Ron Paul's Pointless Internet Presidency

[Bronco_Beerslug]

A complete waste of time and money for those few fanatics who support him...

--------------------------------------------------------------------
Ron Paul's pointless Internet presidency (http://news.yahoo.com/ron-paul-s-pointless-internet-presidency.html)
Ron Paul has about as many votes in this year’s GOP primaries as he has Facebook fans – is his fierce online following that much less relevant than it appears?
Virginia Heffernan is the national correspondent for Yahoo! News, covering culture and politics from a digital perspective. She wrote extensively on Internet culture during her eight years as a staff writer for The New York Times, and she has also worked at Harper’s, the New Yorker and Slate. Her new book, Magic and Loss: The Pleasures of the Internet, will be published in early 2013.

Four years ago, the shrewdest presidential candidates used YouTube, MySpace, Facebook and a dash of Twitter. They also tried to gain a strange new psychic edge called—in the contrived conceit of the day—"mindshare in the blogosphere." Apps were nowhere in campaign strategies. The iPhone was new. The iPad didn't exist.

So who e-campaigned best last time? During Super Tuesday week in 2008, Garlik, a British firm that monitors digital reputations, ranked the day's presidential candidates by online popularity. It didn't take Nate Silver or that Zogby person to call the winner. If you hung around social media even a little, you knew the fix was in.

http://l.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/kSS6qqwVavdLpVTvR8wdvA--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Y2g9Mjc1Njtjcj0xO2N3PTM3NjQ7ZHg9MD tkeT0wO2ZpPXVsY3JvcDtoPTE0MDtxPTg1O3c9MTkw/http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/News/Reuters/2012-03-07T025349Z_1890424127_GM1E8370UG001_RTRMADP_3_USA-CAMPAIGN-PAUL.JPG
Republican presidential candidate and U.S. Rep Ron Paul (R-TX) speaks to supporters …

It wasn't Hillary Clinton. Nor Mitt Romney, John McCain or Barack Obama. Blowing them all away—sealing for himself, in fact, the Presidency of the United Cyberstates of Digital America, commander-in-chief of the Information-Wants-To-Be-Free World—was, naturally, Congressman Ronald Ernest "Ron" Paul.

Ron Paul, President of the Internet! Hail to the online chief! Four more years!

Ron Paul. Elfin ob-gyn goldbug. Ayn Randian. Foe of war, abortion and government. Texan. Rejector of Medicaid, rejector of Medicare. Climate-change skeptic. Keeper of odd company. Espouser of tendentious views.

In 2012, he's still kicking back in the Online Oval Office. Ron Paul, commanding the mad and visible support of somebody. Sure he doesn't fare so well with actual flesh-and-blood voters of majority age who are motivated to drive gas-burning cars and appear with their laminated IDs at three-dimensional voting booths. But you can't have everything.

Big online, small in the real world?

Tim Hwang, a researcher of online movements and memes and the managing director of the Web Ecology Project, says that Ron Paul illustrates a fact we often overlook: "The Internet is not coterminous with the real world." He told me by email, "Like in a rearview mirror communities can be smaller than they appear on the Internet: discussion is often subject to parties who are loudest and can rally the most participants to appear online and participate at that specific moment."

This time around, for Paul, the Internet rally seems to have been sound and fury signifying little.Paul's big hopes for Alaska, Idaho and North Dakota were dashed on Super Tuesday, and he has yet to score a victory in a single contest in this election.

However, he's still logging mindshare in the blogosphere.

So how does he do it? Paul, for all his flat, engineer-like charisma, hardly seems like a Julian Assange mastermind, able to bend the Internet to his Machiavellian hacker will. Instead, it seems the President of the Internet just got lucky.

"I was on YouTube looking for some sort of guitar video or something," an ardent supporter of Ron Paul told PBS a while back, by way of explaining how he came to his candidate years ago. He had stumbled on a Paul propaganda video: "Ron Paul: A New Hope." "He was just speaking truth," concluded the guiter-vid-hunter. A Paulian was born.

And then: lots more Paulians were born. Pop pop pop—everyone on the Web was for Ron Paul! Or so it seemed. They all seemed to have those punk RE/ EVOL /UTION stencils and theories about fiat money. And if a blogger in those days dared to criticize Congressman Paul for, say, taking money from card-carrying neo-Nazis or claiming authorship of a newsletter that talked smack about, oh, black people ("I think we can safely assume that 95 percent of the black males in [Washington, D.C.] are semi-criminal or entirely criminal") she was roundly creamed by organized commenters.

