La ventaja organizativa de Ron Paul en Iowa

The New York Times:

It was four years ago that Ross Witt, a soft-spoken electrical engineer at John Deere, overcame his natural discomfort with knocking on hundreds of his neighbors’ doors during dinnertime as a precinct coordinator for Ron Paul’s campaign.

But when Mr. Paul dropped out of the national race in June 2008, Mr. Witt did not stop, because, in a sense, neither did Mr. Paul: Mr. Witt and many other supporters here joined the Iowa branch of an independent political group Mr. Paul established after the race. They carried on his libertarian message, and picked local organizers. And when Mr. Paul announced that he was running for president this year, Mr. Witt and others jumped back onto his campaign, a force more motivated and efficient than before.

Alone among the Republican field, Mr. Paul, a Texas congressman, has a built-in network from 2008 that gives him a decisive organizational edge. Iowa Republicans say that advantage is an important reason some polls show him within striking distance of a victory in the Jan. 3 caucuses, with a battle-tested ground game poised to take advantage of a lack of passion for the rest of the candidates, a stark contrast to 2008, when evangelicals rallied around Mike Huckabee.

“This isn’t a year-and-a-half campaign,” Craig Robinson, a former Iowa Republican Party political director during the caucuses four years ago, said of Mr. Paul’s organization. “This is a five-year campaign.”

(...) Mr. Paul’s campaign has grown more adaptable. Hundreds of college students are being recruited to travel on their own nickel to Iowa and New Hampshire, where the campaign will pay their food, housing and gas while they knock on doors and make phone calls. Paul backers hope the effort blunts the unfortunate timing of the Iowa caucuses during Christmas break, which could undermine turnout among his fervent student base.

(...) The campaign developed an Internet-based phone-banking system that allows people around the country to make calls to Iowans from home using scripts tailored to identify supporters. It seems to be working: a New York Times/CBS News poll this month found that 60 percent of likely Republican caucusgoers said they had been contacted by the Paul campaign, the highest rate of any candidate, and about double that of Newt Gingrich. The true believers have also been coached not to be rude or dismissive to those who do not embrace the message, an issue during the last campaign.

(...) And Mr. Paul’s biting commercials have been running relentlessly on Iowa stations, winning raves and tearing into Mr. Gingrich, now his main rival here.

Even before all that started, Mr. Paul had a tactical edge, Republican activists say: a lot of his infrastructure stayed intact during the interim through his newly founded group, Campaign for Liberty. One senior Iowa Republican official described it “as a shadow campaign in waiting.”

The group became a bridge between campaigns, they said, keeping important supporters primed, a boost in a state where on-the-ground organization means everything.

(...) Unlike primary states where voters disappear behind a curtain to pull a lever, Iowa’s Republicans (and independents and Democrats willing to join the Republican Party for a day) will gather in about 1,800 caucuses to vote, sometimes by a show of hands. It is a social event, where neighbors lobby one another, making enthusiastic advocates like Mr. Witt a candidate’s most valuable currency.

On caucus night, Mr. Witt will lobby his neighbors all the way up to the voting, including a short speech. He will also run the caucus, as the precinct Republican chairman. He said many other Paul activists — perhaps even hundreds — are now also on hiatus from Mr. Paul’s independent group to play a role in the campaign.