Ron Paul Raises More Money From Hoosiers Than Other GOP Candidates In The Fourth Quarter

This might come as a surprise to the elite insiders of the Indiana GOP who are all backing faux Republican Mitt Romney for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, but Ron Paul actually raised more money from Hoosiers in the fourth quarter of 2011 than any of the Republican presidential candidates, including Mitt Romney. Paul's support comes from grassroots supporters and not big money bundlers who raised all of Romney's funds. The Star's Maureen Groppe picks up on this in her story in today's Star and mentions that your's truly is among the Hoosiers supporting Paul:

Filings by the candidates show that Texas Rep. Ron Paul raised the most Hoosier dollars in the last quarter of 2011 among the GOP presidential candidates.

Paul raised $93,757 from Hoosiers who gave more than $200, the amount that requires disclosure of a contributor.

Indianapolis attorney Gary Welsh called Paul "the only truly traditional conservative in the Republican presidential race."

"People have forgotten what it means to be a conservative in the Goldwater tradition of keeping the government off our backs and out of our bedrooms," said Welsh, who gave Paul $250 in December.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney raised $84,251 in large-dollar contributions from Hoosiers in the fourth quarter. Romney, however, raised the most from Hoosiers to date: $273,549, compared with Paul's $180,107.

It should come as no surprise that the Darth Vader of the Indiana Republican Party, Barnes & Thornburg's Bob Grand, is Mitt's money man in Indiana:

Romney's campaign also disclosed that Bob Grand, a partner in the Indianapolis-based law and lobbying firm Barnes & Thornburg, raised $110,150 for Romney from others. (Candidates have to disclose "bundled" contributions from lobbyists.)

Did anyone catch the little-noticed story over the weekend about how Romney, whose campaign has questioned the Republican bona fides of Gingrich and Paul, was actually a registered Democrat in his home state of Massachusetts as recently as the 1990s when he backed Paul Tsongas for president. It turns out that Romney had originally planned to challenge Ted Kennedy in 1994 not as a Republican but as a Democrat in the Democratic primary. Yep, no surprise here. Romney became a Republican out of political convenience, not out of political conviction. The guy actually sent out his attack dogs to falsely accuse Gingrich of being no friend of Ronald Reagan when Romney didn't even support Reagan's election as president.