I know, because this happened to me. I'd give a link to my interrogation of the Paul scene from the waning days of 2007, but it doesn't exist. My editor at the New York Times fully expunged the record after hundreds of Paulians swarmed the site—like bacteria or antibodies—and sowed the comments section with vitriol.

The complete retraction delighted the Paulians. And to their credit, Paulians can bring the bombast. Lew Rockwell, the "anti-state, anti-war, pro-market" blogger wrote ominously at the time: "Those who smear Ron Paul will live to regret it." He went on: "MSM, here are the new rules: no lying, no ridiculing, no suppressing. Remember 'journalistic ethics'? You really have no choice. The Internet rules."

A victory for Ron Paul would be a victory for the Internet, then, and in theory that victory would be a victory for people—anti-statist, libertarian people, the normal kind who have grave doubts about paper money and spooky conceptions of the Federal Reserve Bank.

Support is limited, but organic and real

The grassroots support Paul lavishly enjoys is either illusory—"astroturfing" by a campaign determined to make its marketing initiatives seem organic—or real.

Most observers feel it is real, as far as it goes. Hwang doesn't believe the campaign is funded well enough even to seed all the user-generated Paul propaganda that's out there.

Zephyr Teachout, the Fordham legal scholar who organized Howard Dean's online campaign, has said that where most campaigns make "Stepford" Web sites that aim to control a candidate's brand, as Coke or Apple would, Ron Paul's sites, many of them made by fans and not PR firms, look like places where anyone can belong and contribute.

Paulians, Teachout says, do not endeavor to meet the candidate, which would be costly for the campaign. Instead, they content themselves with meeting one another—online and in live meetups. Thus convened, they figure out clever ways to engineer shows of online force.

Some of Paul's most ardent supporters are sui generis, including Trevor Lyman, an Internet music entrepreneur and Ron Paul superfan. In 2008, Lyman abandoned a lifetime of political apathy to throw in with Paul, whose opposition to the war in Iraq appealed to him.

Though he's now not on the campaign's payroll, and has had very limited contact with the candidate—no tete-a-tete flights in Gulfstreams to discuss pet issues—Lyman is credited with having staged the campaign's biggest fundraising initiatives (many of them Internet-driven "moneybombs"). He also co-owns a for-profit company that flies blimp advertising Ron Paul for President in 2012. Giving money to Lyman's company is one way for donors to do an end-run around the federal contribution limit of $2,500, per election, to a candidate.

Getting around limitations imposed by government or big business is second nature to digital natives like Lyman who are the right age to have grown up getting music and movies from Napster and BitTorrent. Ron Paul's politics are a natural fit with the frontiersman ideology that drives longtime users of the Internet—especially the pure-hearted ones, trained in the 1990s, who can code, develop online projects, create and curate user-generated content and start digital initiatives. They also happen to be the ones who don't expect money for their labors.

For now, they have only one problem as a support base. There are not enough of them. Ron Paul has about 900,000 Facebook likers, almost precisely the number of votes for Paul in this election, which he is not—you heard it here first—going to win.

[mhgaffney]

Beerslugger has been tossing down too many beers to think clearly.

Ron Paul was the target of a well engineered and carefully orchestrated campaign by the corporate media -- and the Wall Street elite who own the media --

RP had to be weakened -- to kill his campaign chances -- because he alone was perceived as a genuine threat.

None of the other candidates have called for an audit of the fed. They are putty in the hands of Wall Street. RP alone could not be controlled with campaign contributions --

He alone warned about the nation's slippage into tyranny -- and he called for an end to the crazy wars.

No wonder they targeted RP.

They conjured up enough sleaze to wound him.

The result is what we see. RP is not viewed as a "serious" candidate. Notice who is saying this. The corporate media. And notice who is repeating it -- Beerslugger.

Nuf said.

MHG

[Bronco_Beerslug]

RP had to be weakened -- to kill his campaign chances -- because he alone was perceived as a genuine threat.

Uh, Ron Paul, the REPUBLICAN candidate for president?

He was and never will be any threat to that party. Anyone who thought or thinks differently doesn't understand American politics..."Nuf said".

