Ron Paul won a California poll and latest money bomb close to one million

[GALTGULCH8]

Ron Paul continues to keep on truckin'

Amazing how he is so utterly written off by the pundits with few exceptions.

He is a man of principle who takes the oath of office seriously in his many terms in office.

Not a party man which is why he is so hated by the leadership.

An email from him today indicates his money bomb has raised $915,000 so far and he is pleading for generous donations to get over one million on Constitution Day which is this weekend.

Here is an excerpt from the email:

<<<"

But the truth is, you and I have more work to do.

In the coming weeks, I’m planning an all-out blitz to spread my message of liberty to voters in key early primary and caucus states.

And the funds I raise now will determine how much my campaign is able to do.

So please agree to give as generously as you possibly can to help me reach one million.

Thanks so much for all your support.

With your help, you and I can Restore America Now!

For Liberty,

Congressman Ron Paul

P.S. Yesterday’s California Straw Poll victory combined with the success of my Money Bomb is only more proof of what national polls have been saying for months.

Not only am I a top-tier contender to WIN the Republican nomination for President, but I am THE Republican to take on and defeat President Obama next year!

But with so much more work to be done, I’m asking you to help me launch just one final push to reach one million dollars.

">>>

Edited September 18, 2011 by gulch8

[GALTGULCH8]

Here is an excerpt from a NEWSMAX article about the CA convention at which many Paul supporters showed up:

<<<"

Ron Paul Wins GOP Calif. Straw Poll; Perry Second

Rep. Ron Paul easily won what might be called the Texas shootout in the California Republican Straw Poll Saturday, with the Lone Star state congressman finishing first among GOP presidential contenders with 44.9 percent of the vote and Texas Gov. Rick Perry coming in second at 29.3 percent.

The Times chronicled the following quotes from Paul’s address as getting the most applause:

[*]"We have endless wars overseas and endless welfare at home. We can't afford that anymore; we have to change those policies."

[*]"We do need an absolutely thorough audit of the Federal Reserve.”

[*]"What is the purpose of government and political action? I think the main purpose of our Constitution and political action should be the preservation of liberty."

[*]"It would be nice if we had a lot more respect for the rule of law."

[*]"You ought to have a right to work hard, and you ought to have a right to keep what you earn."

[*]America's role is to have a strong national defense, "not to be the policeman of the world."

Enthusiasm Paul generated throughout the day extended to the straw poll tally Saturday night, in which Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney finished a distant third at 8.8 percent and Bachmann, fourth at 7.7 percent. Then came Jon Huntsman at 2 percent, Herman Cain at 1.8, and Newt Gingrich at 1.7. The other candidates failed to break 1 percent.

© Newsmax. All rights reserved.">>>

Here is the link to the article:

http://www.newsmax.c...omo_code=D12A-1

Anyone care to predict that Ron Paul will become the nominee of the Republican Party for president in 2012?

I checked back at his donation site and at 8 PM Sunday evening there were $1,003,258.42 so far from 17,812 donors!

I imagine the main stream media will manage to find a way to avoid and ignore this as Ron Paul's advocates rise to the occasion again with over one million dollars donated in the latest money bomb.

Edited September 19, 2011 by gulch8

[Selene]

Gulch:

For heaven's sake...straw polls are not elections.

Texas Rep. Ron Paul won a California straw poll, the state Republican Party announced in a statement Saturday night.

A total of 868 ballots were cast during the straw poll, the statement said.

Paul won with 44.9% of the votes, Texas Gov. Rick Perry came in second with 29.3% of the votes, and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney came in third with 8.8% of the votes.

The California Republican Party, associated members and registered guests were allowed to vote in the straw poll, according to the statement.

There were some 868 votes en total, of which he received 389.7 or 390 total actual votes in a state of 24,000,000 eligible voters, of which 17-18 million actually vote and of which only 34% identify themselves as registered Republicans.

