The Ron Paul bloggers crack me up
Dear “lewrockwellians”:
Regarding a stray post on dailykos.com — um, dailykosians?– commented by a blogger at lewrockwell.com:
How do I put this? There is this moment on the recent Ron Paul online video with a woman saying all her Liberal relatives are planning on voting for Ron Paul. It’s a misnomer. If push comes to shove, I believe the Liberal contingency would vote for goddamned Hillary Clinton over sainted Ron Paul. Nor do they particularly owe Ron Paul their vote.
Her ideology, such as it is, better matches them than Ron Paul’s does. And that includes the idea that we might intervene in Darfur.
Actually the linking to that is interesting. I do not think I saw it streaming on the rss roster at bloglines, meaning it’s not a “Front Page” item. I might be wrong about that. But the thing is that these sites are linking to Ron Paul in the media items right and left, left and right. A commenter on Reason posited this tendency as compared with the South Park Underpants Gnome of “Step 1: Steal Underpants. Step 2: Question Mark. Step 3: Profit.”
June 21st, 2007 at 3:29 pm
I am a Ron Paul supporter, and I wouldn’t vote for Hilly under any circumstance imaginable. I would sooner write in Mickey Mouse.
Ron Paul is beating Hilly in polls like this dailykos poll, and *earning* the support of the woman you saw in the video, because even most Dems are having a hard time stomaching her. Both parties are having serious problems motivating their base. This is because both parties have repeatedly lied to their base (and I don’t just mean about the various scandals, but about policy as well. Think of Billy’s vote for the Online Communications Decency Act (remember that blatant Democratic attempt to censor the internet – over porn of all things), or Bush Sr. and his “Read My Lips” (but don’t watch my hand as I sign a tax hike.) It has happened so often that Politician = Liar in most people’s minds, and they think that of both parties.
So when a candidate comes along, like Ron Paul, who actually _does_ what he says, people flock to him, regardless of their agreement with the actual message. And they will stay loyal to him just as long as he keeps to his principles (and not one second after.) They won’t care what someone wrote in his newsletter 15 years ago, they won’t care if he pays his daughter $20k/year for office manager duties. All they will care is that he tell the truth.
Say what you like about the _wisdom_ of Ron Paul’s ideas – the one thing you can’t say, is that he is inconsistant or _ideologically_ dishonest. Or that he shirks from his position when everyone is looking.
Who cares what Hilly *says* she believes about Darfur? No one really thinks she will do what she says. It doesn’t matter if my views match Hilly’s or not (they don’t.) because Hilly is going to do what benefits Hilly (and maybe her party, but only if she gets the credit, and the party owes her a favor in return.)
When you put Ron Paul (as GOP nominee only, this all changes if he runs 3rd party.) up against Hillary Clinton, it will be no contest. It would be a Landslide of Reaganesque proportions. Hilly would only win New York (and maybe Florida, known by some as New York South.)
Laters
June 21st, 2007 at 4:31 pm
I did not vote for Kerry, basically because his position on Iraq was to Send More Troops, and he did not make the case that “He could manage the war better than Bush”, such as that was.
There’s my “bonafides” for not voting for Democratic Presidential candidates. I appear to have been an anomolie in what was an “Anyone But Bush” culture, a margin of error figure.
The “Even My — friends” line by random supporters never seems to manifest itself in the election.
Here’s the thing about the dailykos poll: it’s on the Internet, on an obscure page off of dailykos. To mark it up as anything significant is absurd.
Paul is going to end up as a Libertarian candidate, perhaps fused with,,, say… the “Constitution Party”, if he decides to take that bait. In that scenario, he will get a respectable percentage or couple of percentage of votes, which is better than any other Libertarian candidate.
I suspect that Ron Paul’s dominance on the Internet will fade when a larger bulk of politically-active people start to pay attention.
Oh, and I respect Ron Paul, and wish there were about 20 of him in the House.
June 21st, 2007 at 10:57 pm
“I suspect that Ron Paul’s dominance on the Internet will fade when a larger bulk of politically-active people start to pay attention.”
Available evidence indicates the opposite is more likely to happen.
The more politically-involved people thus far (primary watchers/voters, bloggers, people who get their news from the internet instead of TV) tend to be Paul supporters.
Less-politically involved people (people not following the races closely, people who get their news from TV) tend to support Giuliani, Romney, McCain, or Thompson.
The logic therefore dictates that *the more people find out about Paul, the more his support grows.*
This train will be hard to stop.
June 22nd, 2007 at 9:12 am
Yeah – there is no other candidate like him, so I doubt he is going to fade away. Zydeco is wise!
Keep spreading the message!