Posted on 12/06/2011 7:14:19 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Rep. Ron Paul rarely makes news, and his candidacy is frequently ignored by Beltway reporters. But headlines, his aides say, are overrated. In fact, the Texas Republican’s low-key autumn was strategic. As Paul’s competitors stumbled and sparred, he amassed a small fortune for his campaign and built a strong ground operation. And with January fast approaching, his team is ready to surprise the political world and sweep the Iowa caucuses.
“This was a movement when he first started running in 2008,” says Trygve Olson, a senior Paul adviser. “Now it’s turned into a highly professionalized campaign, but the energy from that last run is still there, and at the heart of what’s keeping up his momentum.”
The latest polls back up that confidence. In the influential Des Moines Register poll published over the weekend, Paul placed second. Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, captured 25 percent of likely Iowa GOP voters, but Paul garnered 18 percent, two points ahead of Mitt Romney, who in 2008 placed second in the caucuses.
If Paul wins Iowa, the upset could upend what many politicos say is a two-man race between Gingrich and Romney. According to state GOP insiders, a Paul victory is a real possibility. In background conversations, many say Paul is much stronger than outside observers believe, with deep and wide support among a frustrated electorate. With Herman Cain’s departure from the race, operatives see Paul potentially collecting a quarter of caucus attendees.
“Ron Paul is definitely for real out here,” says Tim Albrecht, the communications director for Iowa governor Terry Branstad, who has not endorsed any GOP candidate. “He is going to get 18 percent in the caucuses no matter what. If there’s a snowstorm, he’ll probably win, since he has such dedicated, passionate supporters. The question is whether he can move higher than that.”
Paul, for his part, thinks that he can close in on Gingrich, who has seen a recent bump in both state and national polls. “We’re getting pretty close to it being within the margin of error,” Paul told CNN on Sunday. “I think we continue to do what we’re doing. We’ve had the flavors of the month up and down so far this campaign. I’d like to think of myself as the flavor of the decade.”
Indeed, Paul’s consistency, his strategists say, is integral to his strength, especially in Iowa, where GOP voters have shuffled through an array of favorites. “Iowans, after testing Bachmann, after testing Perry, after testing Cain, and now Gingrich, are realizing that Ron Paul, all along, has been their candidate,” says Fritz Wenzel, Paul’s pollster. Unlike many primary fights, “this is becoming a race about principles,” he says, “and Ron Paul has stood up for true conservative principles for decades, not just in the last month.”
But campaign strategy, of course, has also played a major role in sustaining Paul’s poll numbers. The campaign combines a strong online presence, centered on volunteer organization, with prolific fundraising. Perhaps more important, however, is Paul’s “traditional” strategy in Iowa, which combines a heavy candidate presence with constant mailings and outreach.
“He’s run the most traditional caucus campaign of the year,” Albrecht says. “Multiple mailers, multiple ads, and multiple visits. Rick Perry has run ads, but hasn’t really visited. Mitt Romney has taken the shy approach, and Newt Gingrich hasn’t been here as often.”
“We’re following the traditional model because it works,” says Drew Ivers, the campaign’s Iowa chairman. “This is the fifth time I’ve chaired an Iowa campaign, and in this state, you can’t beat grassroots politics. The caucuses are like a business meeting. You don’t just come and vote; you go to participate. You need committed supporters; we have them.”
Steve Grubbs, who recently worked as Herman Cain’s Iowa director, has seen the enthusiasm for Paul up close. “I was driving down Interstate 80 two weeks ago and saw a hitchhiker carrying a Ron Paul sign. I didn’t pick him up, but I’m sure a Paul supporter gave him a ride,” he says. “I spot them everywhere, wearing their T-shirts and carrying signs.”
You’ll also find thousands of Ron Paul backers on the web — on message boards and on social-networking sites — talking about Paul and his criticism of U.S. foreign policy and the Federal Reserve. As Paul’s team invests in the ground game, it is taking care to intertwine its above-ground legwork with that web world. And it’s paying off, his advisers say, not only through donations, but in building a cohesive network of voters. An early example of its power came in August, when Paul nearly won the Ames straw poll, finishing a close second to Michele Bachmann.
“Ron Paul’s Internet operation is to Republicans in 2012 what Barack Obama’s Internet operation was to Democrats in 2007 and 2008,” Olson says. “It’s very grassroots and national, with thousands of very active supporters who spread the message in every state. That energy is the undercurrent to what’s happening on the ground, where people are going person to person.”