Therefore, "winning" this straw poll is basically total bullshit.

As much as I like Dr. Paul, he has no ground game, or election day operation and without one, he cannot even be competitive. Additionally, that ground game has to be developed without any of the in place state Republican organizations.

Adam

Edited September 19, 2011 by Selene

[basimpson22]

Hey gulch, I'm on of the 17812 donors. Selene, you say you like Ron Paul...why not support him? Why automatically dismiss him? Plenty can happen with over a year to go till the election.

[Selene]

Hey gulch, I'm on of the 17812 donors. Selene, you say you like Ron Paul...why not support him? Why automatically dismiss him? Plenty can happen with over a year to go till the election.

Bobby:

Apparently, you chose to read my post as dismissing Dr. Paul.

Let me clearly state that I am not dismissing Dr. Paul. However, I will certainly not fake reality, particularly political reality where I am an expert.

I have been in the practical trenches of political campaigns since 1960, both as a volunteer and a paid consultant. I do not do any volunteer political campaign work anymore.

Dr. Paul's message campaign is admirable, but this is reality. Identifying your voter and delivering that voter to the polls on election day in greater numbers than your opponent is what wins elections.

Dr. Paul's folks have numbers, belief and energy, but are clueless as to developing an efficient and winning election field organization and election day operations.

Adam

[basimpson22]

Hell, I figure any GOP nominee will defeat Obama in 2012. Paul, in my opinion, is the only candidate who would actually change anything if in office. I don't know too much about Perry, honestly, but he doesn't seem like anyone who will make a difference. He's clearly a close friend of big business.

Paul is an advocate of a pure free market. Problem is, as i'm sure you're aware, that so many big businesses will fail fast without some form of government intervention. I wouldn't say they're clueless. I'd say special interests groups have the electoral process gridlocked.

[Reidy]

Paul is not an advocate of a pure free market; he supports immigration restrictions, which are an open-and-shut abrogation of a free market in labor.

Next point: whatever he advocates in theory, he's one of the great porkmeisters in practice, as sources as varied as Tim Russert and TAS have pointed out and as we've had occasion to discuss here before. His sneakiness about it makes him ineligible for the standard excuse his admirers make for him.

[Selene]

Hell, I figure any GOP nominee will defeat Obama in 2012. Paul, in my opinion, is the only candidate who would actually change anything if in office. I don't know too much about Perry, honestly, but he doesn't seem like anyone who will make a difference. He's clearly a close friend of big business.

Paul is an advocate of a pure free market. Problem is, as i'm sure you're aware, that so many big businesses will fail fast without some form of government intervention. I wouldn't say they're clueless. I'd say special interests groups have the electoral process gridlocked.

Bobby:

I disagree that any GOP nominee will beat O'biwan the incredible shrinking president and boy fascist prince because of the electoral college, his base, immense campaign funds and one of the best, if not the best election machine ever developed.

I am currently beginning to run electoral college scenarios depending on the GOP nominee. However, we are still fourteen (14) months out from election day which is a phenomenal amount of time in political calenders.

Romney, gagging as I type, can barely beat O'biwan. Perry could win the popular vote and lose the electoral vote. Dr. Paul, sadly, has to get the GOP nomination which is, probably, impossible. His adamant pro-life stance could put him in a position to win the GOP nomination, if he can prove that he could win one single primary, but I do not see that happening because of what I posted concerning his people's complete ineptitude at field organization in an election context.

Finally, this cycle's GOP paradigm for the nomination is not winner take all, but proportional representation [applies to primaries held before April 1st, 2012****] of each convention state's votes to delegate ratio. This can virtually guarantee an actual convention floor battle similar to the past which makes for great television and a nominee that is not in the top three delegate harvest going into the convention.

Therefore, if Dr. Paul can actually develop a field organization that can deliver votes on the primary election day, that will actually translate to a real number of delegates, then he might be able to hang around through three or four ballots while he could put together a ticket with some truly back room deals and emerge as some type of consensus candidate wherein he would be the VP with a domestic mission to power wash the corruption out of Washington.

