COLUMBIA, S.C. — Ron Paul promised to fight on in the Republican presidential race as he headed to a fourth-place finish in the South Carolina primary Saturday.
“There have been three elections, and a total of 37 delegates have been chosen so far, less than two percent, like one-and-a-half percent,” Paul told a raucous crowd at a downtown billiards bar here. “This is the beginning of a long, hard slog. There is no doubt about it, the message of liberty is being received by more people everyday.”
Paul had 13 percent of the vote with 95 percent of precincts reporting. He is on track to get almost five times the number of votes that he got in 2008.
“I’ve been in this process of promoting the cause of liberty in the electoral process for a long time. At the beginning, I thought it was going to be a promotion of a cause,” Paul said. “Then it dawned on me that if you win elections and win delegates, that’s the way you promote a cause.”
Paul promised to go to the caucus states and fight for more delegates.
“That’s the name of the game,” he said. “There’s every reason to be encouraged. There’s every reason that we understand clearly that the cause is so necessary.”
State Sen. Danny Verdin, who endorsed Paul and joined him on stage, channeled John Paul Jones by saying, “We have not yet begun to fight.”
Paul supporters watched despondently as the results came in, many of them nursing beers, but they roared when the Texas congressman stepped to the podium.
“I was looking for a closer second,” Sky Gortney said before Paul took the stage. “This is kinda disappointing, actually.”
Several supporters blamed the establishment media for ignoring Paul and promoting the other candidates.
“People who are voting are getting their information from CNN, MSNBC, all the major media outlets, and when I talk to people on the street, they repeat it verbatim,” supporter Lori Bone told The Daily Caller. “They’re just using talking points from the mainstream media.”
Bone said she converted 15 people in the last week by showing them video clips of Paul’s speeches.
“His message will keep growing, and once it gets out there, it’s unstoppable,” Bone said.
“I was hoping we would come in last,” another supporter Lee Fowles told TheDC. “I was hoping for a third place finish, but it doesn’t look like that is going to happen.”
Fowles said that the most important issue for him was the wars overseas and that he would vote for President Barack Obama before he would vote for any of the Republican candidates.
Jason Sprankle, another supporter, said that he may reluctantly vote for Gingrich, Romney or Santorum, if one of them were to become the Republican nominee.