Still, even with the top-tier showing in Iowa polls and recognition by Iowa operatives of their on-the-ground prowess, Paul’s advisers aren’t taking anything for granted. In coming weeks, “Ron Paul is going to be living part-time in Iowa,” says Dimitri Kesari, Paul’s deputy campaign manager. The entire focus will be on coordinating turnout and stoking enthusiasm. Over 500 college students, for example, will move to Iowa over the holidays to participate in an initiative called “Christmas Vacation with Ron Paul.”
“He’s a different kind of candidate,” Kesari acknowledges, a “highly organized outsider.” But in January, he could also be a winner. And Iowans, at least, wouldn’t be surprised.
— Robert Costa is a political reporter for National Review.
"What is more conservative than returning to a 'constitutional government????'"
1. Chaining and restraining SCOTUS excesses on social issues.
2. Putting an end once and for all to the American Holocaust which has slaughtered more than 50 million innocent unborn infants, sliced, diced and hamburgerized by licensed medical personnel hired to do the killing and now to be subsidized by tax dollars. Ron Paul, ignoring the personhood language of the 14th Amendment, while cowering behind the 10th Amendment and CLAIMING to be "pro-life" at his frequent posing for holy pictures sessions with press and media, absolutely REFUSES to DO anything to stop the killing of American babies. A position which his libertoonian college crowd lusts for so that child support can be avoided by dragging pregnant Susie down to the abortion mill by the ear.
3. Understanding and acting accordingly that the demoralization of our military and of our society resulting from the ongoing campaign to destroy the normal concept of marriage, and to subsidize homosexuality and similar perversions by tax subsidies for pervert relationships and medical benefits for "domestic partners" whether the shackups are heterosexual or perverts, by allowing child adoption by pervert pairs and interfering with Catholic and other religious charities for not turning the kiddies over for molestation. (If you don't like the goings on by perverted clergy or at the Penn State football program or in Franklin County, Nebraska [See Franklin Coverup] or all too many other similar situations in many locations, then you ought not be pleased with Ron Paul's attitude of DOING nothing on social issues while hiding behind the skirts of the 10th Amendment, claiming to be pro-family and wink, winking to his libertoonian college legion).
4. Defending this nation from further Islamofascist depredations like 9/11 by killing the bastards in THEIR homelands (preferably by death from the sky) and destroying the Islamofascist capacity for war.
5. Accepting the obvious fact that Alex Jones, Infowars, the John Birch Society and other Troofers are hallucinating along with Ron Paul, David Duke, Stormfront, neonazis, Code Pink, International ANSWER and the rest when they seriously entertain the lunacy that 9/11 was an "inside job," perpetrated by us.
6. Abandoning the insanity that letters of marque and reprisal are somehow a substitute for the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force and other military professionals. In the same spirit, the crackpot Ron Paul might issue and executive order banning computers, ball points, pencils, and even fountain pens in favor of quills and ink wells, and ban internal combustion and other modern engines in favor of horses and wagons.
7. Understanding that the Constitution is not a suicide pact.
8. Understanding and actually acting accordingly that it is NOT enough to CLAIM fiscal conservatism while stuffing every Appropriations bill with tons of pork for Galveston (like shrimping subsidies, nursing scholarships, and a cornucopia of other actually unconstitutional goodies), then voting against the Appropriations bill in question, but knowing cynically all along that while he takes credit for voting NO, his more honestly liberal colleagues (however corrupt) will provide the majority votes for his pork along with their own.
There are many others but those should suffice as examples of what is more conservative than Ron Paul's crackpot notions of what constitutes "constitutional government."
P.S. I don't care what paleoPaulie CLAIMS to believe. He is running for POTUS and not for wannabe philosopher king. What matters is his track record, his fraudulent two-faced dishonesty on most issues (or his rank insanity as you may prefer) and not his carefully rehearsed act.
I think I should just cut and paste this. It seems to me that the Paultards are incapable of learning.
FOR THE GAZILLIONTH TIME THIS WEEK: FREE REPUBLIC IS A CONSERVATIVE WEBSITE, NOT A LIBERALTARIAN WEBSITE!
Just because RuPaul utters the magic words “smaller government, lower taxes, and Constitution” he doesn’t “fundamentally transform” into a Conservative. A Conservative also believes in morality. That means:
—resisting the homosexual pervert agenda that Paul keeps pushing.
