Ron Paul Rallies Fans in Austin
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Texas Congressman Ron Paul made a couple of campaign stops in Austin yesterday. After picking up some checks at an afternoon fundraiser, he met with a few thousand supporters on the UT-Austin campus.
Paul hasn’t won a single state in the 2012 Republican primaries. And yet the rally in shadow the LBJ library rivaled any crowds Mitt Romney or President Barack Obama can draw at a campaign appearance.
Paul fed off the crowds’ excitement. He seemed giddy at times just to have such a large crowd to speak too about ending foreign war, doing away with the Federal reserve, returning to the gold standard, and legalizing marijuana.
But Paul also addressed the 800 pound gorilla in the race: the fact that he’s far behind Romney and will not win the nomination.
“So it is going to be difficult,” Paul told supporters, “but it is always glorious to have success. And we will have success. Am I saying we’re gonna have success next week, next month, August or November? In some ways we will. We will have success.”
Paul said the spirit of what he calls his campaign revolution won’t go away. Supporter Alex Zhu plans on voting for Paul in the May 29th Texas primary. He knows Paul won’t be the nominee. But that doesn’t mean rally’s like the one last night are pointless.
“In order to achieve some of this stuff you have to start high. If you don’t aim high enough you’re not going to get to a certain point,” Zhu said.
Some of Paul’s supporters also hope he’ll be able to pick up enough delegates by staying in the race to have some power at the Republican National Convention in August.
Jim Henson heads up the Texas Politics Project at UT-Austin. He says based on his own polling data, Paul does not have forward momentum heading into the summer.
“He’s lost a lot of support I think primarily because of his foreign policy pronouncements and to a lesser extent some of the more controversial corners of his Libertarian positions like drug policy,” Henson said.
Paul is still hoping to finish well in his home state. His campaign launched a new TV ad that ran on Fox News in Texas. But a recent poll has him trailing Romney by 31 points.
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