The thing about this is Ron Paul will not score 2nd in the Caucuses. His rabid followers are not the type to show up in the dead of winter at a Ward, precinct, or township caucus that might be held in someone’’s living room, or a church basement. The rabid Paulbots live for shows like today, but they’re not going to be there when it matters on caucus night.
That’s just BS. I swamped my precinct caucus with Paulbots in February ‘08 in Washington (despite the fact I no longer support Paul, I’ll never forget the look on the establishment PCO’s face when she realized she was surrounded by a bunch of Ron Paul supporters).
Paul supporters turnout, it’s just that there aren’t that many of them. Considering Paul got about 4500 votes, that means he probably has around 20-25K supporters in all of Iowa, about 75% of which will show up on caucus night. Even if he got everyone of his supporters out, he still wouldn’t win, even in a low turnout year. Thing about it is though is that Paul supporters have been trained to become stealth delegates, and they are really effective at doing it. One thing that will help Paul get about three extra votes is that Dennis Kucinich supporters will have nowhere to turn as a Democrat, so they’ll probably register as a Republican and vote for Ron Paul.