Poor Ron

Money has no demographics. It doesn't translate as one dollar, one vote. You can raise it all over the country, but you can't concentrate it into one state, one county or one ward. It will not buy you any more voters than you've already persuaded -- or at least it doesn't buy as much as easily as it used to. Therefore there was always cause for skepticism whenever Ron Paul's people crowed about the money they'd raised. They were mistaking money for a mandate, just as they were mistaken their affinity networks in cyberspace for an actual electorate. Now it turns out he's doing worse in New Hampshire, the reputed libertarian stronghold, than he did in Iowa.

The rise of Mike Huckabee and the resurgence of John McCain finished off whatever chance of progress Ron Paul ever had. Huckabee gave Republicans another outlet for protest voting without requiring them to take positions they would have found eccentric or abhorrent. McCain's revival in New Hampshire made him for one more moment the cool maverick candidate. In the end, to vote for Paul you had to be a true believer, not merely a protester, and there were never going to be enough of those. Worse, Paul was a partly unwitting prisoner of a campaign that had grown up around him and had elements in it that he didn't necessarily endorse, from white supremacists to "truthers," but which probably turned off many possible supporters. Finally, too many Republicans still believe in the War on Terror and join Giuliani and others in regarding Paul as an isolationist if not an appeaser or a plain fool. This last bit is unjust to Paul, but he should have known better before running for the Republican nomination. This is the price the would-be rebel pays for pursuing the path of least resistance: oblivion.