Ron Paul says the legions of newcomers his presidential campaign brought to the Republican Party are getting the cold shoulder from John McCain and from the party.

The Texas congressman says neither he nor his supporters have heard from Mr. McCain or Republican National Committee Chairman Mike Duncan since March 4, when the Arizona senator accumulated enough delegates to clinch the party's presidential nomination.

"I don't think they want them," Mr. Paul told The Washington Times, adding that indifference doesn't surprise him because the party's establishment has deserted traditional conservative principles for big government and foreign intervention.

Many of his 800,000 presidential nomination votes were from newcomers to the Republican Party — the kind of dedicated small-donor volunteers the party needs, he says.

Mr. McCain hasn't approached Mr. Paul's voters because Mr. Paul has not called to say he is ending his run, says McCain campaign senior adviser Charles Black.

He estimates his e-mail list of committed supporters alone would account for about 10 percent of the Republican electorate and could move mountains, if they choose to stay in the party and work to change it the way evangelicals and Catholics changed it, beginning in the Ronald Reagan era.

In the end, he wants to be able to say that he and his supporters "revitalized interest in the concept of personal liberty. It is the instrument that made America the greatest country ever — and we're about to lose it."