Despite the mainstream media’s intentional disregard of Rep. Ron Paul as a top-tier Republican presidential candidate, widespread evidence of his popularity is apparent. On Saturday, the Texas Congressman won a landslide victory in the California Republican Party straw poll, a feat which continues to be ignored by the media. Likewise, military donation receipts for Republican candidates for the second quarter of this year reveal that Paul has received twice as much money from military members as all other GOP presidential candidates combined.
Digital Journal reports:
Although Texas Republican Congressman Ron Paul may be ignored throughout the mainstream media, one report shows that the presidential candidate may have strong support from the country’s military personnel.
Dr. Paul was able to produce $36,739.79 in donations from U.S. military personnel. His closest Republican competitor was Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain, who raised $6,223.
Overall, 71 percent of military donations for the 2012 presidential race have gone to Ron Paul, while Minnesota Representative Michele Bachmann received five percent, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney eight percent, and Cain 13 percent. All other candidates combined have received three percent of the military donations.
These figures were all calculated before Texas Governor Rick Perry entered the race; however, observers note that Perry’s presence will likely not shift the figures too much, as the Texas Governor seems to hold much the same defense and foreign policy philosophies as all the other candidates except Paul.
Ron Paul asserts that these numbers indicate that the military supports his stance on the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, agreeing with him that the United States should adopt a position of non-interventionism.
During an interview with PBS’s “NewsHour,” Paul declared that if he were President, he would remove U.S. forces from Afghanistan as “quickly as the ships could get there.” He elaborated:
It’s insane what we’re doing. And I’ll tell you one thing about this business about the military: We just had a quarterly [campaign finance] report, and they listed all the money that all the candidates got from the military. I got twice as much as all the other candidates put together on the Republican side, and even more than Obama got, which tells me that these troops want to come home as well because they know exactly what I’m talking about.
Some analysts questioned assertions that Paul had in fact received the majority of military donations, prompting Politifact.com to conduct its own research. The website reported:
We turned to the presidential candidates’ latest campaign finance filings compiled by the Federal Election Commission, which breaks out donations by donors’ employers…From April through June, Paul fielded more than $25,000 from individuals who listed their employer as a branch of the military.
Combined, six other Republican presidential candidates listed donations from members of the military totaling about $9,000. Our most-to-least breakdown: Herman Cain, $2,850; Mitt Romney, $2,750; Michele Bachmann, $2,250; Newt Gingrich, $500; and Tim Pawlenty and Rick Santorum, $250 each.
On the Democratic side, Obama’s campaign received more than $16,000 in donations from members of the military.
Politifact.com concluded that it is in fact true that military contributions to Paul are more than double that of the contributions to all other Republican presidential candidates, and that those donations also exceed those received by President Obama.
