Oportunidad para Ron Paul en Iowa

The New York Times:

Steve and Cindy Anders belong to one of Iowa’s most politically savvy movements — Christian home-schoolers, whose organizing on behalf of Mike Huckabee in 2008 was one of the secrets behind his upset victory in the state’s Republican caucuses.

This year, the Anderses are behind Representative Ron Paul of Texas, who supports drastically shrinking the federal government and closing the Education Department.

In a year when the Republican field is unusually fractured, with front-runners coming around as often as carousel ponies, Mr. Paul’s ability to mobilize niche groups like home-schoolers may make a big difference. His campaign, which has won a number of straw polls and is picking up momentum, has demonstrated its ability to organize and mobilize supporters, which is particularly relevant in Iowa, where relatively small numbers can tip the scales in the caucuses.

For his part, Mr. Anders was looking forward to a meeting with a Paul campaign staff member to strategize “how we can go to work for Ron Paul.”

“Home-schoolers are really independently minded,” Mr. Anders said, estimating that most of the 10 other families in his Saturday morning coffee club in Council Bluffs, Iowa, supported Mr. Paul. “He believes the federal government has no role in education, as most home-schoolers will agree.”

Home-school families are among the lesser-known converts to Mr. Paul — along with small-business owners and voters well past college age — who have helped him build support beyond his fierce core of followers, often young people.

His support has usually added up to less than 10 percent in surveys of likely Republican primary voters.

But now, thanks to the best organized grass-roots campaign in Iowa and heavy spending on television advertisements that portray him as consistent while other Republicans have flip-flopped, Mr. Paul is breaking through that ceiling, giving rise to a once far-fetched scenario — that he might win the state’s caucuses on Jan. 3.

“I’m buying Ron Paul today,” said Craig Robinson, a former political director for the Republican Party of Iowa, who on Wednesday sent a Twitter message saying, “Ron Paul’s Iowa Campaign Office was abuzz at 8 p.m. tonight when I drove by on my way to the bank. Impressive.”

(...) In making his third run for the presidency, Mr. Paul, 76, has benefited from the splitting of the social conservative vote in Iowa among a number of candidates, and from the fact that this year jobs and the economy trump concerns over abortion and same-sex marriage.

Four years ago, Mr. Paul stumped around the state, warning that the country was heading for financial calamity because of Washington’s overspending. This year he appears in the same hotel ballrooms, and many regard his message as having been prescient.