Paul ‘pretty pleased’ with straw poll finish

Internet insurgent candidate Rep. Ron Paul (Texas) is not disappointed with his fifth-place finish in Saturday’s Ames, Iowa, Republican straw poll.

Though Paul ended up behind fellow long-shot Rep. Tom Tancredo (Colo.), Paul communications director Jesse Benton told The Hill on Monday that Paul was “pretty pleased” with the results considering how little the candidate has been on the ground in Iowa and how little money he spent to win more than 1,300 of the 14,000-plus votes cast.

{mosads}Benton said the campaign saw the poll and the speech that came before it as “an opportunity to introduce Ron to the Iowa voters.”

Benton said other campaigns have “peaked” and “declined,” but Paul, with his “fresh retail efforts,” is the candidate who is actually building momentum.

Benton took an indirect shot at poll winner former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who has spent millions in the state, including a tremendous financial effort over the weekend to transport would-be poll voters to the site and pay for their entrance at $35 a pop.

“I don’t think there were very many voters there that were undecided,” Benton said.

What’s more, he said, Paul had “the strongest overall presence” there besides Romney when out-of-state supporters were added to the mix.

Benton addressed Paul’s decision to lead off his speech with a forceful condemnation of abortion.

Paul is generally regarded as the leader of the libertarian charge in the presidential contest and not generally as a cheerleader of standard modern conservative talking points.

“But the one thing we have to remember is that you cannot have freedom without life,” Paul told his enthusiastic supporters in Iowa. “We must preserve all life if we expect to protect the individual liberty of each and every one of us. And that means the unborn as well.”

Benton said Paul’s decision to offer such language should not be surprising given his long record as an OB/GYN, but he conceded that Paul might have “articulated it in a more forceful way” than usual.

As for his place below Tancredo, who is known primarily as the harshest critic of illegal immigration, Benton said only that Tancredo “has spent a heck of a lot more time in Iowa than we have.”

While the Paul campaign maintains that it has been doing better than other campaigns in the online grassroots arena, Benton acknowledged that for Paul to be truly competitive, he will have to start building on the more traditional aspects of campaigning.

“That’s not where our operation is strongest right now,” Benton said, adding that it does have more than 33,000 meet-up members. “We realize that that’s going to have to be combined with the traditional brick-laying components of politics.”

The campaign opened its Iowa headquarters last Thursday, and Benton said it plans to add staff there soon.