The recent news about GOP presidential back-of-the-packer Ron Paul--that on Monday alone he raised $4 million from 20,000 new Internet donors--got me thinking about...Dennis Kucinich.

Ron Paul is an out-of-the-box Republican. He opposes the Iraq war and has blamed 9/11 on a U.S. foreign policy designed to perpetuate "worldwide imperialism." As a libertarian, he has advocated the legalization of drugs and has voted against numerous government programs (including education for disabled kids).

Kucinich is an out-of-the-box Democrat. He advocates establishing a Department of Peace. He favors a single-payer national health insurance program. In the House, he introduced articles of impeachment against Dick Cheney.

Paul speaks for a slice of conservatives; Kucinich speaks for a slice of liberals. Both are offbeat, driven-by-principles characters. (You've heard about Kucinich and the UFO.) Yet Paul rakes in the campaign moolah, while Kucinich runs along almost on empty. As of the end of September, Kucinich had raised $2.1 million, of which he had spent $1.9 million. (And he was carrying nearly half a mil in debt.) As of that point (prior to his November 5 "money bomb"), Paul had collected $8.3 million, and he had $5.5 million in cash on hand.

The question is, why does a champion of libertarian conservatism attract significant financial support, while a champion of progressive notions is stuck in the poor house? No one should expect either Paul or Kucinich to match the tens of millions of dollars bagged by the front runners or to become contenders within their respective parties. But Paul has tapped his constituency. Kucinich has not.

It may well be that progressives are more satisfied with the leading Democrats (particularly Barack Obama or John Edwards) then libertarian conservatives are with the main Republican wannabes. After all, each of the Dems now oppose the war, while Paul is the lone antiwar voice within the GOP contest. It could also be that progressive Democrats are more pragmatic than libertarian cons and find it easier to live with the conventional liberals of the Democratic Party. Libertarian conservatives apparently cannot stomach the conventional conservatives of the Republican Party.

Still, the Paul-Kucinich comparison causes me to wonder if there is just more energy within antiwar, screw-the-government libertarian circles than within impeach-Bush, downsize-the-Pentagon progressive quarters. At the least, the libertarians are more eager to put their money where their candidate is--and let the political free market work its merriment.

JUST YOU WAIT. Yesterday, I noted that the war has yet to emerge as a main point of contention in the 2008 election. That's because Democrats basically agree it's time to reverse course in Iraq and GOPers (except Ron Paul) all back George W. Bush's stay-the-course policy. Consequently, there hasn't been much significant debate within each nomination contest. But a new CNN/Opinion Research poll says that 68 percent of Americans now oppose the war--an all-time high. Only 31 percent approve of Bush's adventure in Mesopotamia. Surprisingly, this poll came after the White House, GOPers on Capitol Hill, and other war cheerleaders--in the wake of General David Petraeus's congressional testimony--pumped up the volume on the surge-is-working chorus.

So consider this: can a GOP candidate for president win if he is backing a war opposed by seven out of ten voters? If these numbers hold, you can expect the war to be the primary point of engagement between the two nominees next year. And good luck to the Republican standard-bearer and his party comrades running for the House and Senate.