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Ron Paul Effectively Ending Presidential Campaign
New submitter Dainsanefh sends this quote from the LA Times:
"Ron Paul, Mitt Romney's lone remaining rival for the Republican presidential nomination, announced Monday that he would stop spending money on the party's 11 remaining primaries, in effect suspending his campaign. ... Apart from President Obama and Romney, Paul has raised more money than any other White House contender this year – more than $36 million. His calls for strict adherence to the Constitution and his no-nonsense manner have spawned a vocal and well organized group of followers, but not enough to give him a realistic shot at the presidency."
Correct, but getting Ron Paul's follower's support is key #1 to the Republican strategy. If they don't get them, they'll lose to Obama. If they do get them, they'll win. Having a presence at the convention will just make that key even more important. The GOP is on a tight rope. What will they do?
I'm not completely familiar with US politics, but does this mean that he's going to continue running under a third-party ballot?
No. He never has and will not run as a "third-party" candidate. And the LA Times quote, of course, entirely mischaracterizes the announcement.
Note that the media has stubbornly refused to cover ANY of his campaign in the last few weeks. He has been gaining delegates and winning states (at least 8 so far), enough to be officially on the ballot for the ACTUAL selection of the Republican nominee (which the mainstream media does NOT get to decide, even if they think they do). But of course when Paul announces some pull-back or strategy shift in his campaign, they use it to declare once and for all "Romney is the winner!" - which they have been trying to do all along.
Ron Paul has decided not to spend any campaign resources in the remaining primary states. He will, however, continue to amass "delegates" for the Republican National Convention, where the nominee is officially declared. And we still hope to see a brokered convention, which will be a lot of fun, because the Republican establishment wants it to be a show, not a real contest.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Reagan did it. Not exactly the guy that Repubs love to hate.
A whistleblower from DHS recently reported that there is a plan afoot by the Obama regime to pull a "Reichstag Event", which would allow him to declare martial law, postponing (or cancelling) the election..
Your DHS whistleblower is insane. As is a significant fringe of Republicans, who seem to think that cooperation and democratic principles don't matter anymore, because the wrong guy is sitting in the White House.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
p>Cheating the system to get elected... no respect for this man now. (Yes I know its not technically cheating the letter of the law, but it flies in the face of a proper democratic election.)
No it doesn't.
How would you characterize as "a proper democratic election"? Do such things occur somewhere? What does that fantasy have to do with the internal party politics that determines reality?
I LOL in your general direction sir.
What is a caucus?
What is a district?
What is a precinct?
How do precinct chairs get to be chairs?
How do state/national party delegates get to be delegates?
How do party platform planks get to be platform planks?
How did Pat Robertson and Ralph Reed and Don Wildmon and James Dobson take over the Republican Party 30 years ago?
How do state legislatures get filled?
How do voting precincts/districts get carved up?
The reason the political process in the USA sucks is that people fetishize the act of casting a vote and think that's where the citizenry derive their power.
Every time you cast a vote you are simply hitting a toggle switch within a previously constructed system. You are just as free as a pigeon in a Skinner box presented with two levers to peck. No amount of pecking lever 1 over lever 2 will change the structure of the box nor the fact that its creators put you in it.
A true grassroots movement could easily sweep away the crap in the two major parties. But such things don't happen because people are too lazy to get that involved. They'd rather just show up three times a year to vote for whatever's put in front of them. The power goes to those who organize the most. If you show up as a single solitary Paulite to your precinct thinking you're gonna put your little slice of the GOP back on track to "true conservatism" (whatever that means) you will be blindsided by the well-entrenched career powermongers and heavily motivated christianists who have been doing this a lot longer than you and will be using their numerous leftover extra brain cycles to plan dinner and next week's cotillion while they reflexively and casually exploit Robert's Rules of Order style procedures to cut you right out of the process should you try to speak up or add agenda items or nominate yourself as delegate to the your party's larger conventions. They already know ahead of time who is going to be nominated for what positions, who is going to make motions, who is going to second the motions, who is going to call for votes, who is going to move to end the session.... This is settled well in advance. If you're not part of an existing clan, don't enter an advanced open PK-ing MMORPG, because all that happens is that YHBPKed YHL HTH HAND.
Hollywood, Television, has become the dream machine. We need to take that back; each of us is a Dream Machine
yeah, tell me how voting for the lesser of two evils thing has been working out?
that's your greatest problem? not the dire need of winding down the war machine, overreach of three-letter agencies and shit?
Yes but they were going on history; an executive branch that was breathtaking in its brazen power-grabs. They told transparent lies to get us into war, ignored the Geneva Convention and our own laws and refused to back down even once discovered, and eroded the liberty of the average American significantly with laws like the PATRIOT act. In Obama's case, he has done nothing to merit the hate of the Republicans. Far from it! We got a Republican plan for health care, Goldman Sachs still runs the economy, tax cuts were extended and never raised, and he never came for your guns. The criticism from the right for Obama is positively bewildering; he's been as good to them as a Democrat could possibly be.
I guess that preferring a metal that has had value for thousands of years and will have value as far as we can tell for thousands more, over a piece of paper that politicians can print pretty much at will, makes hima loon.
Gold's value swung wildly throughout history, causing massive short-term inflation and deflation. That is far more damaging than long-term inflation, which is easily avoided by not sitting on a pile of cash, which should be treated like a barter stand-in and not a gold equivalent.
Further, the same limited quantities that give gold the value you desire also make it too scarce for a growing economy.
And then there is the inability to "print" money. Ron Paul would probably put this in the "plus" column, but I think that governments will spend recklessly whether they can print money or not. Most of modern Europe is evidence that governments will borrow heavily even if they have no ability to print money. World history is chock-full of "Greeces", well before the federal reserve system was invented. In the US, we had plenty of bank failures, financial panics, and major recessions while on the gold standard. The federal reserve system gives the government more tools than it had prior to it's invention.
So in short, the main thrust of the pro-gold argument is that people who stuff their mattresses full of cash would be better off in the long run. No argument there. Of course they could be buying gold and stuffing that in their mattresses right now, so I'm frankly at a loss as to why we should give up all the advantages of the federal reserve system for such people.
Which gets me to the reason we tend to dismiss Ron Paul as a crazy person. What I wrote isn't remotely controversial. Banking has been a mess since it was invented - one of the core issues of our young country involved banking. We tried several national models, all of which had at least one spectacular failure. I'm under no delusion that the current Federal Reserve is the ultimate solution, but it seems to work better than it's predesessors. Ron Paul seems like a really intelligent guy, and he's also pretty well educated. So it really seems... odd... that he comes to the conclusions that he does on this matter. My conclusion is that his mind works in a way that is very different from my own. I could be the crazy one, but from my perspective he is the one drawing irrational conclusions.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Exactly. Most supporters of Ron Paul are not "loyal republicans" and will vote for a third party before they will vote for Romney. On the other hand, how many Romney supporters would vote for a third party if Romney somehow doesn't win the nomination? Very few. The GOP has a chance to gain huge momentum by supporting Paul's ideas, gaining votes from youth who have found that Obama's hope was a lie and from peace-loving democrats who are disgusted about Obama's track record on foreign policy and torture. However, Romney will not attract any of them. Romney will attract a few former Obama supporters who will decide to switch sides and will attract the "hardcore" Republicans who will never vote for anyone else, but no one else. Can Romney win? It just depends on how badly Obama screws up the next few months.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
When the government can print money or borrow without practical limit, we have a great depression or the morass we're in now.
Actually, at the time of the Great Depression the US was still on the gold standard.
Paulians: they never let facts get in the way of a good rant.