Kuff's World

When the Republican Party issued a clarion call last week for its grassroots supporters to submit ideas online to build the party's platform, Republican National Committee officials probably weren't expecting a concerted push for the dismantling of the Federal Reserve and a return to the gold standard.

But Ron Paul supporters have made themselves at home on the the GOP platform site, sounding many of the themes that turned the Texas congressman's doomed run for the Republican presidential nod into an internet cause célèbre.

"Get rid of the unconstitutional Federal Reserve, and go back to a sound gold and silver based currency," wrote Cathy, a contributor from Stevensville, Montana, in a post to the "Jobs and Economic Growth" section of the site.

It's just one of pages and pages of comments submitted by users complaining about the Federal Reserve. Abolishing the bank is one of Paul's core policy issues.

A Libertarian-leaning Republican, Ron Paul formally ended his presidential run June 12, long after rival John McCain effectively secured the nomination. But Paul's army of online supporters, who've collectively contributed millions of dollars and thousands of hours of volunteering, are still out there, and they're now working to sway the direction of the party.

The latest Pew Research Center national survey, conducted June 18-29 with a sample of 2,004 adults including 503 on a cell phone, finds that the overall estimate of voter presidential preference is modestly affected by whether or not the cell phone respondents are included. Barack Obama holds a 48% to 40% lead in the sample that includes cell phones, and a 46% to 41% advantage in the landline sample.

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The number of Americans who have a cell phone but no landline phone has continued to grow, reaching a total of 14.5% of all adults during the last six months of 2007, according to U.S. government estimates. In addition, 22.3% of all adults live in households with both landline and cell phones but say that they receive all or almost all calls on their cell phones.

The cell-only and cell-mostly respondents in the Pew poll are different demographically from others. Compared with all respondents reached on a landline, both groups are significantly younger, more likely to be male, and less likely to be white. But the cell-only and cell-mostly also are different from one another on many characteristics. Compared with the cell-only, the cell-mostly group is more affluent, better educated, and more likely to be married, to have children, and to own a home.

In the current poll, cell-only respondents are significantly more likely than either the landline respondents or the cell-mostly respondents to support Barack Obama and Democratic candidates for Congress this fall. They also are substantially less likely to be registered to vote and - among registered voters - somewhat less likely to say they are absolutely certain they will vote. Despite their demographic differences with the landline respondents, the cell-mostly group is not significantly different from the landline respondents politically.

Yet as Pew has found in the past, when data from landline and cell phone samples are combined and weighted to match the U.S. population on key demographic measures, the results are similar to those from the landline survey alone. Among registered voters in the combined cell and landline sample, support for Barack Obama is two percentage points higher than in the landline sample alone (48% vs. 46%); support for McCain is one point lower (40% vs. 41%). Narrowing the analysis to voters who are certain about their vote choice, there is almost no difference between the landline and combined samples: Obama has a 38%-28% advantage in the combined sample, while the margin is 38%-30% in the landline sample.

For Obama, there is no shortage of what Democrats describe as do-no-harm people he can pick: Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana; Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware; former Sen. Sam Nunn of Georgia; or Gov. Tim Kaine of Virginia.

"It's a possibility, not a probability," said Nunn, now the head of a nonprofit organization out to reduce the threat posed by nuclear, biological and chemical weaponry. "My own thinking is, it may be a time for the country to say, 'Timeout. The two-party system has served us well, historically, but it's not serving us now.'"

The 68-year-old former senator, still considered one of the foremost experts on national security, confirmed that he's discussed a presidential run as part of several conversations with Michael Bloomberg, the New York mayor.

More important, Nunn said he's been in touch with Unity '08, a group with a goal of fielding a bipartisan or independent ticket for president. Initial talks began with Hamilton Jordan, a co-founder of Unity '08 and former chief of staff to President Jimmy Carter.

Doug Bailey, a Republican strategist and another co-founder, said Nunn was given "a more detailed briefing" from the group this summer.