Posted on 07/16/2007 8:31:51 PM PDT by JTN
Among the other firsts of his campaign, Ron Paul is probably the only presidential contender to be compared to a Samuel L. Jackson movie. The Texas congressman, a dark horse candidate for the Republican nomination, was being lightly grilled by Kevin Pereira, a host on the videogame-oriented cable channel G4. "Young people online, they were really psyched about Snakes on a Plane, but that didn't translate into big ticket sales for Sam Jackson," Pereira said. "Are you worried that page views on a MySpace page might not translate to primary votes?"
The reference was to the Internet sensation of 2006, an action movie whose cheesy title and premise had sparked a burst of online creativity: mash-ups, mock trailers, parody films, blogger in-jokes. Hollywood interpreted this activity as "buzz," and New Line Cinema inflated its hopes for the movie's box office take. When the film instead did about as well as you'd expect from a picture called Snakes on a Plane, the keepers of the conventional wisdom declared that this was proof of the great gulf between what's popular on the Internet and what sells in the material world.
Ron Paul is popular on the Internet, too, with more YouTube subscribers than any other candidate, the fastest-growing political presence in MySpace, a constant perch atop the Technorati rankings, and a near-Olympian record at winning unscientific Web polls. Like Snakes, he is the subject of scads of homemade videos and passionate blog posts. When Pereira mentioned the movie, he was making a clear comparison: Yes, your online fans are noisy, but will their enthusiasm actually translate into electoral success?
It's an interesting analogy, because the conventional wisdom about Snakes on a Plane is backwards. The reason the online anticipation for Snakes didn't translate into big ticket sales is because there actually wasn't much online anticipation for the movie. Yes, some of those parodists were interested in seeing the finished film, whose notoriety has given it minor cult status. But the others couldn't care less about the studio's product. Their online activity was an end in itself, a great big belly laugh at the expense of goofy high-concept movies. Their riffs and spoofs were far more entertaining than any actual feature about airborne reptiles was likely to be. Those fans weren't waiting for a show. They were the show.
That's one difference between Snakes and Paul: The congressman's fans really do want him to do as well as possible in the polls. But victory isn't the only thing on their minds. For many of them it isn't even the topmost thing on their minds. Like those Snakes on a Plane spoofs, the grassroots activity around Paul's campaign is interesting and valuable in itself. Here are three reasons why:
It's transpartisan. Paul's fan base stretches all the way from Howard Phillips to Alexander Cockburn. His libertarian message has resonance, as you'd expect, among free-marketeers dismayed by the GOP's love affair with federal spending. It is also attractive, as you'd expect, to lefties who like his opposition to the Iraq war and the post-9/11 incursions on our civil liberties. But the race has no shortage of anti-spending conservatives and antiwar liberals. Paul is especially appealing to people who don't fit the narrow stereotypes of Blue and Red: to decentralist Democrats, anti-imperialist Republicans, and a rainbow of independents.
The Internet makes it easier for such dispersed minorities to find each other, and the congressman's candidacy has given them a new reason to seek each other out. When Pittsburgh's Paul backers gathered via the MeetUp site, which arranges get-togethers for users who share a common interest, the blogger Mike Tennant attended. He found at least one Democrat, at least one anarchist, several disillusioned Bush supporters, a member of the Libertarian Party, a member of the right-wing Constitution Party, "and a whole roomful of folks disillusioned with the two-party duopoly... The one thing that unites us all is a desire to have a president who actually believes in liberty and has a record to match his rhetoric." Paul fans have been arguing forcefully for their candidate at both the conservative Web hub FreeRepublic and its liberal counterpart, Daily Kos—where, to be sure, they are met by angry opposition from more conventional Republicans and Democrats.
It's idea-driven. Were you wondering how Paul answered that question about Snakes on a Plane? He said, "I don't worry much about that at all. I worry about understanding the issues and presenting the case and seeing if I can get people to support these views." Some politicians are in this race because they really want to run the country. Some are in it because they want to be vice president, or be secretary of state, or extract some other prize from the eventual nominee. Paul is in it to inject ideas into the campaign. He wants to get votes, of course, but like Henry Clay he'd rather be right than be president. (Unlike Clay, he really is right most of the time.)
