Ron Paul raised nearly $1.2 million yesterday in a “money bomb.” Those Internet fundraisers put the 2008 Paul campaign on the map when they helped him outraise top-tier candidates. This one was billed as “the REVOLution vs. Romneycare,” A mailing promoting it took shots at the “fat cat bankers” and Wall Street bailout recipients the Paulites argued helped Mitt Romney raise $10 million in a single day earlier this year.

Paul fell well short of Romney’s haul, though $10 million wasn’t the goal. But this focus on the presumed Republican frontrunner is a departure from the 2008 race. When Romney declared last week, the Paul campaign was quick to circulate an archived web page from Romney’s 2002 gubernatorial campaign highlighting the frontrunner’s past support of abortion and a federal assault weapons ban. Now they are attacking Romneycare in a fundraising effort. Paul is trying to front-load his fundraising this time around, because in 2007-08 the money came in too late to make much difference in some early states.