[Rohirrim]

Beerslugger has been tossing down too many beers to think clearly.

Ron Paul was the target of a well engineered and carefully orchestrated campaign by the corporate media -- and the Wall Street elite who own the media --

RP had to be weakened -- to kill his campaign chances -- because he alone was perceived as a genuine threat.

None of the other candidates have called for an audit of the fed. They are putty in the hands of Wall Street. RP alone could not be controlled with campaign contributions --

He alone warned about the nation's slippage into tyranny -- and he called for an end to the crazy wars.

No wonder they targeted RP.

They conjured up enough sleaze to wound him.

The result is what we see. RP is not viewed as a "serious" candidate. Notice who is saying this. The corporate media. And notice who is repeating it -- Beerslugger.

Nuf said.

MHG

Yeah. It was a conspiracy.

If they didn't put enough froth on your latte, you'd think it was a conspiracy.

[Garcia Bronco]

Yeah. It was a conspiracy.

If they didn't put enough froth on your latte, you'd think it was a conspiracy.

Or too much

[W*GS]

Yeah. It was a conspiracy.

If they didn't put enough froth on your latte, you'd think it was a conspiracy.

Anyone that agrees with gaffe is a Good and Right Person.

Anyone who disagrees with gaffe is Evil and Wrong and part of the destruction of all that is Good and Right.

gaffe has one binary bit for a brain.

[mhgaffney]

Anyone that agrees with gaffe is a Good and Right Person.

Anyone who disagrees with gaffe is Evil and Wrong and part of the destruction of all that is Good and Right.

gaffe has one binary bit for a brain.

I heard the anti Ron Paul tirade from Mike Savage and other hard line Zionists -- who sunk to the usual depths -- accused him of being anti Israel and anti semitic.

As we have seen -- this sort of sleaze -- even when not true -- is very effective at wounding a candidate -- even someone as wholesome as RP.

The guy is a physician -- and for many years never wavered in his views -- but suddenly he becomes another satan -- when it's convenient for the Zionists.

The only candidate who would hold Wall Street accountable - had to be damaged.

Curious that Ro, and W*gs and Beerslugger have been mute about auditing the fed. Sigh...

Where is Andrew Jackson when we mist need him?

[W*GS]

Thanks for spewing your Nazi crapola.

We can always count on you for pulling that ****, gaffe.

[DenverBrit]

I heard the anti Ron Paul tirade from Mike Savage and other hard line Zionists -- who sunk to the usual depths -- accused him of being anti Israel and anti semitic.

As we have seen -- this sort of sleaze -- even when not true -- is very effective at wounding a candidate -- even someone as wholesome as RP.

The guy is a physician -- and for many years never wavered in his views -- but suddenly he becomes another satan -- when it's convenient for the Zionists.

The only candidate who would hold Wall Street accountable - had to be damaged.

Curious that Ro, and W*gs and Beerslugger have been mute about auditing the fed. Sigh...

Where is Andrew Jackson when we mist need him?

Psst, he's dead. You should look into it.

http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/files/imagecache/feature/files/20080314_sherlock_holmes.jpg

[BroncsRule]

I'm all for auditing the FED, and then holding open Senate hearings to discuss said audit.

I'm also strongly for reassessing (and sharply downsizing) our global military footprint.

But returning to the gold standard is just moonbat teritory.

And RP is far from "wholesome".

[mhgaffney]

Here they are folks, Ro, W*gs and Beerslugger...the three chimps.

See no truth, speak none and hear even less.

[mhgaffney]

The one man who could not be bought, Ron Paul, had to be damaged (as in smeared) to take him out of the race.

Where are the Ron paul supporters? Indeed, where is Taco, that coward?

We've seen his cowardice on the board in the past.

He's probably keeping his head down -- -trying to blend in with the woodwork -- so as not to become a target of the Zionist machine.

It's gotten so bad -- that an honest man cannot get anywhere near the White House. Had they failed to sufficiently damage RP, had he gotten close to the nomination -- - they would have taken it to the next level -- and put out a contract on him.

We have only the illusion of democracy --

[mosca]

If it's pointless, why did Beerslug spend the time and effort to post this attack piece?

