Ron Paul Shows He's Still Alive

It's like that old Monty Python skit; the voice of Texas Rep. Ron Paul drifts up somewhere from the pile of defeated presidential candidates and croaks "I'm not dead yet."

Paul is indeed far from dead. Sen. John McCain may be the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, but Paul is still out there fighting for every delegate and vote he can get. In Pennsylvania, he racked up an impressive 16 percent. The Boston Globe reports that Paul's "campaign bragged yesterday that 128,000 Pennsylvanians had voted for 'freedom,' and announced a rally tomorrow in Idaho, where Republicans go to the polls May 27."

While many of McCain's formal rivals are now campaigning for him, Paul intends to continue campaign right to the GOP convention in Minneapolis where he will take his message of limited government and opposition to the war in Iraq to the delegates.

(Hmmm. Any guesses on what time of the day that GOP convention planners would schedule a Paul speech?)

But Paul has always said that while he will fight hard, after the convention he'll support the winner - in this case McCain.

Perhaps more troubling for the Arizona senator were the number of votes cast for former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. Huckabee, who is not running any more, still got 11 percent of the vote in Pa.. Most of that vote comes from religious conservatives or others who have not made their peace with their presidential candidate. It's a sign that despite recent efforts to smooth over ruffled feathers with this group, it's not going exactly as planned.

7:50 AM ET | 04-24-2008 | permalink