Bringing Politics Back to the People - The Do-It-Yourself Campaign of Ron Paul

In 1964, just before the New Hampshire primary, an average Joe named Paul Grindle didn’t particularly care for the choice of candidates running for the Republican nomination for President.

With the help of a few friends and using the most sophisticated marketing techniques at the time, Grindle created a boomlet for Henry Cabot Lodge, former Massachusetts U.S. Senator, 1960 GOP Vice-Presidential candidate and then the U.S. ambassador to South Vietnam. Lodge wasn’t running for anything, his name wasn’t even on the New Hampshire ballot. Grindle and his friends mailed out postcards to New Hampshire Republicans to find out if there was support for Lodge which they found out there was. Then they mailed out fliers for Lodge, letters for Lodge and pamphlets demonstrating how to write Lodge’s name on the ballot. They even opened a headquarters for him in Concord.

All that postage spent for eventually paid off. Lodge won the New Hampshire Primary with a write-in vote, beating out that year’s eventual GOP nominee Barry Goldwater and former Vice-President Nelson Rockefeller despite all their money, all their TV ads and vast campaign apparatuses deployed in the Granite State.

Of course it helped Grindle that so many New Hampshire Republicans wanted someone other than Rockefeller and Goldwater, he just simply provided another candidate. But Grindle’s effort also goes to show that politics does not have to be “game” played only by a few professionals, or the hacks or even the wealthy. Sometimes, even the “average Joe” can play too if they have the knowledge, the gumption and a little luck.

It’s that same “do-it-yourself” spirit that Grindle showed 43 years ago that’s a part of Congressman Ron Paul’s run for the White House today.

Forget the all internet activity, You Tube videos, or Facebook pages for a moment and focus on meat-and-potatoes politicking. Out of all the candidates running for President in 2008, who among them has supporters willing to hang signs on freeway overpasses, to stand with signs outside events whatever the weather, who will volunteer their time to make phone calls or write letters to voters or do lit drops as well? Who among the candidates has supporters willing to pay for advertising in newspapers and radio out of their own pocket or are willing to write scripts for cable TV ads? Who among the candidates has supporters so dedicated that they attend his rallies thousands of miles from home?

The Ron Paul campaign isn’t spending a lot of money right now because they don’t have to. The spending time, money and talent coming from Ron Paul supporters across the country is cash one cannot measure but has become important to the credibility of the campaign. You cannot write off Ron Paul because he has thousands of supporters in all 50 states willing to do things on their own initiative while other campaigns simply spend money on TV ads or give handouts to voters like free bus trips, straw poll tickets and meals. Indeed, former Massachusetts Governor Willard Romney’s campaign has become a literal welfare agency in order to win votes.

Ron Paul supporters don’t need handouts to vote for him at local straw poll. They don’t need orders from the central campaign office either. Much of what is done for Ron Paul by his supporters is done upon their own ideas and their own initiative. For example, two weeks before the Iowa Straw Poll, Ron Paul supporters set up an account through Pay Pal.com to pool their money to buy advertising on Iowa radio stations and newspapers. One person made the ads buys, a few enterprising fellows came up with the idea for the ads (including a beautiful mosaic ad of Ron Paul’s head made up of pictures from thousands of supporters across the country with the Constitution itself as a backdrop.) and before the official campaign came up with their own radio and TV ads, Ron Paul’s message was being heard on the airwaves and in the pages. Plans are afoot to do the same in New Hampshire and Iowa again and to expand to television as well. All on their own they did this. That’s how devoted they are. As Ron Paul himself said. “I didn’t start a campaign, I joined a campaign.” Like the Minutemen of Lexington and Concord of old, Ron Paul supporters do not need “orders” to shoot the Redcoats. All they needed were their rifles.

Candidates for President aren’t elected in vacuums. Powerful cultural forces pull them towards the White House. If Ron Paul wins the GOP nomination, goes on to win the Presidency itself, it will be because American voters begin to admire the plucky resolve and selfless determination of Ron Paul supporters, who created a campaign virtually from scratch of their own time, effort and resources and want to capture that spirit for themselves and recapture it for the nation.

Since 9-11, a whole nation wanted to do something, anything to help with the war efforts. A whole nation wanted some sense of pulling together and working together to help a country in distress. They wanted time to go back to World War II, where food was rationed, gas was rationed, rubber drives organized, scrap drives organized, where people joined the Red Cross or the USO, or civil defense organizations, all of this done to help with the war effort in any way possible. To be a slacker back then - if you weren’t fighting or doing something to help our “boys” overseas – was as bad a form of treason as “loose lips sink ships.” And yet did we go back after 9-11? No. Care packages, yellow ribbons pen pal letters to troops and greeters at the airport are important and nice gestures, but one doesn’t get the sense a whole nation has been mobilized to do so. No, instead, after 9-11, President Bush II told Americans they ought go out and buy more stuff. No calls for sacrifice were made. War wasn’t declared in Congress; just a resolution calling for military action was passed. They also pass resolutions on Capitol Hill to the declare National Pickle Day as well. That’s how much importance they gave to this cause. No draft of any kind was issued, so the many millions who could fight instead stayed at home to watch the war on TV while those who did volunteer fought the war in their stead. Or when things weren’t going well, they could ignore what was happening overseas completely and go back to whatever it was they were doing on Sept. 10, 2001 as if time simply skipped over that day.

