Prepare yourselves: Once again, Paul will outperform some of the “frontrunners” in the first financial disclosures of the quarter.
You can see that Paul fell short of his $2 million goal; this isn’t the first time that Paul’s struggled a bit to match the lofty hauls of 2007. I’m more interested in how he framed the fundraiser. In 2007 and 2008, the Paul bombs were pegged to patriotic causes – the Boston Tea Party, MLK Day. This one is an attack on Mitt Romney. It was sold this way in an e-mail from Paul to supporters:
Establishment candidates are revving up their campaigns and trying to blow the field away with massive fundraising totals. You see, Mitt Romney was able to tap his bailed-out banker buddies on Wall Street to the tune of 10 million dollars in one day. These influence peddlers want to install a different conductor on the Big Government gravy train. And while his support is a mile wide with the establishment, it’s an inch deep with the people who decide the Republican nomination: tea party activists, grassroots conservatives, and liberty-minded Americans. His liberal record - RomneyCare and his ever-shifting positions - leaves the media-anointed frontrunner with political liabilities.
Paul was always reluctant to challenge candidates in 2007/2008 unless they challenged him first, as Rudy Giuliani did. This is a much punchier campaign.
