee will take the last candidate's stand at the CPAC, the place where so much doubt about John McCain resides.
Posted by Mark Silva on February 9, 2008 8:30 AM | Permalink
http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/news/politics/blog/2008/02/ron_paul_has_left_the_building.html
