Ron Paul Fights On

He beat back the effort to unseat him in the Texas primary, and now is free to continue his quixotic quest for the presidency, even though John McCain sealed up the Republican nomination last night. The LA Times blogger Andrew Malcolm, who's clearly drunk the Kool-Aid exults:

But just Paul's powerful presence, eloquence and outspoken defense of the Constitution has forced every other Republican party luminary out of the 2007-08 race, including Rudy Giuliani, who's now reduced to doing bit parts on "Saturday Night Live," Fred Thompson, Mitt Romney, Sam who's-its from Kansas and that grumpy guy from Virginia. Tuesday night, faced with the prospect of a hard-charging Paul on his tail, even former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee gave up, although he directed his concession speech at McCain to save face.

Of course, that's intended as parody, but the Ronulans really believe this narrative. The hard-charging Paul got 1/6th as many votes as Huckabee in Ohio, 1/3rd as many in Rhode Island, and most astoundingly only 1/7th as many in Texas, his home state. Yes, his supporters are committed, and they ought to be, but they're still stuck on the same 5-7% of the vote they've been getting since the beginning of the process.