Short of this rosy scenario, he will be a force, but a limited one at the convention.

Adam

****

2012: Will the Republican Delegate Rules Changes Prolong their Primary Season?

Entry by jlenski | Tuesday, September 14th, 2010 |

I know it is early to start thinking about the 2012 presidential election, but hey, we are only 510 days away from the Iowa Caucuses so we might as well start!

Last week, the AP reported that former NM Governor Gary Johnson is mulling a run for president. So why should anyone care that a relatively unknown, former governor of a small state is thinking of running for president? Two reasons: Gary Johnson is Ron Paul’s favorite presidential candidate, and the Republican Party has recently changed its rules so that all the states having primaries before April 1, 2012 will allocate their delegates proportionally instead of winner-take-all.

The change in the rules to mandate proportional allocation of delegates may end up having a significant impact on the eventual selection of the Republican Presidential nominee. John McCain’s victory in 2008 was primarily determined by his key primary victories in early winner-take-all primaries in South Carolina, Florida, California, Missouri, New Jersey and New York. If the delegates had been awarded proportionally in 2008, McCain’s 47% of the primary vote might have left him short of the necessary delegates for the nomination, especially if Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee had stayed in the race until the convention. (For a great source for all 2008 primary results you can visit Dave Leip’s Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections)

Which leads us to Gary Johnson, and the 2012 Republican Presidential primaries and caucuses. Gary Johnson is the former Republican governor of New Mexico who has very libertarian views on a number of issues – cutting government spending, reducing taxes, legalizing marijuana – and this has made him the favorite candidate of Ron Paul (if Paul doesn’t run for president himself again in 2012.) Ron Paul made a small splash in the 2008 primaries and caucuses, but ended up with only a handful of delegates – mainly because of the delegate allocation rules at that time.

In 2008, Ron Paul did much better in caucus states (12.3% of the vote) than in primary states (5.6%). Ron Paul’s best caucus performances were in the following states:

Montana 24.5%

Washington 21.6%

North Dakota 21.3%

Maine 18.4%

Alaska 17.3%

Minnesota 15.7%

Nevada 13.7%

Kansas 11.2%

Iowa 10.0%

If Gary Johnson could match or exceed Ron Paul’s performance in some of these caucuses, and win 15% to 25% of the delegates in many of these states under the 2012 proportional allocation rules, he could become a significant force at the Republican convention. In a closely contested race, these prospective Gary Johnson delegates could determine the nominee, or at least become a significant nuisance, especially if the early round of primaries and caucuses do not provide a consensus nominee among a group that could include Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Tim Pawlenty, Mitch Daniels, Haley Barbour and a cast of thousands.

In 2008, we saw how the Obama campaign took advantage of their edge in low-turnout caucus states to build a significant delegate advantage over Hillary Clinton. In 2010, we have seen the success of Tea Party candidates in low-turnout Republican primaries, such as the Alaska primary that unseated Senator Lisa Murkowski and the delegate selection process in Utah that unseated Senator Bob Bennett. By tinkering with their delegate selection system, the Republicans seem to have assured a long 2012 primary season that gives passionate fringe minorities a lot more influence over the selection of the eventual nominee.

[basimpson22]

Mitt Romney makes me gag too.

Edited September 20, 2011 by Aristocrates

[basimpson22]

Honestly I get a little confused. If you look at them individually its a little difficult to tell them apart. They both look like middle-aged Ken dolls. How I tell them apart is that Romney is a whiny weasel and Perry seems like a Bush clone (the new, updated, more destructive, more genuinely stupid edition).

[basimpson22]

i've watched beck interview a couple of republican hopefuls. He always asks at the end what their position on Israel is. God, it makes me sick. He's playing to the Baby Boomer's religious sensibilities. I don't see how Objectivist thinkers can support a party that survives on religious votes. This mentality is so prevalent in Tennessee. It says "you can't be a Christian if you're a Democrat". It'd be ok if they voted on the fact that Israel is of strategic interest rather than believing that God ordained America to be the protector of Israel or whatever the hell they believe.