Point is that Ron Paul represents many important views that none of the other mainstream, corporate-paid candidates are willing to espouse, which I have listed several times in many of the threads here that focus on Paul. Even with a Ron Paul loss, at least someone is bringing these view to the forefront and putting them on the national scene. These are issues that are larger than Republican vs. Democrat and with Ron Paul's increased media attention, hopefully many of these issues will get more traction in 2016 and beyond.

[Bronco_Beerslug]

If it's pointless, why did Beerslug spend the time and effort to post this attack piece?

It's not an "attack piece", it's a slice of reality piece. You Paul supporters just don't "get it". He is not respected or taken seriously by 90% of Americans because of the fantasy world he preaches and dwells in.

Once again, a complete waste of time and money.

[Arkie]

Ron Paul has more activists than the others swarming local and county delegate selections, and he could win outright majorities in two of the states that have already started their process. Ron Paul may not win the nomination, but he has a voice on the internet even if the mainstream media ridicules him or blacks him out. It's probably enough to keep Romney from winning enough delegates on the first ballot.

It's not pointless even if he doesn't win. He never believed that if he couldn't win it all this year, he shouldn't even try. He's already made a difference in the liberty movement compared to four years ago.

[mosca]

It's not an "attack piece", it's a slice of reality piece. You Paul supporters just don't "get it". He is not respected or taken seriously by 90% of Americans because of the fantasy world he preaches and dwells in.

Once again, a complete waste of time and money.
So anyone who doesn't share your, or the mainstream view of the establishment Repubs/Democrats is a "complete waste of time and money," since they didn't win the election. Thanks for the insight. Appreciate the time you wasted in informing us of this.

[mosca]

If Beerslug made the rules, we'd go back to the Soviet one-choice ballot. Voting for anyone who doesn't win is a complete waste of time and money.

[W*GS]

Here they are folks, Ro, W*gs and Beerslugger...the three chimps.

Here's Der gaffe...

[Arkie]

Liberty will continue to gain momemtum in the years ahead as the establishment continues to screw us over. Ron Paul is just the beginning.

[hazefrog]

A complete waste of time and money for those few fanatics who support him...

--------------------------------------------------------------------
Ron Paul's pointless Internet presidency (http://news.yahoo.com/ron-paul-s-pointless-internet-presidency.html)
Ron Paul has about as many votes in this year’s GOP primaries as he has Facebook fans – is his fierce online following that much less relevant than it appears?
Virginia Heffernan is the national correspondent for Yahoo! News, covering culture and politics from a digital perspective. She wrote extensively on Internet culture during her eight years as a staff writer for The New York Times, and she has also worked at Harper’s, the New Yorker and Slate. Her new book, Magic and Loss: The Pleasures of the Internet, will be published in early 2013.

Four years ago, the shrewdest presidential candidates used YouTube, MySpace, Facebook and a dash of Twitter. They also tried to gain a strange new psychic edge called—in the contrived conceit of the day—"mindshare in the blogosphere." Apps were nowhere in campaign strategies. The iPhone was new. The iPad didn't exist.

So who e-campaigned best last time? During Super Tuesday week in 2008, Garlik, a British firm that monitors digital reputations, ranked the day's presidential candidates by online popularity. It didn't take Nate Silver or that Zogby person to call the winner. If you hung around social media even a little, you knew the fix was in.

http://l.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/kSS6qqwVavdLpVTvR8wdvA--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Y2g9Mjc1Njtjcj0xO2N3PTM3NjQ7ZHg9MD tkeT0wO2ZpPXVsY3JvcDtoPTE0MDtxPTg1O3c9MTkw/http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/News/Reuters/2012-03-07T025349Z_1890424127_GM1E8370UG001_RTRMADP_3_USA-CAMPAIGN-PAUL.JPG
Republican presidential candidate and U.S. Rep Ron Paul (R-TX) speaks to supporters …

It wasn't Hillary Clinton. Nor Mitt Romney, John McCain or Barack Obama. Blowing them all away—sealing for himself, in fact, the Presidency of the United Cyberstates of Digital America, commander-in-chief of the Information-Wants-To-Be-Free World—was, naturally, Congressman Ronald Ernest "Ron" Paul.

Ron Paul, President of the Internet! Hail to the online chief! Four more years!

Ron Paul. Elfin ob-gyn goldbug. Ayn Randian. Foe of war, abortion and government. Texan. Rejector of Medicaid, rejector of Medicare. Climate-change skeptic. Keeper of odd company. Espouser of tendentious views.

