After building a political campaign that was long on passion and grassroots support, if ultimately short of votes, Texas congressman Paul announced today that he is suspending his hunt for the presidency.

The candidate urged supporters to continue their efforts to amass delegates at state conventions, however, as part of a strategy to gain a voice at the Republican National Convention – and influence over the direction of the party.

"We will no longer spend resources campaigning in primaries in states that have not yet voted," the Paul campaign said in a statement sent to reporters. "Doing so with any hope of success would take many tens of millions of dollars we simply do not have."

The rank and file objected to the news. Some Paul supporters took to the internet to deny that he was giving up the race.

"Stop overreacting," wrote a commenter at ronpaulforums.com, the online hub for Paul supporters. "It's always been a delegate strategy, and this changes nothing, when the media was going to black out any campagining he did anyway." The commenter has written hundreds of posts on the forum under the name TheGrinchWhoStoleDC.

"If you hear news that Ron Paul has dropped out than their either lying or they're ignorant," wrote Twitter user Joshua Miller.

The Paul campaign began the year with hopes of winning one of the early primary states and staying at the front of the Republican pack in the delegate tally. Weeks of campaigning in New Hampshire, however, produced only a distant second-place finish to Mitt Romney, and Paul landed fourth in South Carolina and in Florida, which he did not contest.

Resilient Paul supporters were undeterred. They pointed to his performance in the Republican debates, in which his message of small government and opposition to foreign wars repeatedly excited audiences and made rivals look noncommittal – or disingenuous – by comparison.

Supporters also pointed to Paul's uncanny ability to pick up delegates through the energetic participation of his backers in the complicated state convention process. Although he placed second in the Maine caucuses and third in Nevada, Paul managed to win the majority of national convention slots for delegates from both states (although many of those delegates are bound to vote for Romney, the primary winner in both cases).

Paul scored a similar post-facto victory in Iowa, where the majority of national delegates are likely to be aligned with his campaign (although unrequired, once again, to vote for him), according to the Des Moines Register.

Paul, who first ran for president in 1988, campaigned in 2012 on a libertarian platform with a helping of pacifism and more than a dash of anarchy. He called for the abolition of large swaths of the federal government, including the IRS and the Federal Reserve, the evisceration of entitlement programs and the severe curtailment of federal funding for infrastructure. His radical vision of self-sufficiency and personal liberty, at a time of deepening deficits and the perceived infringement of the federal government on privacy rights, drew a large and enthusiastic following.

Not counting his gains in state conventions following the primaries, Paul amassed 100 delegates to take to the national convention in Tampa, Florida at the end of August. It is unclear what role he may win at the convention as that number continues to grow, or how, exactly, Paul plans on using his delegates.

It is clear that he plans on using them.