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Race for '08: Ron Paul fans share one goal - Cut government TAYLOR BRIGHT If Ron Paul's supporters got together for a family portrait, it would be one of those pictures in which no one seems to resemble anyone else. "You have old-school Republicans, the conservatives who backed Barry Goldwater (in 1964). You have the anti-war crowd who are principled non-interventionists," said Jim Forsythe, a former Air Force major who's organized meet-and-greet sessions in New Hampshire for the Texas congressman and GOP presidential candidate. You also have businesspeople tired of government regulation, college students who like his views on holistic medicine and middle-aged folks who don't see Social Security helping them in a few years. There are people who supported Democrat Howard Dean four years ago and others who backed conservative Republican Pat Buchanan in the 1990s. What brings them together is a common belief that government is too big, obtrusive and unresponsive. "It's a desire to get government out of my life. That's it," said Rick Grote, a pharmacist in Hampton, Iowa.
(Article continues below) That bond has made Paul one of the more striking phenomena of the 2008 campaign. He's slowly climbed to poll respectability in the early voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire, and his fundraising looks to be topping the Republican field in the fourth quarter, with a haul of more than $12 million. Perhaps ironically for a 72-year-old physician who ran a barely noticed campaign for president on the Libertarian Party ticket 19 years ago, his current success is in part due to the Internet, which has brought together like-minded voters who've never met and quite probably never would have. The Paul campaign counts more than 40,000 supporters on Facebook, nearly twice as many as Mitt Romney has, and more than 90,000 friends on MySpace, twice as many as McCain.
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