People wanted to help. They waited for orders to come from on high and yet such orders never came. Instead all they saw was a war turning sour because of the incompetence of the people in charge. Then they saw a great city destroyed by a natural disaster and saw that same government bumble the aftermath and reconstruction. That made it hard to help those who needed it and only wasted the energy of those who gave of their time and effort to help with the clean-up. So where does all that energy go when its not be used? When it’s being left to dissipate on the sidelines and all that’s left is anger and bitterness at the authorities for their incompetence and their mismanagement? Well some have decided they aren’t going to wait for “orders” anymore. Some have decided on their own that they are going try and elect a man they believe is going to change things for the better. And whether or not Ron Paul could make such changes if he was elected President or get them through Congress really doesn’t matter when you think about it. Just getting to that point will show that the nation has recaptured the do-it-yourself spirit that helped to found the country in the first place.

Many books have been written about how alienated the average voter is from politics with detailed explanations as to why. Yet all of them miss this essential point: People feel alienated to something when they believe that nothing they do concerning it matters because they are removed and remote to it. As politics has become a “game” played by rich people and slick hustlers and where the game board is a television screen, voters just watch it all from a distance. They’re no longer a part of the process, just stage props for photos ops. Once upon a time an “average Joe” could be a precinct captain. He could stuff mailers or put up signs in his neighborhood working for the political machine or his wife could host a coffee klatch or baby-sit at campaign headquarters. Now people are paid to do things like this. Politicians all like to talk about grassroots support but very few campaigns use volunteer labor like they once did. Once upon a time the presidential campaigns of Barry Goldwater and George McGovern and Ronald Reagan were made possible by such grassroots support but in this day and age, only the late U.S. Senator Paul Wellstone really had an “army” of average people volunteering their time for him with their undying loyalty. If more campaigns were as volunteer orientated as Ron Paul’s, perhaps voters would feel that connection with politics again and would use that untapped energy for a cause they believed in and one they didn’t need to be “directed” at. And if all that happened in the future, then Ron Paul’s campaign will be a success well past 2008.

Statement of Faith by Ron Paul

We live in times of great uncertainty when men of faith must stand up for our values and our traditions lest they be washed away in a sea of fear and relativism. As you likely know, I am running for President of the United States, and I am asking for your support.

I have never been one who is comfortable talking about my faith in the political arena. In fact, the pandering that typically occurs in the election season I find to be distasteful. But for those who have asked, I freely confess that Jesus Christ is my personal Savior, and that I seek His guidance in all that I do. I know, as you do, that our freedoms come not from man, but from God. My record of public service reflects my reverence for the Natural Rights with which we have been endowed by a loving Creator.

I have worked tirelessly to defend and restore those rights for all Americans, born and unborn alike. The right of an innocent, unborn child to life is at the heart of the American ideal of liberty. My professional and legislative record demonstrates my strong commitment to this pro-life principle.

In 40 years of medical practice, I never once considered performing an abortion, nor did I ever find abortion necessary to save the life of a pregnant woman. In Congress, I have authored legislation that seeks to define life as beginning at conception, H.R. 1094. I am also the prime sponsor of H.R. 300, which would negate the effect of Roe v Wade by removing the ability of federal courts to interfere with state legislation to protect life. This is a practical, direct approach to ending federal court tyranny which threatens our constitutional republic and has caused the deaths of 45 million of the unborn. I have also authored H.R. 1095, which prevents federal funds to be used for so-called “population control.” Many talk about being pro-life. I have taken and will continue to advocate direct action to restore protection for the unborn.

I have also acted to protect the lives of Americans by my adherence to the doctrine of “just war.” This doctrine, as articulated by Augustine, suggested that war must only be waged as a last resort--- for a discernible moral and public good, with the right intentions, vetted through established legal authorities (a constitutionally required declaration of the Congress), and with a likely probability of success.

It has been and remains my firm belief that the current United Nations-mandated, no-win police action in Iraq fails to meet the high moral threshold required to wage just war. That is why I have offered moral and practical opposition to the invasion, occupation and social engineering police exercise now underway in Iraq. It is my belief, borne out by five years of abject failure and tens of thousands of lost lives, that the Iraq operation has been a dangerous diversion from the rightful and appropriate focus of our efforts to bring to justice to the jihadists that have attacked us and seek still to undermine our nation, our values, and our way of life.

I opposed giving the president power to wage unlimited and unchecked aggression, However, I did vote to support the use of force in Afghanistan. I also authored H.R. 3076, the September 11 Marque and Reprisal Act of 2001. A letter of marque and reprisal is a constitutional tool specifically designed to give the president the authority to respond with appropriate force to those non-state actors who wage aggression against the United States while limiting his authority to only those responsible for the atrocities of that day. Such a limited authorization is consistent with the doctrine of just war and the practical aim of keeping Americans safe while minimizing the costs in blood and treasure of waging such an operation.

On September 17, 2001, I stated on the house floor that “…striking out at six or eight or even ten different countries could well expand this war of which we wanted no part. Without defining the enemy there is no way to know our precise goal or to know when the war is over. Inadvertently more casual acceptance of civilian deaths as part of this war I'm certain will prolong the agony and increase the chances of even more American casualties. We must guard against this if at all possible.” I’m sorry to say that history has proven this to be true.

I am running for president to restore the rule of law and to stand up for our divinely inspired Constitution. I have never voted for legislation that is not specifically authorized by the Constitution. As president, I will never sign a piece of legislation, nor use the power of the executive, in a manner inconsistent with the limitations that the founders envisioned.

Many have given up on America as an exemplar for the world, as a model of freedom, self-government, and self-control. I have not. There is hope for America. I ask you to join me, and to be a part of it.

Sincerely,

Ron Paul

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