Ron Paul Supporters Donate $6.04 Million in One Day

Yesterday was a big day for Ron Paul supporters.

On just one day, in honor of the 234th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party, the new American revolutionaries brought in $6.04 million, another one-day record. The average donation was $102; we had 58,407 individual contributors, of whom an astounding 24,915 were first-time donors. And it was an entirely voluntary, self-organized, decentralized, independent effort on the internet. Must be the “spammers” I keep hearing about!

Ron Paul

Why Students support Ron Paul:
I was tempted to donate myself, but I decided not to, as I haven’t yet decided which candidate to support. The effort was organized on the internet at teaparty07.com, and I am impressed with how well they did. Their goal was $10 million in a single day; that would have far, far surpassed any previous records– but even $6.04 million is incredible. This beats John Kerry’s record after he was selected for the Democratic Party’s nomination.

The $6 million number beats the 2004 record set by Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, who raised $5.7 million after he gave his nomination speech. The fund raising is all the more impressive because Paul is relatively unknown among rank-and-file Republicans, trailing in offline polls, while Kerry’s record was set after he became the official Democratic nominee.

Wired.com

The establishment is baffled and worried, and well they should be. They keep asking me who runs our internet fundraising and controls our volunteers. To these top-down central planners, a spontaneous order like our movement is science-fiction. But you and I know it’s real: as real as the American people’s yearning for freedom, peace, and prosperity, as real as all the men and women who have sacrificed for our ideals, in the past and today.

Ron Paul

Again, I’m reminded of this thought, attributed to Mr. Franklin (Wikipedia claims it is misquoted, but admits that it may have originated with Franklin. If it wasn’t him, it was anonymous)…

“Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”
Benjamin Franklin

We are supposed to be Neo-Conned into believing that a man who believes in limited constitutional government, a return to sound monetary policy (in part abolishing the fed), who has never voted to raise taxes, and voted against the patriot act which robs us of our civil liberties is not a conservative. But a pro-abortion, money wasting, social program loving Rudy Giuliani is the model conservative? Maybe today that is true.

“Will the Real Reagan Republican Please Stand Up?“

Giuliani is near the bottom of my list. As I’ve said before, Ron Paul, John McCain, and Mike Huckabee are near the top. I will make sure to vote in this election, as it’s obvious that everyone’s vote is very important.

For me, it comes down to two men, Ron Paul and John McCain. That may sound strange, because in many ways they are polar opposites: the champion of the surge and the non-interventionist against the Iraq war; the occasional meddling boss of Washington and the live-and-let-live libertarian from Texas. But picking a candidate is always a mix of policy and character, of pragmatism and principle. And what these two mavericks share, to my mind, is a modicum of integrity. At one end of the character scale, you have the sickening sight of Mitt Romney, a hollow shell of cynicism and salesmanship, recrafted to appeal to a base he studied the way Bain consultants assess a company. Paul and McCain are at the other end. They have both said things to GOP audiences that they knew would offend. They have stuck with their positions despite unpopularity. They’re not saints, but they believe what they say.

… the deeper reason to support Ron Paul is a simple one. The great forgotten principles of the current Republican party are freedom and toleration. Paul’s federalism, his deep suspicion of Washington power, his resistance to government spending, debt and inflation, his ability to grasp that not all human problems are soluble, least of all by government: these are principles that made me a conservative in the first place. No one in the current field articulates them as clearly and understands them as deeply as Paul. He is a man of faith who nonetheless sees a clear line between religion and politics.

Andrew Sullivan, Ron Paul For The Republican Nomination

More info: Ohiomm.com (Let’s hope the money translates into votes!), CNN.com

Jan 5 update: Ron Paul on the falling dollar (Facebook video)