Other: not enough visits by Ron Paul to Iowa, not enough people on the ground who organized local visits and rallies by Ron Paul. The lack of visits by Ron Paul was a decision by the campaign not to spend a lot of time and money there, given that 30-40% of the vote would go right off the bat to an evangelical.
Fred("Can I get some applause?") Thompson lived in a bus in Iowa the last two or three weeks of his campaign; he visited small towns even when he could only get one or two signatures for his campaign. See the article on his depressing campaign in the New Republic. But it was enough to get him third. Or perhaps it was just because people knew him from Law and Order.
Ron won Jefferson County with 35% of the vote. Why? I imagine it was because of strong local organization in Fairfield, the county seat. It had a rally for him last summer that drew hundreds of people.
Is this where FEC regulations hamper us? We have strong, motivated grassroots, but it cannot coordinate with the campaign. We need to pick an early state where we can do well, Michigan or South Carolina perhaps, and do retail politics-- speak to small groups of registered Republicans in as many counties as we can, meet with the local GOP and local newspaper editors and TV reporters. Talk radio reaches a lot of listeners, and I think Ron does a lot of talk radio interviews; but I think face to face contact with voters would get more registered Republicans on our side. Let Ron talk directly to the pro-war Republicans about fiscal responsibility and our foreign policy. But who can do the logistics for local whistlestops if the grassroots meetups and the HQ campaign cannot coordinate?
