Perhaps America will finally return to its former glory.

HE WILL BE OUR NEXT PRESIDENT.

I think Paul could play a role. I just think it is important to keep in mind that Paul is running as a protest candidate. He is running to talk about his issues. While Dean may have started out that way, at some point he became a viable candidate. Paul is not mainstream enough to get to that point.

It was great meeting you at PDF. Get in touch when you guys get close to launch. Would love to get a demo.

TOdd

As you recall, the traditional media suddenly began to take Dean seriously in the second quarter of 2003 only after 1) he began to rake in cash from online donors and 2) the meetup.com storyline reached critical mass.

The competition between the current leading characters may begin to wear thin over the course of the marathon primary season. (Some might say it already has.) But more importantly, as the Dean campaign exemplified, the media loves the upstart/dark-horse narrative. If Ron Paul is able to raise funds online at a greater pace than the rest of the second tier – and the early signs suggest he may have the potential to do just that – the media will up their coverage of his campaign dramatically.

Unlike Dean, I think Ron Paul ultimately has no chance at winning the primary because his views do not represent the majority of his party. But he does give voice to a significant minority of Republicans who oppose the Iraq war and don’t just talk the talk on scaling back federal government, who are represented disproportionately online. Thus, Paul may yet be able to play a major role in the intra-party debate.

I believe that when a candidate first gets mainstream coverage, then the public will decide whether they wish to embrace him or her or not. Until that occurs, it is really difficult, I believe, to truly predict in either direction what will or won’t occur.

Just recently, Mitt Romney was in single digits, and now he is leading many of the GOP polls. But he is a former Governor, of course.