For Paul, it's a victory just to be on stage with Rudolph Giuliani arguing for a non-interventionist foreign policy, because it serves as a reminder that it's possible to be a fiscal conservative with bourgeois cultural instincts and yet oppose the occupation of Iraq and the effort to extend that war into Iran. That novelty, coupled with his fans' online activity, has earned Paul a rash of TV interviews: In the last two months, he has appeared on This Week, The Daily Show, Tucker, Lou Dobbs Tonight, and The Colbert Report, among other venues, raising his profile far above the other second-tier candidates. Each appearance is an opportunity not just to ask for votes but to express his anti-statist ideas, spreading a message rarely heard in the context of a presidential campaign.
It has a life of its own. After Jesse Jackson's populist campaign did unexpectedly well in 1988, many of his supporters hoped the Rainbow Coalition would become an independent grassroots force. But Jackson was more interested in his own political career, and he opted to make it a smaller group he could control. Similarly, Ross Perot resisted every effort to make the Reform Party something more than a vehicle for his presidential ambitions. When it slipped out of his control anyway, and in 2000 gave the world two competing presidential nominees, he stiffed both and endorsed George Bush instead.
A different fate befell the left-wing "netroots" that embraced Howard Dean in 2004 and Ned Lamont (among others) in 2006. They've maintained their decentralized character, and they're obviously larger than any particular pol. But unlike the Perot movement or even the Rainbow Coalition, which included left-wing independents as well as Democrats, the netroots aren't larger than one particular party. They may hate the Democratic establishment, but they're still devoted Democrats.
The Paul movement is different. Unlike the Jackson and Perot campaigns, it is open, decentralized, and largely driven by activists operating without any direction from the candidate or his staff. Unlike the netroots, it has no particular attachment to the party whose nomination its candidate is seeking. Paul himself left the Republican fold in the '80s to run for president as a Libertarian, and he still has friendly ties to that party. When he returned to the GOP and to Congress in the election of '96, the national party establishment threw its weight behind his opponent in the primaries, an incumbent who had originally been elected as a Democrat. Paul turned to independent sources to fill his campaign coffers, raising substantial sums from the libertarian, constitutionalist, and hard-money movements. Those have always been his chief base of support.
Barring a complete meltdown of the party gatekeeping apparatus, Ron Paul will not be the Republican nominee next year. And he says he has no plans to run as an independent. But you can't erase all the traces of a self-directed, transpartisan, idea-driven movement. Long after Snakes on a Plane was relegated to the cult-movie shelf, the people who spoofed it online are still writing blogs and editing mini-movies, applying the skills they honed mocking an action flick. Howard Dean is just a party functionary today, but the troops who assembled themselves behind him are still active in the trenches, their original leader nearly forgotten. I suspect that Paul will have a longer shelf life than Dean or Snakes. But whatever becomes of him after this election, his fans will still be there, organizing rallies, editing their YouTube videos, launching their own political campaigns, and spreading ideas.
They won't. They'll do what they've always done: First they'll mock the Paul supporters ("Ha, you're candidate is .001% in the polls!), then they'll demand that they vote for their RINOs ("If you don't vote Republican, you'll get the mean-old Democrat. Oooga-Boooga!"), and when they don't they'll piss and moan because they voted 3rd party or stayed home ("Waaa-waaa, you losertarians stayed home").
There's the problem right there. Too many DEMOCRATS stinking up the GOP. Oust them and maybe having a real conservative in the fold wouldn't seem such an oddity.
Gimme a break. Nobody's comparing Paul to Reagan, and we honestly believe that he probably won't win the nomination. We're just glad he's in the race talking about the real issues, you know the stuff Republicans are supposed to be advocating for instead of being Democrat-lite. BTW, Paul was an early supporter of Reagan, and he led the Texas delegation in 1976 for him. But that doesn't matter to you Paul bashers.
In the world that the RPbots live in if the U.S. would just pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the whole of the middle east, then we would have "peace" from our enemies. There's no understanding of what giving over control of the oil rich middle east region to these terrorist would mean for the rest of the world. No understanding of what our enemies would do with the billions they would generate in oil revenues and use to further their Islamo-facist jihad agenda. Ignorance would turn out to not be bliss I'm afraid.
