Ron Paul’s top strategists are confused and frustrated that the wild enthusiasm they see at their campaign rallies and events is not translating into votes.
Thousands turned out to see the Texas congressman at events in Alaska, Idaho and North Dakota in the days before Super Tuesday. Paul said publicly and believed privately that he could win all three states outright. When the votes were counted, though, he finished third in Alaska and Idaho and second in North Dakota.
Paul may still emerge with a big chunk of delegates in the GOP nominating race, but the candidate’s much-hyped focus on caucus states has yet to yield an outright victory in any state.
This gap between dreams and reality came to a head during a Wednesday morning conference call for senior staff when the discussion turned to why the campaign keeps underperforming its own forecasts.
“They count the numbers and then they count the votes,” said Doug Wead, a Paul senior adviser who was on the call. “Did they get overconfident? … We’re digesting that.”
Despite his lack of success, Paul is unlikely to get out of the race anytime soon. He often says he is leading a “movement” and his campaign is concentrated on amassing delegates rather than winning the nomination, though the two are not mutually exclusive.
Paul admits his “chances are slim” to win the GOP nod (that’s how he put it on CBS last Sunday), but the lawmaker and his team feel zero pressure to exit the race. A slowdown in fundraising would force them to scale back their ambitions, but that wouldn’t stop their campaign.
Ron Paul plays a very dirty, but perfectly legal game.
He can gain a whole lot of delegates IF we go to a brokered convention.
How, you ask.
Simple.
A lot of caucus goers don’t read all the rules.
Many early caucus goers leave after their own vote is counted.
But ALL of Ron Paul’s caucus goers stay til the end WHEN THE DELEGATES get appointed.
At that point all they have to do is commit to voting for, say, Romney or Santorum, on the FIRST ballot at the RNC nominating convention.
IF that first ballot does NOT yield a clear-cut winner ALL delegates are FREED from their commitments and may vote for whoever they please.
At that point a lot of Romney and Santorum delegates will magically become Ron Paul delegates…..which was who they voted for at their caucus anyway.
@Nan G: Well, that’s more or less the establishment’s game, too. Generally the delegates will be Republican party insiders unless caucusgoers act to put in someone else (there are exceptions like PA where delegates are elected on the primary ballot). You can assume that a lot of delegates would be Romney supporters (even if bound to vote for Gingrich or Santorum for one or two ballots) even if Paul’s campaign hadn’t managed to secure some of those spots. I don’t think it matters too much; he hasn’t done well enough to actually get a majority of unbound delegates, and after a couple rounds of voting there will be enough unbound delegates from Santorum and Gingrich that they can put Romney over the top even if none of Paul’s delegates switch sides (and that’s even if Romney doesn’t win the first ballot).
It looks like it will be close whether Romney can win on the first ballot. He’s still only getting about 40% of the vote or less, but he’ll get a lot of automatic delegates, and then there are places like Puerto Rico and Guam where there are delegates that will likely go to him because the caucuses are almost nonexistent.