This gap between Paul's dreams and reality came to a head Wednesday morning. Paul aides ponder 'frustrating' race

BOISE, Idaho — Ron Paul’s top strategists are confused and frustrated that the wild enthusiasm they see at their campaign rallies and events is not translating into votes.

Thousands turned out to see the Texas congressman at events in Alaska, Idaho and North Dakota in the days before Super Tuesday. Paul said publicly and believed privately that he could win all three states outright. When the votes were counted, though, he finished third in Alaska and Idaho and second in North Dakota.


Paul may still emerge with a big chunk of delegates in the GOP nominating race, but the candidate’s much-hyped focus on caucus states has yet to yield an outright victory in any state.

This gap between dreams and reality came to a head during a Wednesday morning conference call for senior staff when the discussion turned to why the campaign keeps underperforming its own forecasts.

“They count the numbers and then they count the votes,” said Doug Wead, a Paul senior adviser who was on the call. “Did they get overconfident? … We’re digesting that.”

Despite his lack of success, Paul is unlikely to get out of the race anytime soon. He often says he is leading a “movement” and his campaign is concentrated on amassing delegates rather than winning the nomination, though the two are not mutually exclusive.

Paul admits his “chances are slim” to win the GOP nod (that’s how he put it on CBS last Sunday), but the lawmaker and his team feel zero pressure to exit the race. A slowdown in fundraising would force them to scale back their ambitions, but that wouldn’t stop their campaign.

Brushing aside growing questions about his viability from pundits who have long written him off, Paul is forging ahead with his retail campaigning. He’s catching a breather Wednesday and Thursday but will campaign in Kansas on Friday and Saturday ahead of that state’s caucuses this weekend.

But the core problems of his campaign remain.

Repeatedly all year, Paul supporters have had plenty more bark than bite. More than 9,000 caucused at the Taco Bell Arena here on Boise State University’s campus Tuesday night, for example. Electioneering is allowed, and the Paul backers were the loudest and most energetic when each side got a chance to cheer. But when the voting began, it was Mitt Romney who won — and won easily on the first ballot with 52 percent of the vote to Paul’s 22 percent.

Campaign leaders earlier saw massive rallies and publicly predicted that Paul could win in Iowa, Nevada, Minnesota, Washington state and Maine. All five states hold caucuses, where they believed that low turnout would let their more motivated grass-roots supporters pull off an upset.

The campaign identified 24,000 supporters in Nevada but a comparatively paltry 6,175 actually turned out to caucus for Paul. He finished third behind Newt Gingrich, who ran an embarrassingly inept campaign.

“It’s very frustrating,” said Jesse Benton, Paul’s national campaign chairman. “It certainly wasn’t for lack of trying.”

In theory, Paul’s turnout operation is more professionalized than Gingrich’s or Santorum’s. Experienced field staffers have been hired and headquarters set up in every caucus state. In Nevada, all 24,000 targeted supporters got “multiple touches” from the campaign — including mailers, emails and personal phone calls from volunteers.

The biggest problem for Paul is that most of his supporters are young people. In the Michigan primary, for instance, exit polling showed that Paul pulled 37 percent of 18- to 29-year-old voters but this demographic made up only 10 percent of the electorate.

“This has always been a political reality that young people don’t vote,” Benton said. “But we need to really, really make the case to young people. … Young people need to start to take the reins.”

Paul still does better in college towns than anywhere else, but it’s not enough. About 2,200 came to see the 76-year-old at a Monday afternoon rally at the University of Idaho in Moscow. He won Latah County, where the school is located, with 52 percent compared with Romney’s 20 percent. But he did so with only 509 votes.

David Fischer, vice chairman of Paul’s Iowa campaign, argues that most people who come to Paul rallies do end up voting.

“That underscores the dedication of Ron Paul supporters. It shows the strength of message that he can draw those kinds of crowds,” he said Wednesday. “You’re seeing the support for the other candidates is considerably softer. There’s not the energy behind their support. There’s not the passion.”

Paul’s campaign officially downplays the importance of “beauty contests” and primaries that don’t directly yield delegates. Paul also tells anyone who will listen that the media is undercounting how many delegates he will ultimately win because most are unbound and many won’t be awarded until state conventions in May or June.

Benton expressed confidence that Paul could still wind up with the majority of the delegates in six states where he didn’t finish first in the popular vote: Iowa, Washington state, Maine (where the campaign believes it actually did win because of errors in the way the caucuses were conducted), Minnesota, Nevada and North Dakota. National strategists are also keeping an eye on Colorado.

“If Mitt Romney has a hard 1,144 bound delegates, then that changes our decision-making,” Benton said Wednesday. “Either until Ron is the nominee or another candidate has 1,144 delegates, we’re going to continue to work our plan.”

Paul’s namesake son, Ronnie, and national campaign manager, John Tate, are currently on the ground in Hawaii. The campaign is spending money on targeted ad buys and mailers in the Aloha State. Benton said they’re “going to try to do real well” in Hawaii’s March 13 caucuses.

There are several non-electoral advantages to continuing the campaign. Continuing allows Paul to beef up his coveted mailing list, which he can use later to raise money or — since he’s retiring from Congress after this year — to help his son Rand in the likely event the Kentucky senator decides to run for president in 2016.

“If you can stay in this political race through California, then our cause picks up those names and that data,” Wead said.

In a scenario in which Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich drop out, Paul could also fill the place of protest candidate. In Virginia on Tuesday, for example, he got 40.5 percent of the vote because he and Romney were the only candidates who secured enough valid signatures to get on the ballot.

“If we stay on the ballot, we give people the opportunity to speak out,” Wead said.

Paul feels like being in the race has helped shape the debate.

His advisers call it “Paul-ing” when another Republican candidate embraces an issue position long espoused by Paul that is only now entering the conservative mainstream. Examples include Santorum and Gingrich calling for an audit of the Federal Reserve or Romney saying he’d fire Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke.

Paul’s New Hampshire campaign chairman, state Sen. Jim Forsythe, thinks Paul’s 2012 performance should be compared with his 2008 campaign benchmarks. He’s consistently grown his level of support from four years ago.

“We have a core group of very energetic, enthusiastic people,” Forsythe said. “Because he represents true change, it’s harder for some of the other people to come along. It’s something that takes time — for the people that we have to spread the message.”