In 2012, he's still kicking back in the Online Oval Office. Ron Paul, commanding the mad and visible support of somebody. Sure he doesn't fare so well with actual flesh-and-blood voters of majority age who are motivated to drive gas-burning cars and appear with their laminated IDs at three-dimensional voting booths. But you can't have everything.

Big online, small in the real world?

Tim Hwang, a researcher of online movements and memes and the managing director of the Web Ecology Project, says that Ron Paul illustrates a fact we often overlook: "The Internet is not coterminous with the real world." He told me by email, "Like in a rearview mirror communities can be smaller than they appear on the Internet: discussion is often subject to parties who are loudest and can rally the most participants to appear online and participate at that specific moment."

This time around, for Paul, the Internet rally seems to have been sound and fury signifying little.Paul's big hopes for Alaska, Idaho and North Dakota were dashed on Super Tuesday, and he has yet to score a victory in a single contest in this election.

However, he's still logging mindshare in the blogosphere.

So how does he do it? Paul, for all his flat, engineer-like charisma, hardly seems like a Julian Assange mastermind, able to bend the Internet to his Machiavellian hacker will. Instead, it seems the President of the Internet just got lucky.

"I was on YouTube looking for some sort of guitar video or something," an ardent supporter of Ron Paul told PBS a while back, by way of explaining how he came to his candidate years ago. He had stumbled on a Paul propaganda video: "Ron Paul: A New Hope." "He was just speaking truth," concluded the guiter-vid-hunter. A Paulian was born.

And then: lots more Paulians were born. Pop pop pop—everyone on the Web was for Ron Paul! Or so it seemed. They all seemed to have those punk RE/ EVOL /UTION stencils and theories about fiat money. And if a blogger in those days dared to criticize Congressman Paul for, say, taking money from card-carrying neo-Nazis or claiming authorship of a newsletter that talked smack about, oh, black people ("I think we can safely assume that 95 percent of the black males in [Washington, D.C.] are semi-criminal or entirely criminal") she was roundly creamed by organized commenters.

I know, because this happened to me. I'd give a link to my interrogation of the Paul scene from the waning days of 2007, but it doesn't exist. My editor at the New York Times fully expunged the record after hundreds of Paulians swarmed the site—like bacteria or antibodies—and sowed the comments section with vitriol.

The complete retraction delighted the Paulians. And to their credit, Paulians can bring the bombast. Lew Rockwell, the "anti-state, anti-war, pro-market" blogger wrote ominously at the time: "Those who smear Ron Paul will live to regret it." He went on: "MSM, here are the new rules: no lying, no ridiculing, no suppressing. Remember 'journalistic ethics'? You really have no choice. The Internet rules."

A victory for Ron Paul would be a victory for the Internet, then, and in theory that victory would be a victory for people—anti-statist, libertarian people, the normal kind who have grave doubts about paper money and spooky conceptions of the Federal Reserve Bank.

Support is limited, but organic and real

The grassroots support Paul lavishly enjoys is either illusory—"astroturfing" by a campaign determined to make its marketing initiatives seem organic—or real.

Most observers feel it is real, as far as it goes. Hwang doesn't believe the campaign is funded well enough even to seed all the user-generated Paul propaganda that's out there.

Zephyr Teachout, the Fordham legal scholar who organized Howard Dean's online campaign, has said that where most campaigns make "Stepford" Web sites that aim to control a candidate's brand, as Coke or Apple would, Ron Paul's sites, many of them made by fans and not PR firms, look like places where anyone can belong and contribute.

Paulians, Teachout says, do not endeavor to meet the candidate, which would be costly for the campaign. Instead, they content themselves with meeting one another—online and in live meetups. Thus convened, they figure out clever ways to engineer shows of online force.

Some of Paul's most ardent supporters are sui generis, including Trevor Lyman, an Internet music entrepreneur and Ron Paul superfan. In 2008, Lyman abandoned a lifetime of political apathy to throw in with Paul, whose opposition to the war in Iraq appealed to him.

Though he's now not on the campaign's payroll, and has had very limited contact with the candidate—no tete-a-tete flights in Gulfstreams to discuss pet issues—Lyman is credited with having staged the campaign's biggest fundraising initiatives (many of them Internet-driven "moneybombs"). He also co-owns a for-profit company that flies blimp advertising Ron Paul for President in 2012. Giving money to Lyman's company is one way for donors to do an end-run around the federal contribution limit of $2,500, per election, to a candidate.

