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Like noxious bugs swarming over a crumbling tenement, followers of Ron Paul have invaded the blogosphere. Their target is anyone who dares to criticize their hero. Bloggers have dealt with them in various ways. Some have tried banning them outright. Others allow readers to engage them in back-and-forth debates that can easily take a thread to several hundred responses. I used to find the Paulites annoying, but recently I had a revelation: Far from being scorned, Paul’s rabid fans should be welcomed and encouraged. We should do everything we can to make certain they keep pushing their man, sending him...

Who do you want to be the Republican Presidential nominee? Rudy Giuliani Mike Huckabee Duncan Hunter John McCain Ron Paul Mitt Romney Tom Tancredo Fred Thompson

This guy is becoming even more of an idiot than I thought. It's ok to want out of Iraq, but it's another thing to lie about it in order to get votes. He was properly smacked by McCain for his comments. To which Ron Paul supporters tried to boo McCain, but were drowned out with cheers for McCain as McCain schooled Paul on the facts of Vietnam. I will post video as soon as I have it, and the latest numbers of a decline in violence in Iraq. Which Paul says is because the Brits are pulling out of Basra....

I chose this topic for a guest DUFU with some degree of trepidation. Any mention of "Ron Paul" anywhere on the Internet tends to bring out the Paulbots. But there is material to work with here: Confusion and kookiness in DUmmieland! Pied Piper Pitt takes on the Paulbearers--and the Paulbamboozled--in this THREAD titled, "I haven't been on DU much, so this might be off base...but...Ron Paul? Say freakin' what?!" BTW, Pitt will use this thread to a) reveal some personal news of note and b) get in some digs at one of the Democrat favorites in DUmmieland. So let's...

AS THE HOPELESS but energetic presidential campaign of Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, builds momentum in name recognition, fundraising and cross-ideology appeal, some conservatives are beginning to attack him in earnest. A GOP consultant condemns Paul's "increasingly leftish" positions. Syndicated columnist Mona Charen calls Paul "too cozy with kooks and conspiracy theorists." Film critic and talk-radio host Michael Medved looks over Paul's supporters and finds "an imposing collection of neo-Nazis, white supremacists, Holocaust deniers, 9/11 'truthers' and other paranoid and discredited conspiracists." For the most part, these allegations strike me as overblown and unfair. But, for argument's sake, let's say they're...

More than 600 people came out Tuesday afternoon for a rally held by presidential hopeful Ron Paul. Paul, the Texas representative who's gaining attention for his online and grassroots support, spoke to the crowd about ending the war in Iraq, limiting government regulation and gaining economic stability. "We don't need to sacrifice," Paul said, drawing applause from the audience. "What we need is freedom to make our own decisions."

Perhaps of some relevance to the passionate comment thread here on whether Ron Paul's rise says something about whether Democrat or Republican, right or left, is where libertarians ought to turn for viable political allies, John Nichols of The Nation says this about Paul today: When is the Washington press corps going to start treating Ron Paul as seriously as it does Fred Thompson? The likely answer is "not soon." And that's the most frustrating thing about the way in which the GOP race is being covered by major media. After all, Ron Paul has more to say -- and...

State field director predicts second, even first in Iowa It seems like when we're young, we like to break a few rules.  Staying out a little too late, sneaking a drink before that official legal age, or backing a candidate who's outside the established mold (YEEEEEAH!) Several of those dynamics were on display Saturday at Olive Court, a notoriously wild tailgate spot three blocks from Iowa City's Kinnick Stadium.  It was here, just a year ago, that John Kerry was infamously photographed with a beer bong.  And into the anarchy marched the Ron Paul revolution. Ron Paul wasn't imbibing...

The meeting of Ron Paul activists was well under way when organizer Steven Talcott Smith offered the kind of basic advice you probably wouldn't hear at a gathering of any other Republican presidential candidate's supporters. "By the way," Smith told the Internet-driven "meet-up" of about 40 people at a library west of Boynton Beach, "by the end of this year everybody in this room should plan to be a Republican." Florida's Jan. 29 Republican primary is, not surprisingly, limited to registered GOP voters. But a Republican pedigree or a familiarity with the elections process cannot be taken for granted with...

The ardent supporters of Rep. Ron Paul, the iconoclastic Texas libertarian whose campaign for the presidency is threatening to upend the battle for the Republican nomination, got word yesterday of a new source of outrage and motivation: reports of a federal raid on a company that was selling thousands of coins marked with the craggy visage of their hero. Federal agents on Thursday raided the Evansville, Ind., headquarters of the National Organization for the Repeal of the Federal Reserve Act and Internal Revenue Code (Norfed), an organization of "sound money" advocates that for the past decade has been selling a...

