Posted on 08/30/2007 5:50:52 AM PDT by George W. Bush
Bringing Politics Back to the People - The Do-It-Yourself Campaign of Ron Paul
Sean ScallonAugust 28, 2007
In 1964, just before the New Hampshire primary, an average Joe named Paul Grindle didnt particularly care for the choice of candidates running for the Republican nomination for President.
So he decided to run his own candidate 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 wasnt running for anything, his name wasnt 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 Lodges 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 years 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 Grindles 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.
Its that same do-it-yourself spirit that Grindle showed 43 years ago thats a part of Congressman Ron Pauls 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 isnt spending a lot of money right now because they dont 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 Romneys campaign has become a literal welfare agency in order to win votes.
Ron Paul supporters dont need handouts to vote for him at local straw poll. They dont 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 Pauls 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 Pauls 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. Thats how devoted they are. As Ron Paul himself said. I didnt 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 arent 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 werent 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 doesnt 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 wasnt 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. Thats 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 werent 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 its being left to dissipate on the sidelines and all thats left is anger and bitterness at the authorities for their incompetence and their mismanagement? Well some have decided they arent 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 doesnt 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. Theyre 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 Pauls, perhaps voters would feel that connection with politics again and would use that untapped energy for a cause they believed in and one they didnt need to be directed at. And if all that happened in the future, then Ron Pauls campaign will be a success well past 2008.
Sean Scallon is a freelance writer and journalist from Arkansaw, Wisconsin
I dont know if you read the article or not, but it states that this movement goes beyond the net. Its not simply a bunch of supporters sending emails, posting on forums and voting in online polls. These people are spending their own time and money working for the candidate. They print yard signs, handout literature and bumper stickers. They pay for space at county fairs and local events. They produce and pay for radio & TV spots. And its producing results. If you are impressed by their net activities you should be even more impressed with what they do when they get out on the streets.
Uh huh, smae was said about Ho Ho Dean in 04.
And as we know, when the time came no ‘orange hats’ were to be found at the voting booths.
He’ll be a distant memory after the first primary.
(chuckle)
Our policies over the last decade have caused flowers to unite against us around the world. IF we only pull back from the flower gardens, they wouldn’t attack us!
(snicker)
They must be asleep this morning.
I found this CNN video entertaining, look how polished and coherent the Republican Student is compared to the Democrat student.
http://chaosgone-politics.blogspot.com/2007/08/cnn-hosts-shocked-when-republican-guest.html
That is why they are polling a close second in first place wins at all the straw polls. It is beyond the net.
‘Thus far, Badeye, no other candidate has been able to match our self-organizing efforts. Over 700 MeetUps. Over 30,000 activists. And we’ve barely begun.’
Yep, haven’t seen anything like it since Dean in 03.....
>> 34% disapproval rating on Iraq amongst Republicans
... doesn’t necessarily translate to support for immediate “cut and run”, as Ron Paul proposes.
I for one disapprove of how Iraq is being handled. I think we should be kicking much more butt and taking much less crap from the Islamonazis. So I disapprove because we’re not doing MORE over there, militarily.
Wonder how many of those 34% are like me?
Those numbers are meaningless. The average voter - put another way the VAST majority of voters - isn’t paying attention, and won’t til next year.
The Ron Paul supporters turn a blind eye to their man’s weaknesses just as the Deaniacs did in 04 and early 04.
The simply fact of the matter is Paul’s assertion we are to blame for Islamic Radical Fundementalists attacking us can never be overcome politically. He won’t quit his quest, but he should cause that ended any further considering of him for the job at hand.
Your memory is getting faulty Badeye.
Howard Dean was the darling of the MSM during the last campaign season. The guy was in the news constantly, and if you believed the MSM propaganda, was a shoe in for the Democratic nomination
...Until Kerry started kicking his ass in the Primaries. Dean was entirely a creation of the media, and none of that translated into votes.
By contrast, Ron Paul can't get decent media coverage at all. The MSM goes out of their way to ignore him, especially after Sean Hannity's meltdown on Faux Nuze. (in between the 24/7 missing pretty blond girl of the week coverage)
In Paul's favour, i don't see him doing any screaming soon.
Paul simply stated what the findings of the 911 Commission Report stated regarding the reasons Islamic Fundamentalists hate us so much. Continuing to say that “Paul blamed us” won’t make it true.
Sorry, youtube debunks this spin, we all heard what he said, we all heard the context, and we all heard (and cheered) Guiliani’s response to that nonsense.
“It doesn’t matter who the nominee is as long as we elect a democrat....”
“So if Porky pig were the Democrat nominee you’d vote for him?”
Yep, havent seen anything like it since Dean in 03.....
Your memory is getting faulty Badeye.
Howard Dean was the darling of the MSM during the last campaign season. The guy was in the news constantly, and if you believed the MSM propaganda, was a shoe in for the Democratic nomination
Nope. The MSM has ALWAYS treated Republicans this way.
The comparision is valid as it relates to those claiming the ‘netroots’ for Ron Paul are overwhelming the nation, just as the ‘Deaniacs’ claimed the same in 03.
As you and I have now both noted, once the primaries started in Deans case he was toast...the same will happen to Paul.
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