Monday, December 24, 2007

The Turnaround in the Paul Grassroots Continues

A week or two ago, I blogged about what appeared to be a big turning point for the Paul grassroots: an increasingly widespread understanding amongst leaders in the Paul grassroots that overzealous support could do more harm than good to Paul's ability to attract votes.

That understanding is starting to reach a crescendo as one of the leaders of the NH grassroots organization posted this at the Daily Paul on Friday. Money quote:

However, there has also been some help that has been undesirable, and downright harmful to our efforts here. I’ve said several times that Ron Paul's best asset is his supporters. But they are also his biggest liability. There can truly be “too much of a good thing”.


I continue to believe that this turnaround is coming too late to significantly impact Paul's ability to succeed in the early states. But it is remarkable to see a decentralized campaign like this start to police itself more and more like this.

In this case, the number of negative comments to the post is a much lower percentage even than the article I linked to last week. It seems the vast majority of Paul supporters are starting to understand the problems with overzealousness, and that in order for Paul to have any chance at making an impact, he needs the support of people who are not naturally part of his core group of supporters. This means his core group of supporters must be considerate of the issues, concerns, and lives of voters from the political "mainstream." Again, I think all of this is happening too little, too late to significantly impact Paul's numbers in the early states, but it may be enough to get Paul into the low double-digits in the later states.