Analyst Predicts One Million Ron Paul Supporters Online by 2008

PRWeb ^ | 6/10/2007 | staff

[Henchster]

Analyst Predicts One Million Ron Paul Supporters Online by 2008

Yep, 1% of the electorate. That, and a $20 tour ticket will get you into the White House for an hour.

[George W. Bush]

Must have happened in the last day. Well, maybe he’ll be back. He must have angered the mods somehow. Still, he can probably read the pinged article.

[the tongue]

You’re falling for crap from the media and campaign flacks. Take Paul’s war position out of the equation, (honestly, I have to because it’s the only place I disagree with him) and tell me what else about his message is wrong. Smaller government, getting the feds out of YOUR life, etc etc all sounds good to me. He’s not proposing MORE government programs like McCain and Thompson and every single other candidate.

[George W. Bush]

Pinging for RP. Interesting news on his online support.

[svcw]

Yes, and many are Paul supporters.

[Erik Latranyi]

Interesting news on his online support.

Yes, and if Atari maintained its 150% growth rate, we would still be playing PONG.

[George W. Bush]

Ron Paul polls at 1% or less. This is proof that his supporters are jousting with windmills.

Many RP supporters are from his old conservative/libertarian support network who are certainly underpolled by NYT/WP and other polls. But this large surge we're seeing now is in the under-thirties who think RP's utter squareness is almost hip. He's also drawing Greens and Hitlery-haters among the Dims, also mostly from those under-thirties.

The key point here about the yout's is that they all have cell phones and no landlines. Pollsters almost never call cell phones. Therefore that support for Ron Paul (or Fred Thompson or Obama or Edwards) can be there strongly and never show up in the polls. Clearly, RP has the advantage among the cellphoned under-thirties though.

[George W. Bush]

He’s not proposing MORE government programs like McCain and Thompson and every single other candidate.

I keep thinking sooner or later his support has to drop when they figure out that ol' Uncle Ron is gonna take all their goodies away! LOL.

That's one problem with having the younger lib types or the Greenies. They want those freebies.

[proxy_user]

The real purpose of such a candidate is to show that some of his ideas have mass appeal.

When this becomes apparent, these ideas will be adopted in modified form by the other candidates. They might not go for his foreign policy, but the idea of shrinking the Federal government and respecting the sovereignity of the states will be on the agenda again.

[ROP_RIP]

The idealistic, socially libertarian, draft-eligible 18-29yo crowd is looking for any plausible alternative to Hillary. The few kids who vote generally lean Democratic, but Hillary is sufficiently uninspiring that even Dems are left unsatisfied.

Paul’s message of smaller government resonates with most Americans, but his take on foreign relations would dramatically weaken our nation and conjure memories of the Carter years. Like many of the candidates, Paul fails to understand that fear is the only thing that keeps evil in check. For this reason he is wholly unsuitable for the role of chief executive.

[mimaw]

Well, I think he should run for President of the 1000000 Internet kooks that support him. They could set up their own site, go back to the gold standard, build a virtual fence around themselves and dissolve the military.

[Always Right]

"That is a 50% growth rate over the past two months. If you extrapolate that over the next 6 months, his familiarity online would grow by another 350%.

Extrapolating short term trends often leads to stupid results. It's kind like if a major league baseball player hit 4 home runs in his first couple of games, would you really expect the guy to hit 326 home runs for the season?

[George W. Bush]

The real purpose of such a candidate is to show that some of his ideas have mass appeal. When this becomes apparent, these ideas will be adopted in modified form by the other candidates. They might not go for his foreign policy, but the idea of shrinking the Federal government and respecting the sovereignity of the states will be on the agenda again.

Exactly. Paul and Tancredo and even Hunter are all just as much issues candidates as they are presidential candidates. They hope to raise the profile of their causes, encourage people to run for office on those themes, get enough attention for one or more major candidates to steal some portion of their agenda to get elected later.

Think about it. Without RP/Tancredo/Hunter in the race, would we be able to pin down Rudy McRomney on much of anything, especially the border issue? Without Duncan up there, who would have (accurately) called McCrazy (and Romney and Giuliani) "the Kennedy wing of the Republican party"?

For conservatives, it does help flush these candidates out and expose their agenda. And it also happens to help make Fred Thompson more attractive as well so his numbers keep climbing while the others deflate or at least fail to catch fire.

[truth_seeker]

He can be President of the MySpace Youth Party. Under 18.

Ps. I had a Republican professor at Orange Coast College (Costa Mesa, CA) in the early 1970s, teaching US Government.

He was a true conservative, wore a short sleeved white shirt and tie, and sported long grey hair, for the shock value. A good guy, may I add. Learned much.

[Publius]

George, at the risk of becoming a pain in the ass, I'd like to pose to you the same questions I posed to NCSteve and Remember_Salamis. And I'd like your particular take on how we can transition from what we are to what Dr. Paul wants -- a libertarian America returning to its roots in the Constitution. I have assumed from the beginning of Dr. Paul's candidacy that his goal is to return to the America that existed before the Civil War -- minus slavery, of course.

