The Trib: Ron Paul revolution: It has just begun to fight
I have a feeling the Illinois DFA types didn't anticipate this from today's Trib,
Costas Panagopoulos, director of the Center for Electoral Politics and Democracy at Fordham University, said the Paul phenomenon is the technological descendant of Howard Dean’s blogger base in 2004. That “revolution” also created excitement, but Dean quickly faded once the voting started.He keeps gaining traction and I bet he'll run as a third party candidate disrupting local Democrats more than the GOP.
Paul insists his fate will be different than Dean’s, and not just because online campaigning is more important today––YouTube, Facebook and MySpace are all sponsoring debates—but because he’s tapped into a deep public sentiment. How else could he raise so much money, he asks?
“The disgust with government and the spread of our message, plus the willingness of these individuals on the Internet to organize, is going to make a difference,” he said in interview.
10 comments:
Bill,
I don't know about other states, but in IL, you can't run as a 3rd party if you ran 1st as a Dem or Rep.
Others reading this may have more details, but I think it can't be done.
If someone could post the actual legislative/Const. language, it would be appreciated.
Rich assured me that's the law in a post over on Capital Fax on Pera and Lipinski.
I just get a kick out of leftists I know from my generation who talk of the surge of young voters coming and it just seems to me RP is going to get them.
So if RP doesn't tank and it's just a blip, but instead becomes a movement I think there is potential for Ronulean type candidates to fill gaps...
So imagine if Pera comes weakens Lipinski but doesn't knock him out.
The GOP isn't credible oppositoin.
I can see a Ron Paul ally filling a hole in a district like Lipinski's and giving him a real run.
Ron Paul not my kind of guy, but I think he could really turn a lot of things upside down.
Democrats have generated a lot of anger.
It was unwise. It may turn on them.
In RP, they have a candidate who sure seized on the new technology.
Note how stale the Illinois DFA blog was....
It's unclear how many states have sore loser laws that apply to the position of U.S. President: http://www.ballot-access.org/2007/01/12/sore-loser-laws-dont-generally-apply-to-presidential-candidates/
But I think Paul will not run unless some very wealthy financier turns up willing to work with his campaign (as Oprah has done for Obama). The bar for independent candidates is just so much higher than for the two major parties, running as an independent could kill all the momentum of developing a Ron Paul "movement" to follow up on whatever his showing is in the primaries.
Barack Hussein Obama will fall as Howard Dean did.
Ron Paul is not even in the double digits. It is hard to fall from single digits.
Shalom,
---Leland Milton Goldblatt, Ph.D.
Distinguished Professor
This thread reminds me of how badly we need a party of integrity to subplant the Republicans.
It is also frightening that what happened in 1856 (birth of the pro-commerce, anti-slavery Republican party) cannot occur in todays regulated environment. Campaign Finance laws make it virtually impossible.
We need a party that predicates it's existence upon returning power to the citizenry. Neither party does that.
The Rs talk freedom while building a security apparatus and a corporate protection network, while the Ds are simply un-reconstructed socialists looking to create a state run by an administrative class of public pension pigs.
Illinois is a microcosm of where this nation is headed.
Ron Paul can't hurt the GOP because the Illinois GOP has already slit its own throat.
I don't think he'll hurt the GOP. I think he's pulling a lot of these new voters progressives have said for years were always coming to them.
That's why, if RP build on it, he has the potential to turn a lot of local things upside down.
So, if my math is correct, we can now add the "Ron Paul Revolution" to a green candidate in IL, winning back the Congress and, what, the Iraq surge to the list of things which are going to be the downfall of the Democratic Party.
Baar, perhaps you're a mad genius. Maybe you're lulling Democrats into complacency by repeatedly offering absurd Chicken Little-like doom prophesies so that when a real threat emerges, they'll just sit back and let it happen.
Mwuaaa haa haaa.
Read Jonathan E. Meyer in Roll Call on Surge’s Success Is Good News for the Democrats
Over the past couple of years, Democrats have made huge political gains by criticizing President Bush for both his decision to invade Iraq and his conduct of the occupation. These critiques are probably the single greatest factor in Democrats retaking the House and the Senate in 2006 and sending Bush’s approval ratings spiraling to historic lows.
But that critique has gone about as far as it can go. A significant majority of voters today agree with Democrats that the decision to invade Iraq was wrong, and that the conduct of the occupation and attempts to rebuild the country have been failures. A large percentage of Americans believe the Bush administration misled the country on Iraq in the first place. Those opinions are solidly held and highly unlikely to change. That debate is over...
This presents a unique opportunity for Democrats. Having used the Iraq War to win over millions of Americans who were previously disposed to support the other side, they can now build on that momentum by turning to other issues to seal the deal with voters who remain on the fence.
I lot of Democrats if not most really believe that, and I think it will come back to haunt them next year when having used the war... is thrown back at them.
Whatever one thinks of the decisions to invade and to say and they way it was all managed, that Democrats used a war like this is going to ultimately destroy the party.
Since LBJ there's been Carter and Clinton... I don't think they'll win the presidency in 2008 because Americans won't tolerate a party that used the war, and I think then the crack up begins and the left turns to greens and libertarians and the crack up begins.
Obama not going to save them. Clinton hardly.... it will be a mess... so mark the mad genusis words here.
PS and note after having used the war, now that the surge is success, Meyer suggest changing the subject.
That's not the voice of a party with much future.
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