One issue voters. Confused, emotional one issue voters. And they come from all stripes of politics. Let's have a look. The Neo nazi groups/conspiracy theorists - Ron says he will end aid to Israel. They've latched on to that one. Most of them don't want the government to function, good or bad because it keeps them in check. Not quite anarchists, but close. The Leftie Anti war crowd, not really pacifists, but bohemian cowards promoting anarchy. Paul says he'll end the war and be nice to everyone no matter how they've tried to kill us. The Conservative who really would...

Ron Paul breaks into the light as freedom warrior By David M. Brown TRIBUNE-REVIEW Sunday, November 11, 2007 DES MOINES -- It used to be easy to portray Republican presidential hopeful Ron Paul as a quixotic champion of a hopeless cause. But Don Quixote never raised $4.2 million in a single day. The parody of someone tilting at windmills hardly fits now that Paul is raising serious amounts of campaign cash. He's using it to fortify grassroots efforts in the important early caucus state of Iowa and to buy TV ads in New Hampshire and other key battleground states. The...

Ron Paul Political Report Volume I Number 1 Page 3 In Congress today, unquestlonlng support for Israel is true bipartisan foreign policy. Conservative Senator Jesse Helms (R-Nc) was once a critic of aid to Israel. In 1983, the Israell lobby set out to forge an alliance between the evangelical right and Jews and knew Helms would be the best place to start. As a result, in 1984 Israeli PACs and associated wealthy buslnessmen helped bankroll Helms' reelection. campaign. Once Helms was back in office, he was flown to Israel. At the Wailing wall, Helms described the revelatlon that God wanted...

November 4 Ron Paul 5%

Sen. Barack Obama has Oprah Winfrey, Sen. Hillary Clinton has Magic Johnson and Rep. Ron Paul, the online star of the primary race, has Sean Morley, aka Val Venis, the popular WWE pro wrestler who pretends to be an adult film star. And like many of the Paulites, the Texas congressman's loyal, Web-savvy supporters, Morley is blogging about Paul on his own site. "I can't really say what my support means. But, you know, I first heard about him two years ago, and I've studied his voting record and I'm convinced that more than any candidate, Republican or Democrat, he's...

It sometimes seems as if someone is playing a cruel practical joke on Ron Paul. He goes to a college and delivers the same speech he's given for the past 30 years of his political career, the one espousing the Austrian school of economics. Only now the audience is packed with hundreds of kids in RON PAUL REVOLUTION T shirts who go nuts — giving standing ovations when he drones on about getting rid of the Federal Reserve and returning to the gold standard. After a speech at Iowa State last month, when nearly half the crowd had to stand...

Stephanie Burns and Ben Parkinson strolled down sun-drenched Fillmore Street with political thievery on their minds. Both are grass-roots volunteers for Republican presidential contender Ron Paul, a Texas congressman whose libertarian views might seem to make him a tough sell in this legendarily left-wing city. But Burns, Parkinson and other Paul supporters have been spending their weekends marching, staffing tables and knocking on doors in an improbable quest: picking up some of California's 173 convention delegates in the Feb. 5 primary. On the surface, the plan seems quixotic given general assumptions about California: that the state is too big for...

Just so ya know, credit for finding the Alex Jones payment from Ron Paul, if youÂ’re here from Hot Air or CaptainÂ’s Quarters, goes to one of my anti-Paul/anti-troofer friends at digg, COINTELPROAgent (a facetious name to bait the troofers, if thatÂ’s not obvious). YouÂ’d be surprised how much information you can find out (i.e. FEC violations, among other things) just by reading the nonsense the Paultards spew over there. IÂ’m on a mission to clean up the internets, if you havenÂ’t noticed. IÂ’m reeeeally sick of the RP spammers. If Ron Paul is going to get a spot at...

The Texas congressman is not likely to be president, but his campaign already represents the most significant pro-freedom movement in recent American history. ...So how did a 72-year-old grandfather who is self-effacing and slender to the point of looking frail on television (he doesn't in person) become the closest thing to a rock star the Republicans have produced, swarmed for autographs at every appearance? Raised in Pittsburgh, Ron Paul attended Duke medical school, served in the Air Force, and began practicing medicine (he's an OB-GYN) near Houston. Along the way he started reading writers like Ludwig von Mises and Friederich...

Over the weekend, the Second Amendment Foundation's (SAF) Gun Rights Policy Conference (GRPC) convened in Fort Mitchell, KY. With eight hundred pre-registered attendees, this was the largest SAF event ever. From the buttons, bumper stickers, and familiar faces, it was clear that a sizable chunk of the morning's record figure could be attributed to interest in Congressman and Republican Presidential Candidate Ron Paul. The conference began on Saturday with a Federal Affairs Briefing that explained the many ways that bloated federal government and bureaucracy is currently attempting to regulate as well as legislate away our rights. The crowd was unified...