Ron Paul Raises Over $4.3 Million In One Day

by The Understudy

On November 5th, 2007, supporters donated $4.3 million dollars to Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul—the self-proclaimed “Champion of the Constitution.” This one day total sets a new record for funds raised by a 2008 GOP presidential candidate in one day. (The record previously belonged to Mitt Romney who raised $3.1 million on a single day in January.)

Begun by independent supporters, this ‘money bomb’ fundraising effort gained attention through the website thisnovember5th.com, where nearly 20,000 people pledged to give at least $100 to the campaign on November 5th 2007.

It remains to be seen how ‘major’ media will cover this stunning fund raising drive. In the past, they’ve been inclined to preface Ron Paul stories and interviews by stressing certain phrases, including ‘long-shot candidate’ and ‘low in the polls’ in addition to characterizing his support as being online-only (as if 30,000 individual online donors don’t also exist in reality).

Now, with this demonstrated and unequivocal support, they may not be able to justify those characterizations anymore unless they continue to rely solely on land-line telephone polls of a couple hundred people—many of which do not even include the name ‘Ron Paul’ and therefore bring down his overall polling average significantly (along with a host of other factors that may be contributing to the discrepancy in ‘traditional’ polling numbers).

One interesting angle employed by CNN’s early coverage of the November 5th donations was the continued stressing that the numbers could not be verified—until the end of the quarter. While technically true, it does seem a bit odd how they’ve never used that angle with anyone else’s fundraising events. Perhaps they are suggesting that it may not be real, or perhaps they are just in shock.

One thing is for sure—the Constitutional message of Ron Paul has taken hold and produced a remarkable showing of financial support that not only disproves naysayer claims that Ron Paul supporters aren’t ‘real’, but also erodes confidence in ‘traditional’ land-line political polling as an accurate barometer of, well, anything. Perhaps certain key players in the news media will kick the habit of just disseminating the ‘party line’ and will start spending more time interviewing and understanding Ron Paul.

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