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
Actually, before you came back to FR, we went to considerable efforts to post bin Laden’s fatwa against the U.S. It seems a lot of people had no idea he declared war on us and authorized jihad on Americans back in the Nineties. It’s a key point to understanding everything that followed and why the Xlintons were criminally derelict in failing to apprehend him when they were offered Osama on a platter, for the taking. It surprised me that so many people didn’t know.
Yep.
(btw, just because I wasn’t posting here doesn’t mean I didn’t ‘check in’ and read)
Ron Paul - the right man for the last century.
Yep, havent seen anything like it since Dean in 03
Paul’s campaign is not comparable to Dean’s.
(chuckle)
It will be fun to bring this comment up in seven months.
Will the leftist supporters rip RP apart when they find out he doesn’t “do” national disasters? Or will they stand with him on principle.
So the thousands of volunteers working on behalf of Dr. Paul all summer...who are they then? They can't be political junkies, because the political junkies are supposedly waiting for Fred to announce or already supporting Rudy McRomney. The grassroots for Paul is there, dirtboy. To say otherwise is to remain in self-denial.
Unfortunately for the other GOP candidates, Fred has name recognition, gravitas, charisma, and the ability and willingness to discuss the tough issues (such as entitlements) with the people in a manner they can relate to without talking down to them. September is going to be a very interesting month politically.
He does, and there's no denying that. In fact, Fred Thompson's views of government is similiar to Paul's, sans the foreign policy. I have no problem if Fred is nominated. As for the thousands of grassroots for Paul, they might see a problem with Fred. They see him as an insider, they'll look at his Senate record, his lobbying record, and they'll just shrug and continue supporting Paul. Which means that Paul will go deep in the primaries and Fred would have no choice but to reach out to Paul's supporters - maybe reassure them that there is no NAU and let Paul speak at the convention - and he'll have the coalition to defeat the Democrat.
Ding-Ding, we have a winner.
jw
Boy, talk about circular logic. You can do better than that.
The grassroots for Paul is there, dirtboy. To say otherwise is to remain in self-denial.
Where did I say otherwise? However, the grassroots, by definition, are people who are regularly involved in politics.
Which means that Paul will go deep in the primaries and Fred would have no choice but to reach out to Paul's supporters
I'm sorry, but Dean pulled Kerry too far leftwards in 2004 and Kerry was unable to get back to the center by November. If Fred is smart, he won't chase Paulites into their version of the universe. Specifically, the anti-war universe.
Thanks.
Its kinda sad pointing out the exceedingly obvious gets a ‘win’ for ya on a political board....(chuckle)
But I’ll take it.
Paul's not spending any of the money that Romney or Giliuani are. The guy's campaign is ENTIRELY grassroots. There's no big-money corporations or powerful suits pulling the strings at all.
Sorry, that dog wont hunt. You can only claim this till the first primary...then youll find yourself, just as Deaniacs found themselves, trying to explain away the lack of votes.
Sorry, but that belief in the Constitution and what it meant to be an American before the socialists ruined it is a mutha. Everybody from all types of political stripes are supporting Paul because of this. This is a movement here, Paul may lose but it's 1964 again when Goldwater lost and a new generation of conservatives rose up and seized the mantle.
Goldwater actually won primaries.
Ron Paul can’t, won’t, and nobody in their right mind would even attempt the comparision til he does.
Which of course leads us full circle back to ‘fringe groups supporting Ron Paul’.
Ping me after the first primary.
Here's the Ron Paul approach to Katrina and other natural disasters, and I wholeheartedly agree with it.
The best way to rebuild New Orleans is to provide entrepreneurial incentives for people and businesses willing to do the hard work involved. I voted for several bills last fall that provide some measure of tax relief for Katrina victims, but more could be done. Imagine the revitalization that would occur if Congress declared New Orleans a federal tax-free zone for 5 or 10 years.
No circular logic. You said the only people paying attention now were political junkies. I pointed out to you that Paul's campaign is being conducted by thousands of energetic supporters who likely never participated in politics or were turned off by politics before. If they're political junkies or operatives, they're doing a helluva acting job.
Where did I say otherwise? However, the grassroots, by definition, are people who are regularly involved in politics.
Not in Paul's case it isn't. Read the article. It's folks who feel that they're alienated from the political process, and they found someone they can relate to. Hence the support for Paul.
I'm sorry, but Dean pulled Kerry too far leftwards in 2004 and Kerry was unable to get back to the center by November. If Fred is smart, he won't chase Paulites into their version of the universe. Specifically, the anti-war universe
He (Fred) doesn't have to change his war stance. He can just say he opposes a long-term commitment to Iraq but the troops need to stay for now and fight. That'll peel off a chunk of the Paul supporters should he win the nomination. He should also address the NAU thingy.
And it's high time the GOP let Paul speak at the convention. Let him give the keynote speech, let him have his moment in the sun and give this patriot the tribute he deserves. If they can give Gerald Ford a video tribute they can give Paul one.
And your proof that these people have never been involved in politics before is?????
It's folks who feel that they're alienated from the political process, and they found someone they can relate to.
Yeah, sure. Just like those serial callers to C-Span who say "I'm a lifelong Republican, BUT..."
And it's high time the GOP let Paul speak at the convention.
Fat chance.
No it's because he's a shrewd campaigner. He has the internet & volunteers working for him. He's not blowing cash for votes like your buddy Romney is.
The core of Paul's support is anti-war. You are the exception in that regard. Fred ain't even going anywhere near there.
Where's the proof that anti-war kooks and anti-government anarchists are supporting Paul? I know you probably didn't insinuate this, but it's SOP for the Paul-bashers to say it. If you don't believe that ordinary Americans shut out of the political process are supporting Paul, that's your problem, not mine.
Yeah, sure. Just like those serial callers to C-Span who say "I'm a lifelong Republican, BUT..."
Wrong. You got a genuine movement here for Paul.
Fat chance.
So you have no problem then if Paul's supporters stay home or write-in Paul's name for President and probably throw the election to Hillary. I'm telling you now the GOP better work with Paul. Trust me, they're going to need his support.
I predict he'll go deep in the primaries, to the chagrin of the GOP establishment.
Sorry, but most of Paul's support is anti-war at its core. Dean dragged Kerry too far leftwards in 2004. Fred ain't gonna let Paul drag him too far in an anti-war direction to woo the anti-war crowd. So who are the anti-war types going to vote for? Hillary? Third party? Fred would lose more votes going after them then he would gain with their support.
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