Very very sad.
Good grief....did that person really say that?? That person is on my Ignore List now so I don't read his ramblings, but that remark is definitely more fitting for DU or Daily KOS.
Maybe that's Harry Reid's FR handle?
And to Paul’s acolytes - do you people really think Iran is not a threat to U.S. interests? That we should just let Iran be?
The problem is that we won’t do it all the way. We’ll half ass it like we did in Iraq. If we could have just let the military do it’s job and canned Bremmer alot sooner we’d have already moved on to Iran, that was the plan all the time but political self interest skewed commitment and now we’re stuck in Iraq.
If we weren’t willing to kill Al Sadr in Iraq, what the heck do you think we’ll do in Iran. Lob some MOABs? Then what will we do when they push out the doctored photos of innocent deaths for the AP to eagerly put on the Front page of every news rag in the world? Stop, find a scapegoat and leave our guys in limbo while the politicians decide who to put on trial in front of Congress and how to spin this to squeeze out more campaign money.
I’d love for us to go into Iran, constitutionally declare war and utterly defeat them, hook up with those inside who want to topple the regime, help those who want to assasinate the Mullahs and hand things over to a secular representative government. We won’t do that though, our politicians are far too concerned about the next election.
So you need to get over it and start looking at how your liberty is being stolen by our Wars On Anything (to get votes, money and federal authority) and make sure that if the Islamofascists come here there’s a Constitutional Republic to defend, or will we be just be defending our “right” to watch porn and american idol and vote for our favorite contestant on Big Brother 28?
The point is *Constitutionally* illegal, SoldierDad. And what does Afghanistan have to do with Iraq? Or Iran?
They won’t.
Agreed
Common sense flying out the window yet again.
Snookums? Honeybunch? Seek help. How can I be stalking you, when you are the one who hates Ron Paul yet posts on every single Ron Paul thread? There’s no games or manipulation, only your sick mental projections.
Why do you refuse to have an honest debate with me?
What does Iraq have to do with Afghanistan?
I’ve been wrong before and admitted it. I’m honestly just trying to understand. There was a time where FR was all about reasoned, rational debate between several parties with different opinions who managed to have a civil discourse. Now it’s just a flame war and I’m trying to avoid that.
You almost had me...I almost thought I had gotten a polite person to have a discussion with and then you had to go and act tough and arrogant. (Sigh...)
I'll tell you what I tell everyone who does that. Come over here and say that to me personally and perhaps I'll give you a listen. ;-)
Ciao!
The point is *Constitutionally* illegal, SoldierDad. And what does Afghanistan have to do with Iraq? Or Iran?
He asks questions where he discusses Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran, and then asks me what they each have to do with the other. I think ignoring any further inane posts from him is prudent.
Yes, it's the best course. He questioned my integrity in a very nasty assumption the other day and it was unprovoked. It showed more about his character than he realizes.
I think the DU-like ones among us are best ignored.
wah, you didn’t ping me before talking about me, wah, wah, wah.
We're in a war, and the war encompasses the entire planet and not just one particular country or region. If people don't get a grasp on this fact then our nation will not long endure. We're not fighting just people in Afghanistan, just people in Iraq, just people in _________ (fill in the blank). We, in this country, have failed to teach history to the detriment of this era. Three times in history since Islam arose have there been wars which lasted 100 years+ where the muslims have attempted to control other countries only to be defeated. This is just another attempt at world domination, and the enemy is now everywhere. How's that for a reasoned response?
I’m sorry if it sounded rude, I didn’t mean it to be. I was trying to convey the seriousness of what is happening. Emotion is easily inserted or implied in emails and posts. If I almost had you don’t let your sensitivity to percieved insults get in the way. If it makes sense, then it makes sense whether I’m a bombastic ass or a meek pleader or anything in between.
There is not really a fluffy way of saying what I did, we do need to get over our myopic focus on the middle east, ALL OF US or we won’t have anything left here worth defending besides our leisures. Even The LORD Jesus Himself had to say hard things and in a hard way to get the people’s attention. Those interested in truth heard the message, the rest just took these things as personal insults. I know you’re better than that.
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