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Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul said he was "pleased and surprised" at campaign efforts on his behalf. "It's almost like it's on autopilot, certainly the fund-raising part."
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For Ron Paul, easy money
Even before the recent influx of money, the Paul campaign had raised enough ($5 million from July through September) to pay for television and radio commercials in the early-voting states.
It also has exploited the new media, with aides and supporters using YouTube to disseminate videos and meetup.com to get people together. Another Web site with a strong Paul presence is pledgebank.org, a place where individuals promise to do something - say, give $1,000 to Ron Paul - if 100 others will do the same.
Still to be determined is whether the campaign can take the next step.
"We've seen the Internet build campaigns for candidates with tech-savvy supporter populations that want to feel like insurgents out on the fringe," said Julie Germany of George Washington University's Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet. "We haven't yet seen that translate into a get-out-the-vote effort."
Debbie Hooper, the assistant campaign manager, said in a recent Webcast: "The truth is there will be no revolution without precinct captains and delegates."
In New Hampshire, perhaps Paul's best state, one poll has him in fourth place at 7 percent. But analysts suspect he has a low ceiling even there, in a state with the slogan of "Live Free or Die."
"Among mainstream primary voters, I can't imagine that Ron Paul's anybody's second choice," said Dante Scala, a political scientist at the University of New Hampshire. "With him, it's all or nothing."