—resisting the Shariah Law that Paul’s Iranian Islamo-Nazi pals keep pushing.
—refusing to find common ground with leftist lunatics like Dennis Kucinich, Bernie Sanders, and Cindy Sheehan.
—refraining from calling the US “imperialist” like some Moveon.dork twerp.
You maybe willing to sacrifice a few hundred thousands of your fellow Americans to make way for your idol, I am not.
You may enjoy ignorance of how things work, I don't. Iran is space capable, two satellites orbited more to come. Here is a lesson for you, orbit means going around the planet at least one time. If you can go around it you can come down where ever. replace satellite with nuke, drop where ever. Even if it is just “approximately’ aimed at the East coast how many lives would be lost? or should I ask, how many can you accept...
The best way to stop this is knowledge and that comes form being there, or as close as we can.
Running home is not an option.
Surrender monkey is rather apt for Paul...
Yes, allowing our enemies to lay seige against us, instead of taking the fight to them, has always worked well throughout history/s
Yeah but besides all that...
LOL...
I’m going with “rank insanity.”
Then again, I’m just a “war-mongering Zionist” to the Ronulans. What do I know ?
“We are broke because we spend too much on entitlements and vote buying schemes, not because of the military.”
Very True.
Unfortunately even the military is going to be cut because of our economic problems. Military power is based on economic power and our economic power has been declining for years. I wish this was not true.
His words and his defense of it makes him a traitor to many
What a moron you are...You're told the same Commander in Chief in his own words, was pushing home loans for totally unqualified minorities, just a few years prior the collapse, he and ya know his strategy of fighting compassionate 12 year long wars, costing trillions....And then when someone tosses this up in your face, ya cry and claim their leftist...
Getting that monkey movie felling again.
It's a GD mad house.
Darn it...
You (dragnet2) must not pay much attention to the news! Perhaps you should. If you did, you'd know that China has come out in support of Iran, and stated they would provide military support to Iran if it is attacked. Now, maybe Iran doesn't "frighten" you, but how do you feel about China? Hmmm?
” ‘and Ron Paul has stood up for true conservative principles for decades, not just in the last month.’ “
Was he doing that when he refused to support the Constitutional amendment to defend marriage ? How about when he voted to repeal DADT ? Was that Conservative ? Maybe it’s his stance about legalizing drugs and prostitution....yeah, that’s the ticket!
RuPaul is to Conservative like kitten is to blocking fullback.
It also won’t do much against cyber attacks ;-)
LOL You want to rape the USC for a marriage amendment? Why not leave it to the states?
If VT wants gay marriage, why do you care? If NH wants to ban gay marriage, let those twinks go to VT.
Why should the federal govt be in the marriage business?
If they can remember where they kept the laptop....
And what was your purpose for bringing up President Bush? I had simply listed the housing issue as one factor in a long list of progressive government programs and you focus in on President Bush? Then you go on your anti-American war rant? There is no way to tell you apart from a leftist with such talking points. (anti-Bush and anti-American war)
And while yes President Bush was guilty of buying into some progressive schemes such as in regards to housing he also tried to apply conservative principles to these schemes and warned repeatedly that the GSEs needed to be reformed or else we could face such a collapse. Other republicans did as well. It was your leftists buddies in the democrat party who resisted any reform at all of these massive progressive programs and schemes.
Basically the left-wing rarely if ever will allow reform being that the Marxist thrives on misery and failure. They never will accept accountability for their failed policies and will always use dupes like you to conflate the issue by casting blame on their opposition for their progressive failures. Instead of laying the blame where it should be, you are using the failure of left-wing policies to attack republicans. Pathetic.
Morals, morality-—AKA the other side of the Conservative coin.
Heterosexual marriage is the cornerstone of the family, which in turn, is the cornerstone of our country.
See, regardless of what the Ronulans seem to think, the United States of America was founded on Judeo-Christian values and moral principles.
You can’t be a moral nation with Adam and Steve pretending to be Adam and Eve.
Bushbot cognitive dissonance is so 2006.
Wait a minute here...Is this a big surprise to you?
Did ya think Communist China was ever your friend?
This was the same country that threatened the U.S. with nuclear weapons years ago?
Good God Billy Bob...
Hey Mr. Dad, did ya do your Christmas shopping at Chinamart yet...I hear they got some good deals on Communist Chinese products!
This place is crawling with Commie apologist and those who are surprised Communist China is not their friend...
In a country gone mad...
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