The America we lost was defined by a Constitution written for a republic of farmers. But long before the Civil War, the nation had industrialized, and most of its basic concepts had changed, thanks to the work of Webster and Clay. We are the America that Hamilton created, not the America that Jefferson wanted to preserve. If I understand what a Paul administration would look like, we could expect the following:

• The restriction of the federal government to the 5 explicit powers and 7 implied powers granted it by the Constitution. That means only 3 federal crimes -- treason, piracy and counterfeiting. All other responsibilities would devolve to the states. Entitlements would either be run by the states, or handed over to churches, charities and benevolent associations.
• The end of federal taxation as we know it and a return to excises, imposts and dunning the states for their share of the federal budget. With most items devolved to the states, the federal budget would be small, and Congress would meet for 6 weeks a year and then go home.
• The end of the fiat dollar, paying off of the national debt and returning to the gold standard. The London Bill Market, closed since 1914, would be reopened, and real bills maturing to gold coin would circulate along with gold coin itself.
• The end of our large standing army, which the Constitution permits to exist for only a 2 year period anyway. We would have a Coast Guard to protect our shores and some kind of air defense system, but the Army would return to the state militias that existed before the National Guard system was created in 1910.
• American foreign policy would become isolationist. We would come home, close our borders, guard our shores, expel the UN and mind our own business. We would no longer use our dollars or military to take over various sectors of the planet. We would have a much smaller global footprint and would end any dream of an American Empire.

My area of expertise is the period between the Revolution and the Civil War, and I find a return to the America of Monroe and Jackson to be a very seductive concept. I would be quite comfortable in the America that existed before Lincoln, provided it were possible to return to those halcyon days -- minus slavery, of course.

The US shipped its manufacturing capabilities abroad to the Third World, and we now make our money moving piles of electronic currency around -- something that Hamilton, a believer in manufactures, would have frowned upon. The problem we face is that the changes sought by Hamilton and wrought by Webster, Clay and Lincoln are irreversible. So let me pose some observations and questions:

• Corporations were strictly regulated by the states before the Civil War. Afterward, we were pretty much governed by Big Business in general and the railroads in particular. With the states' rights position discredited by the Civil War, Jeffersonians turned to using Lincoln’s powerful federal government for the people, i.e. using Hamiltonian means to achieve Jeffersonian ends. This was what the Progressive agenda was all about. Franklin Roosevelt built on that to define a whole new paradigm of democratic socialism -- using government as the tool of the people's will to control the forces of the market. This raises the question of a power vacuum. Should the federal government retreat to only those powers granted by the Constitution, then who gains control? In a global marketplace, the states are going to find themselves powerless in regulating corporations. One would probably end up with some form of corporate fascism, sometimes referred to humorously as "Proctor and Gamble with the death penalty". This would indicate that even under a Paul administration, it would be necessary to utilize a loose construction of the Interstate Commerce Clause to prevent the undermining of democratic rule.
• With the American people believing that only Big Government can protect them from Big Capitalism and that Big Government is the proper means by which the American people take care of each other, how does one convince the American people to go back to the days of Alexis de Toqueville and his classic tome Democracy in America? We have lost the ancient American trait of self-reliance, as Hurricane Katrina proved. How do you convince the American people to give up the protections they have relied upon from their federal government? Most people have based their retirement on those government checks.
• You would need a worldwide financial crash and the involuntary imposition of a worldwide gold standard to get people to rethink the role of the modern state in their lives. How do you return to a hard money standard without inflicting massive pain?
• After the War of 1812, even President Madison, father of the Constitution, believed we needed a standing army.
• Power, like nature, abhors a vacuum. If America comes home and minds its own business, who steps into our shoes to run the planet? Macchiavelli says someone is going to try. The European Union? Russia? China? Iran? The United Nations (after relocation to Geneva)? It's a question that has to be answered.

To return to those less complicated days of Monroe and Jackson, the question arises, How can it be done without the kind of pain we experienced from 1929 to 1940? While I'd like to go back to the way things were, I fear the events that could force it to happen.

Returning to original intent sounds like a great idea, and it's certainly the purest definition of conservatism. But how do you get to there from here, and how do you get the American people to change their collective mindset?

[claudiustg]

I think Ron Paul is nuts, but that wouldn’t stop me from voting for him. I voted for Bush twice.

[George W. Bush]

I think Ron Paul is nuts, but that wouldn’t stop me from voting for him. I voted for Bush twice.

ROFLOL.

[RachelFaith]

I’d like to see a LOT more from the so-called 2nd Tier candidates... When the MSM seems to be telling me my choices are only THEIR choices... I’m disliking the front runners more and more...

All that said... I hope Paul isn’t another one of these Drugs and Whores Libertarians....

Lastly.. His campaign needs to either get real or get over itself...

[RachelFaith]

I’d like to see a LOT more from the so-called 2nd Tier candidates... When the MSM seems to be telling me my choices are only THEIR choices... I’m disliking the front runners more and more...

All that said... I hope Paul isn’t another one of these Drugs and Whores Libertarians....

Lastly.. His campaign needs to either get real or get over itself...

[jrooney]

As another Freeper pointed out the other day, I believe the website posted above where this originated either is from Paul's campaign or affiliated with it. Ron Paul will get less than 1% nationally in the race for the White House. When he does, all of those that support him, like yourself will see how much you have in common with the average American voter, not much. If Ron Paul had his way, Saddam would still be in power to rape and murder the innocent.

Ron Paul, the only LIBERTARIAN running for the GOP nomination. Ron Paul, the GOP candidate most likely to surrender to Al Qaeda. Ron Paul, the GOP candidate whose foreign policy view point mirrors the most LIBERAL democrats.

Ron Paul's supporters consist of DU dummies, Move On morons, Kos kiddies, Sorosites and antiwar Code Pinkos. What does that say about you Paulettes?