Is The Ron Paul Phenomenon Over?

The Ron Paul campaign has been a sight to see; he amassed a collection of disaffected folks that ranged from the far right to the the far left and myriad misfits in between. Whether they are "Truthers", white supremacist's or just idealistic students, they were a passionate bunch to say the least and were ravenous at the first sign that someone on the web maligned their guy. They spammed every poll and commented on every post...until now.

It wasn't just the MSM finally researching his past and finding newsletters that contained xenophobic, racist and homophobic musings, no, it was everything involved with the campaign. It was a campaign built on a house of cards--vocal supporters whose sheer volume belied their collective numbers. They screamed that we'd be sorry and that we were wrong, their boy was going to shock everyone and show well in the caucuses and primaries. They were hypnotized by what they thought they were and failed to take a step back and see that the "movement" they claimed they had was not quite one at all. That must have been a hard moment of clarity and I would have my doubts that all have suffered it.

Why am I writing this now? Because I witnessed something I'd not seen in a year, a post written about Paul that didn't attract at least some comments defending the Texas Congressman. Captain Ed is a much larger force in the blogosphere than I and if he's noticing it, it must be a trend although I disagree that with the good Cap'n that Andrew Sullivan "bravely" called out Paul). Every other post I wrote about Paul generated numerous comments--comments that unfortunately are gone since I switched over to the update Blogger.

Click here, here and here to see the knee-jerk venomous reaction from the Paulites every time I mentioned his name while working over at AOL. I admit, he was a bloggers dream who would draw scads of traffic for little input and for that reason only will be missed.

I may be a bit premature in writing his political obituary--he may last until Super Tuesday, but the fire is dimming and the cause is lost for the Paulistinian's. One only can conclude that's a good thing.

Update: The gloating begins. Brutal.