The fact that the Ron Paul Revolution is still kicking, despite the fact that the Republican nominee has already been decided, could potentially help Barack Obama and hurt John McCain’s chances at the presidency. I read an interesting blog post from Tommy Christopher at the Political Machine that brought up a key point. According to Christopher, one of the strongest ties of the Ron Paul revolutionaries is that they strongly oppose the war in Iraq. Since McCain plans to keep the Iraq war going indefinitely, this will likely lead to many Ron Paul supporters crossing party lines to vote for the Democratic candidate, which will likely be Obama.
McCain’s party hasn’t worried too much about the Ron Paul fallout, probably assuming that it would taper off once he clearly won the nomination, but that doesn’t appear to be happening. In the recent Pennsylvania primary, Ron Paul won 16% of the vote, which in itself is not a huge number, but if a majority of these Ron Paul supporters turn to Obama come election time, they could easily swing the race.
Ron Paul seems intent on continuing to use his platform as a presidential candidate to spread his revolutionary ideas for as long as he can. The more people who hear Paul’s message, about the Iraq war in particular, the more people who could demand the end to this war, which would likely only come if Obama is elected president.
By staying in the race Ron Paul is in effect helping Obama. I don’t think that Ron Paul supporters are truly excited about the prospects of McCain or Obama, or they would be supporting one of these candidates by now. Which way they go in the end though could possibly decide the presidential race, and it is hard to ignore that the biggest issue in many of the Ron Paul Revolutionaries minds is the Iraq war. I can’t imagine many things more upsetting to Republican leaders than the idea of the Ron Paul Revolution helping Obama win the presidency, but it just might happen.
Labels: Barack Obama, John McCain, politics, Ron Paul
