LAWRENCE — Texas Congressman Ron Paul can’t seem to turn enthusiasm into wins.
Regularly holding the loudest, most rambunctious rallies of any of the four remaining GOP presidential candidates, Paul, the only presidential hopeful without a primary or caucus win, spoke to thousands of Kansans Friday in one last get-out-the-vote effort. Town halls in Wichita, Topeka and Lawrence had Paul addressing jam-packed rooms — more than 2,500 showed up on the University of Kansas Friday to hear Paul speak.
Driving home an across-the-board anti-war policy during a rally at KU’s Lied Center — Paul spoke of costly wars in the Middle East, a failing war on drugs, a war on the middle class waged by the Federal Reserve and a war on the U.S. Constitution by members of both Republican and Democratic parties — the Libertarian-leaning congressman said he needed every single supporter to show up on caucus day to have success.
Apparently, not all Paul supporters came out Saturday — Paul garnered just 13 percent of Kansas Republican votes.
So why hasn’t the enthusiasm resulted in success at the ballot box?
“I don’t have a final answer and nobody does,” Paul told the Register Friday after the Lawrence showing. “We had over 2,500 people here tonight. Some of the people aren’t registered and some are from out of state. But we don’t know exactly why that happens. We get people right to the poll sometimes and it doesn’t seem that the numbers match up all the time.”
Fortunately, Paul said, the road to the presidency doesn’t solely rely on popular votes, rather acquiring delegates before the national Republican convention in August is what earns a candidate the party’s presidential nomination.
“We are doing well in getting out our delegates,” Paul said. “We just haven’t won a straw vote. When we finally count all the delegates we will have several states that we have won.”
Needing 1,144 delegates to secure the nomination, Paul is guaranteed at least 46 delegates from his results in states where ballots have been cast. Because the majority of delegates are not bound to a particular candidate, current delegate counts may not be a predictor of what will happen at the convention.
