$4.2 Million! Why Ron Paul's Message is Winning

Yesterday, the Ron Paul for president campaign raised $4.2 million dollars from its grassroots supporters. 37,000 of them gave an average of $129 each to the campaign, inspired by the movie "V for Vendetta" (Remember, Remember, the 5th of November!).

This is completely unprecedented in politics! The only candidate in history to raise more than this in one day was John Kerry in September, 2004, who raised $5 million the day he accepted the democratic nomination. The huge difference was that most of the Kerry money was from the corporate elite, not $100 donations from average Joe voter!

The pundits will be out trying to make sense of this phenomenon today, including the neocon radio talk show hosts. They will make up crazy conspiracies like "it must be the Clintons donating!" and they will try to come up with excuses like "well these aren't republicans who are donating anyway". They will put forth the media-spun poll numbers and claim "Ron Paul is not a factor anyway, he's only polling at 3%!" (which even if you take these land line polls seriously, is wrong: he's at 5% in the latest CNN poll).

The real question is, why is this man and his ideas so popular?

It's not an easy question, and there certainly is no sound byte answer here! Here's a quick overview to explain the $4.2 million in one day:

1. A large percentage of Americans actually agree with Ron Paul's ideas regarding freedom and liberty, which no other candidate is discussing, i.e., Paul would put an end to the Patriot Act.

2. Ron Paul is anti-establishment and anti-status quo. Even today, Americans have an inherent tendency to go against authority, or as some might say, a rebellious streak. Ron Paul represents this like no other candidate.

3. There are actually millions of libertarians in the U.S. who have been sitting on the sidelines in the past few presidential elections. Ron Paul coming on to the national spotlight has given them hope that they haven't had in a long time. In the past, libertarians running in the Libertarian party would be lucky to get 1% of the vote, most did not even do that well. Now, we have a candidate who has 1,100 Meetup groups with 70,000 members, growing by the day!

4. Many feel that NOW is the time for real change in D.C., and voting for a democrat is really not going to make a whole lot of difference from what we have now- most of the democrats will keep the war and military-industrial complex alive, while taking more of your money in the process. Other GOP candidates offer either more of the same, unpopular G.W. Bush policies, or even want to take it a step further and get us involved in a nuclear World War III!

5. Ron Paul is the only true anti-war candidate from either two of the major parties, and 70+% are now against the war.

6. Ron Paul is clearly not running for president to "take power", in fact, he is a reluctant candidate who wants to take the power AWAY from the federal government. Everyone else running is going to "run the country", Ron Paul wants the people themselves to run it.

I could probably list a dozen or so more reasons why Ron Paul is exploding in popularity, but I have to go work and make some fiat dollars in what is left of the free market in the U.S.!