Edited September 21, 2011 by Aristocrates

[basimpson22]

Here's an idea, Paul and Johnson as running mates! What a team huh?

[Selene]

He's playing to the Baby Boomer's religious sensibilities. I don't see how Objectivist thinkers can support a party that survives on religious votes. This mentality is so prevalent in Tennessee. It says "you can't be a Christian if you're a Democrat".

Bobby:

I kinda hate to point this out, but you "support" Dr. Paul who is...a Christian and avidly pro-life.

Supporting a political candidate is a secular choice in America. Furthermore, since there are no avowed atheists, or agnostics are running, this point is moot.

Adam

Edited September 21, 2011 by Selene

[basimpson22]

He's playing to the Baby Boomer's religious sensibilities. I don't see how Objectivist thinkers can support a party that survives on religious votes. This mentality is so prevalent in Tennessee. It says "you can't be a Christian if you're a Democrat".

Bobby:

I kinda hate to point this out, but you "support" Dr. Paul who is...a Christian and avidly pro-life.

Supporting a political candidate is a secular choice in America. Furthermore, since there are no avowed atheists, or agnostics are running, this point is moot.

Adam

Supporting a candidate "should" be secular. I don't support Paul because he is Christian or pro-life. The problem I have is with people who see our role in the middle east as a war of religion or even, more broadly, as a war of ideology. Rick Perry uses this rhetoric. Ron Paul sees it(the war) and calls it for what it is. Perry still sees it as the war on terror. We all know these wars are a means to an end/of financial and strategic interest. A war on "terror" is sure to be perpetual. A war is made unquestionable simply by throwing it under this category.

The religious and the uneducated fuel the Republican Party.

Sure, an important component to Paul being nominated is appealing to the religious base. Where he differs from Perry is that he is genuine and doesn't use religion as a reason for military campaigns. Honestly, do you buy any of Perry's little religious demonstrations? Surely you see right through it all.

Disclaimer: I may have been wrong for bringing Perry back into the conversation but nonetheless it's something I wanted to address and I'm not holding you to any of the positions I opposed above.

Edited September 21, 2011 by Aristocrates

[Selene]

Bobby:

"The religious and the uneducated."

Do you believe that? What is your definition of "uneducated?" Those that do not believe your way? Or Southern fundamentalists with degrees from religious colleges?

Adam

[basimpson22]

Bobby, what is your definition of "uneducated"? A or B because it couldn't possibly be anything else you knucklehead.

Southern fundamentalist might have been a viable option if you had left out the clause "with degrees from religious colleges", even though, to me, the phrase has ambiguous implications.

To use one of your tactics, Adam, I'm going to copy and paste for you a definition of uneducated at the bottom of this post. But first lets approach the definition of uneducated from the angle of common sense. Un is used at the beginning of many words to indicate an absence of the word it precedes. For example undeclared would indicated something that is not declared. So from this assertion it would seem that uneducated would indicate someone who is not educated. Are you following me Adam? Let me know if you're having any difficulties.

un·ed·u·cat·ed

   [uhn-ej-oo-key-tid, -ed-yoo-]

adjective

not educated.

Holy Shit Adam! I believe I gave an even better definition than your trusted friend, The Dictionary.

Edited September 23, 2011 by Aristocrates

[Selene]

Bobby:

I will defer to your ability to recognize a "tactic."

Now that you avoided answering my apparently audacious "tactic" of asking you to define "uneducated" it in the context you employed the word in describing those individuals, or groups, that "fuel the Republican party," I will again ask you again...

Do you believe that the religious and uneducated "fuel" the Republican party? I would like to see your argument and some facts to support that assertion because I do not believe it is accurate.

Adam