Fire up the Harley, Johnnie boy, looks like you're about to jump the shark!

Big deal.

Apples: Paul hasn't spent much money and he's not collecting much new money either.

Grapefruits: McCain has collected much more cash. I won't make any predictions about his ability to raise more.

Go, Ron Paul!

What is most amazing is not the cash on hand figure, though it is pretty incredible. The most amazing thing is how much cash on hand he has relative to the total amount raised. While other candidates like McCain are burning through cash, Dr. Paul's campaign has been rather miserly, yet continue to make tremendous gains in publicity and donations.

I give Paul better odds of winning the Republican primary, then I would give any Republican winning the presidency in '08

Having previously commented on some of the things John Edwards was getting wrong about his campaign, it's only fair that I look at John McCain's mistakes.

The biggest one he's made is the most fundamental; he has sought to run, this time, as the establishment Republican, George Bush's successor. McCain strove early on to reconcile with many of the big-money men who backed Bush in the last two cycles, and hired many of Bush's former operatives. There are a lot of things wrong with this strategy, but one that should have been obvious is that hiring consultants and strategists to keep them away from other campaigns is expensive, and McCain was never going to be the fundraising machine Bush was.

Any campaign is going to get diminishing returns, at some point, from the additional political operatives it takes on. McCain took on way too many of them. His campaign still has more than it really needs.

One could argue he faced a difficult choice -- he hadn't won running against the Republican establishment in 2000 and probably can't today, yet he can't secure anything like the united support from that establishment he'd need to spook other candidates from the race. The counter-argument is simply that John McCain is not George Bush; he can't run a campaign like George Bush and expect to win.

Bush could promise anything to anyone and raise money; McCain can't do that now (with the tax-cut store having already been given away) even if he wanted to. Bush, in 2000, could duck controversial positions that might compromise his fundraising; McCain hasn't been willing to do that this year -- immigration in particular is just killing him. And Bush in 2000, like Romney and Giuliani today, had no record in national politics. There are many monied interests, among defense contractors and membership-based advocacy groups, that McCain has crossed on multiple occasions, and that his GOP opponents haven't.

Which is fine, really. McCain just is who he is. But if any of the operatives he hired had been worth what he was paying them they would have counseled him not to spend money so fast that he'd have to break fundraising records to stay in the game. Of course, if he'd taken that advice most of those operatives would never have been hired in the first place.

Quaker nailed it.

I await the Ronbot stampede to WM.

Ahhhh, I love the smell of Karma in the morning

I`d vote for Paul (not likely) long before I`d vote for McCain (never)

"If you don't know what your government is doing, you don't live in a democracy." - Jane Anne Morris

Hey Disputo, good thing you didn't take me up on that bet a couple weeks ago...you'd be donating $50 to the Paul campaign today if you had!

Besides cash raised, Paul also has a growing group of tens of thousands of self-organizing, self-coordinating, tech savvy, and very highly motivated supporters across the country who require virtually no money or management from the Paul campaign. This is a nice parallel for a libertarian government's devolvement of centralized power to smaller, more empowered localities.

Don't know how many millions such supporters are worth, but I bet Rudy'd give his entire $18 mil for them.

Ron Paul -- your next president, ladies and germs. Not kidding.

You may not like much of what he says, but Ron Paul is the only real "straight talk" Republican in the race. McCain's loss and his gain are not unrelated.

Ronmentum and the Great Libertarian Inevitable--I saw them when they opened for Hot Tuna in Madison. True story.

Kristol and his crowd are so fucking smug… today.

Could it be the Neo-Con-- Fascist MSM bubble echo chamber is way off base and the electorate is about to send a historic Fuck You Tsunami?

The American public is not as stupid as Kristol, Lieberman and gang assume and are counting on.

There clink their glasses and dismiss reality and the outrage of the American public and military.

However, the public is on to them… They are the enemy to America’s way of life and the safety and security of our children.

They are happy to sacrifice and exploit the deaths and injuries of American troops.

Fascist, corrupt, anti-democratic, anti-constitution, anti-American foreign policy interests.

Klingon, as I recall, you rejected *my* proposed bet.

In any case, I await the FEC's release of the official figures.

Where did McCain's money go? Oh wait...he hired a bunch of Republicans.

OK Disputo...double or nothing on whether the FEC gets the $2.4 million figure :)

Come on Disputo, you gotta admit it's pretty good for Paul to be in 3rd place among Republicans when most people still haven't even heard of him...

Yep, the Ron Paul "borg" is on screen. Prepare to boarded Enteprise.

Zathras summed up best why McCain is floundering and will continue to flounder. He's tied himself to a failing president and will only rise if that President rises and vise versa. So his fall is no coincidence. Still, considering Kerry was where McCain was four years ago, I'm not wirting him off.

Ron Paul raised $2.9 million and spent $500,000 of that in the 2nd quarter, mostly on staff. Much of the campaign activities have come pretty much from the meetup.com groups and the advertising from You Tube and other websites. Ron Paul hasn't spent a lot because he hasn't had too.

This is a good start but the key is, and you may think it strange, will he spend it? Libertarians have been burned contributing to campaigns of LP candidates only to watch them sit on their contributions. They seem to think camapaign budgets are like the federal budget, you have to finish with a surplus. That's not the way it works. Hopefully RP can avoid that trap.

The media has dismissed Ron Paul as a "fringe candidate" and it is interesting to see him emerge as a result of the blogosphere.

Personally, a republican could not have my vote, but Ron Paul is a sane voice among Stepford Village candidates. Credit Kevin Drum for pointing out the Stepford quality of the crop of repug hopefuls. Well said.
They frighten me, when I see them en masse such as in debates. Robotic. Sickening. Orwellian.

But not Ron Paul.

McCain is a has-been, or a "never-was", I'm not sure which. Any of the top tier Democrats would kick his geriatric ass in a general election. His angry, tired and nasty character would quickly lose him votes, as people come to realize what a nasty and confused old man he is.

By the way, I really like Ron Paul's wifes' frozen fish entrees...

....it's pretty good for Paul to be in 3rd place among Republicans ...Klingon # 53 at 10:01 PM Yep, the Ron Paul "borg" is on screen. Prepare to boarded Enteprise....Sean Scallon at 11:51 PM

Oh, Mike, didn't you know that scientifically conducted polls are biased against RP, and that the only true way to assess support for him is by counting his myspace friends...?

LOL. The rationales that Ronbots keep conjuring up to argue that RP support is the omnipresent yet undetectable dark matter of politics reminds me of all the Web 1.0 alternative explanations for determining "value" to explain how a bubble isn't in fact a bubble.

Just goes to show you that ole Iraq war is a killa.