Getting around limitations imposed by government or big business is second nature to digital natives like Lyman who are the right age to have grown up getting music and movies from Napster and BitTorrent. Ron Paul's politics are a natural fit with the frontiersman ideology that drives longtime users of the Internet—especially the pure-hearted ones, trained in the 1990s, who can code, develop online projects, create and curate user-generated content and start digital initiatives. They also happen to be the ones who don't expect money for their labors.

For now, they have only one problem as a support base. There are not enough of them. Ron Paul has about 900,000 Facebook likers, almost precisely the number of votes for Paul in this election, which he is not—you heard it here first—going to win.

you are an absolute ****tard.

[Dukes]

It's not an "attack piece", it's a slice of reality piece. You Paul supporters just don't "get it". He is not respected or taken seriously by 90% of Americans because of the fantasy world he preaches and dwells in.

Once again, a complete waste of time and money.

You're completely insane if you think his message dies with him losing the race. It's only going to grow. He simply planted the seeds to fight the establishment.

[DenverBrit]

You're completely insane if you think his message dies with him losing the race. It's only going to grow. He simply planted the seeds to fight the establishment.

How long has he been doing that?

[Dukes]

There's a reason why Paul has received more donations from active duty military and veterans than any candidate combined. Including Obama.

[Bronco_Beerslug]

So anyone who doesn't share your, or the mainstream view of the establishment Repubs/Democrats is a "complete waste of time and money," since they didn't win the election. Thanks for the insight. Appreciate the time you wasted in informing us of this.
One more time, Ron Paul doesn't matter. It's not my rules or just my views, it's America's viewpoint. Paul lives in some kind of fantasy world that doesn't exist anywhere but in his mind.

The statements he has made in the past show he is without question, a fruitcake. If he ever became a "threat" to actually win the nomination the press would blow him up and sink him forever for all those looney tune words and views he owns.

But as this article and others point out, his small army of Internet followers aren't interested in hearing facts about their messiah.

"The Internet is not coterminous with the real world." He told me by email, "Like in a rearview mirror communities can be smaller than they appear on the Internet: discussion is often subject to parties who are loudest and can rally the most participants to appear online and participate at that specific moment."

This time around, for Paul, the Internet rally seems to have been sound and fury signifying little. Paul's big hopes for Alaska, Idaho and North Dakota were dashed on Super Tuesday, and he has yet to score a victory in a single contest in this election.

[mosca]

One more time, Ron Paul doesn't matter. It's not my rules or just my views, it's America's viewpoint.
So... you're spending your personal time starting Internet threads about him... why exactly?

[hazefrog]

So... you're spending your personal time starting Internet threads about him... why exactly?

fear

[Bronco_Beerslug]

So... you're spending your personal time starting Internet threads about him... why exactly?
Because you spend your personal time trying to defend him?

Nah, this started 4.5 years ago with Taco John championing him.
And like I told him then, you are wasting your time and money trying to promote him.

[myMind]

One more time, Ron Paul doesn't matter. It's not my rules or just my views, it's America's viewpoint.

Ummm...I think youd be surprised by just how wrong you are. The way you explain it seems to say that because the current institution of government is in place, then thats what the American population's viewpoint of goverment should be, or is.

You honestly dont see the unrest growing in our nation? I promise you it's there, and I promise you its there BECAUSE people SEE and FEEL the corruption eating away at the core of our political system. Although I dont agree with all of RP's stances on issues, I would definitely vote for him over Mormonmonkey or the religous zealot.

[Bronco_Beerslug]

Ummm...I think youd be surprised by just how wrong you are. The way you explain it seems to say that because the current institution of government is in place, then thats what the American population's viewpoint of goverment should be, or is.
Not what I'm saying. I'm saying the majority of the people who have heard Paul's fantasy world of economics, government, etc... understand he is completely out of touch.

You honestly dont see the unrest growing in our nation? I promise you it's there, and I promise you its there BECAUSE people SEE and FEEL the corruption eating away at the core of our political system. Although I dont agree with all of RP's stances on issues, I would definitely vote for him over Mormonmonkey or the religous zealot.
I seen "real unrest" in the 60s and 70s, people today could care less compared to those times. It's the same as it ever was in the corporate world of greed in this country, just a different day.

