This just in from Bloomberg’s Lorraine Woellert:
Presidential candidate Ron Paul said he has raised more than $9 million in the past two months and he predicted his campaign will exceed its $12 million fourth-quarter goal.
“It looks like we can’t stay under it,” Paul, a long-shot candidate for the Republican nomination, said in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital with Al Hunt,” scheduled to air today. Paul said organizers expect a Dec. 16 fundraising blitz to bring in more than the $4.2 million a similar event raised on Nov. 5, an “astounding” amount.
Paul said he has begun “spending generously” in key early-primary states. He is competing in New Hampshire, Iowa, South Carolina and Nevada, and said he expects to have money to campaign through Super Tuesday, Feb. 5, when at least 22 states may hold primaries and decide the nomination.
Paul called his Republican presidential rivals, including frontrunner Rudy Giuliani, neo-conservatives” whom he couldn’t support in the general election should his own bid fail.
“They think we’re supposed to spread our goodness through force,” Paul said. For example, none will pledge not to wage war on Iran, he said. “How could I support something like that?”
I’ve just added Ron Paul to the poster of alternative and improved Republicanism below. I don’t agree with all of Paul’s views — but to generate $12 million in a single quarter behind the kind of clear critique of the Bush administration’s reckless crusades is impressive.
— Steve Clemons
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