[Dukes]

Not what I'm saying. I'm saying the majority of the people who have heard Paul's fantasy world of economics, government, etc... understand he is completely out of touch.

Which is exactly why we are so far gone as a country from what our founders implemented. Basically, we are ****ed.

[Obushma]

A complete waste of time and money for those few fanatics who support him...

Oh hell, who let the bed ****ter out of the senior center. LOL

BTW I reported you to the Colorado goverment for violating SOPA by posting that whole article. Nnyah! Better catch up with the times!

[Odysseus]

Liberty will continue to gain momemtum in the years ahead as the establishment continues to screw us over. Ron Paul is just the beginning.

We will end up hitting the reset button within the next 15 years. Count on it.

The problem is it happen in further support of globalism. We are one voice in 193 and the world will cease to revolve around Washington in the next 20 years. There will be several voices. We will become only one.

All debts come due and all the nostalgic sentimentality will not bring back what we used to hold most dear.

[Odysseus]

Oh hell, who let the bed ****ter out of the senior center. LOL

BTW I reported you to the Colorado goverment for violating SOPA by posting that whole article. Nnyah! Better catch up with the times!

COMMUNIST! :giggle:

[Odysseus]

Not what I'm saying. I'm saying the majority of the people who have heard Paul's fantasy world of economics, government, etc... understand he is completely out of touch.

I seen "real unrest" in the 60s and 70s, people today could care less compared to those times. It's the same as it ever was in the corporate world of greed in this country, just a different day.

I understand what you are saying. I get it.

The problem in this situation is everybody sees a piece of the puzzle and got the puzzle wrong.

Paul won in a manner of speaking in that his "fantasy"economics were sold to a popular base of voters who will be ready next election. His ideas will be back but Ron Paul won't be champion for those ideas.

Question: How do you usurp ideas from a man who cannot be compromised? You wait until the man is not relevant. Ron Paul is 76 years old. This is his last run.

Paul got played because there is no way he would be selected but he also has a seat at the big table. The Paul head's are right. Our politics, policies, and economic standing cannot be maintained. America is this beautiful pinata that will shattered so the world can feast on our markets. Blame Reagan. Unintended consequences...


Reference:
http://decoded.nationaljournal.com/2012/01/ron-paul-age.php

[Bronco_Beerslug]

Oh hell, who let the bed ****ter out of the senior center. LOL

BTW I reported you to the Colorado goverment for violating SOPA by posting that whole article. Nnyah! Better catch up with the times!

SOPA is a "federal" law Forrest.

[cutthemdown]

There's a reason why Paul has received more donations from active duty military and veterans than any candidate combined. Including Obama.

I had heard that also, then some article i read said it was debunked and they don't have accurate records on who gets most from military personal. I wonder if its true or just propaganda.

[mhgaffney]

I had heard that also, then some article i read said it was debunked and they don't have accurate records on who gets most from military personal. I wonder if its true or just propaganda.

As usual, you heard wrong.

[Blart]

I'd disagree with this article in 2008.

Now? I agree with it, and any internet-centric campaigning. It's too democratic.

Aside from the failure of Ron Paul to gain any rational person's interest - I fail to see why he couldn't win over the GOP.

in 2004, and especially 2008, small folks on the internet played a big role in politics. It was the difference between Clinton and Obama, and nearly the difference between Dean and Kerry. It's why Ron Paul was denouncing war on Fox News. It was incredible.

Imagine, small individual donations rivaling large corporate donations!

After Citizens United (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhMMTaHpvKg), small donations don't mean quite so much.

Consider where Romney would be without his Super Pacs (http://www.thestreet.com/story/11445674/1/romney-super-pac-spending-30m-on-attacks.html).

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

SOPA is a "federal" law Forrest.

L0L! :laugh:

Since when did facts matter to the average Teapublican?

[Arkie]

I had heard that also, then some article i read said it was debunked and they don't have accurate records on who gets most from military personal. I wonder if its true or just propaganda.

They know Ron Paul gets the most donations from the military by a large margin. It's pretty obvious even if the records are inaccurate. Records show that he gets twice as much as everybody combined. That's about three times as much as Obama and six times as much as the combined GOP. If the records are inaccurate, there's no way they're skewed so bad that one of the other candidates is actually getting more than Paul. The gap is huge.