bobbyw24
03-19-2008, 12:37 PM
http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/55545
The Ron Paul Postmortem Part I - Autopsy of a Revolution
Sean Scallon
Sean Scallon is a writer and freelance journalist living in Arkansaw, Wisconsin. His weblog, Conservative Heritage Times, can be accessed using the link to the Author's Website below.
March 17, 2008
In 1967, Lt. Col. Joseph P. Mitchell wrote a book on the generals who fought in the American Revolution. The main thesis of his book was that while the romantic view of the war had the British Army beaten by simple farmers with pitchforks fighting in the militia, the reality was far different. Mitchell argued that while the militiaīs efforts were important, it was really the efforts of the Continental Army, led by George Washington, which ultimately compelled the British grant its American colonies independence. Or at least grant it quicker than maybe would have happened otherwise. After all, it took Irish rebels over 900 years just to establish an Irish "free state" using guerrilla tactics. It only took the Continentals two years after the battle of Yorktown to have the Treaty of Paris signed which recognized the new American state.
But it was no accident why militiamen were more lauded after the war than the Continental Army and why guerrillas, insurgents and revolutionaries are more romanticized than professional soldiers. The Founding Fathersī distrust of standing armies allowed such myths to take hold and suited the young nation some to have its people believe that all it took to defend it was the musket hanging from the walls of your log cabin, rather than a military establishment paid for through taxation and supplied with men through conscription.
Mitchell proved to be right with his history and what goes for war also goes for presidential campaigns as well. It may have been romantic to think the grassroots supporters of the insurgent Republican candidate, Texas Congressman Ron Paul, could have won the GOP nomination through sign waving, "money bombs" and Ron Paul Blimps. Yet the reality proved to be quite different. Winning presidential campaigns, even those that are insurgent campaigns against the party establishment like Barry Goldwaterīs or George McGovernīs, need the organization, the training and the discipline like that of the Continental Army in order to achieve success. Now that Ron Paul is "winding down" his campaign, itīs a good time to look back upon the effort to see what went wrong, what went right, what could have been done better and what forces were standing in Ron Paulīs way that would have ultimately kept him from winning even if everything ran as smooth as ice sheet after a zamboni has gone over it. Itīs also a good time to look at the possible future what has developed into a movement for better or worse.
Part I
Ron Paul was overwhelmingly re-elected to his Texas Congressional District recently by a two to one margin over his GOP primary opponent Chris Peden. Despite the lies and smears the neoconservative sock puppet was mouthing, Peden could barely make a dent in Paulīs strong support in CD-14. It just goes to show that when Ron Paul is able to campaign amongst people that know him well, he does well.
Getting the rest of the country to know Paul as well as they do in Galveston and Victoria was the biggest challenge the campaign would face and unfortunately it did not come close to meeting it. Especially in the two states that offered Paul the chance to best use his retail politicking skills, Iowa and New Hampshire. Given the fact that Paul is not exactly a very telegenic figure nor a compelling orator, being more at home giving speeches at Von Miesian conferences or a near-empty House chamber, it was imperative that Paul get to know as many voters in the first two and most important states in the process when it comes to setting the tone for the whole campaign.
Unfortunately, Rep. Paul spent the least amount of time all of the GOP candidates in both Iowa and New Hampshire. For this we can only blame candidate himself for this damaging mistake. While much-lampooned-as-lazy Fred Thompson spent the New Yearīs weekend traveling through every frozen town in Iowa (and probably hating every minute of it), Paul spent his time by the fire in his Lake Jackson home reading policy manuals, or at least thatīs what his campaign said he was doing. Well, Thompsonīs last minute bus tour worked. He won 13 percent of the vote ahead of Paulīs 10 percent and kept his campaign going long enough to affect the outcome. Had Thompson finished behind Paul, there was a very good chance he would washed his hands of his whole wasted campaign there and then. Instead, the result was well enough to allow him to campaign with a straight face in South Carolina and help John McCain win that crucial state in Republican politics and subsequently win the nomination.
Why did Paul spend so little time in such crucial states? Paul made it clear that despite campaigning for the highest office in the land, he was not going to stop doing his day job. He refused to miss any Congressional votes or committee meetings while campaigning. That meant only campaigning on weekends and not only that, campaigning in other early states as well like Nevada, South Carolina, Michigan and Wyoming which spread him too thin. Truly this was a noble gesture, considering how much time away from work candidates like Senīs. Barak Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Chris Dodd and John McCain spent away from their day jobs and shows how serious Paul is about representing his constituents. Itīs also utterly inane. No member of Congress who runs for president gets punished by the voters if they spend a little more time running for president than voting on a resolution establishing National Artichoke Day. For some odd reason Paul thought he had to do this (maybe to cast the dissenting vote). Not only did this gesture put him at a disadvantage to those members of Congress willing to shirk their duties as they tried to climb the Washington food chain, Paul was even more disadvantaged in a GOP field top heavy with candidates like Mitt Romney, Rudy Guliani, Fred Thompson and Mike Huckabee who had no day jobs and could campaign in Iowa and New Hampshire as long and as often as they liked. Once again, the voters of Iowa and New Hampshire have shown they will not vote for phantoms. You either show up and speak to the voters and listen to them or you will not win.
By not spending as much time as he could in Iowa and New Hampshire, the only impressions of Ron Paul voters had of him were either in the televised debates (assuming they tuned in) where he got little time to speak at all; in the news, where he was hardly featured at all (Except on internet, where one doesnīt find a lot of Republicans over 45 years old who made up the majority of GOP primary voters); or on talk radio where the impression was overwhelmingly negative. Perhaps they got their impression of Dr. Paul from his supporters. Sometimes these supporters made good impressions. Other times they did not and unfortunately this did not balance itself out. Heckling other candidates, reportedly bothering people in line to see Santa Clause in New Hampshire, having neo-Nazis and 9-11 Truthers give money or take pictures with Dr. Paul, shouting obscenities at Bill Clinton, giving the big (and deserved) FU to Frank Luntz or chasing Sean Hannity across a parking lot while he did his own version cutting and running, didnīt exactly endear Rep. Paul to the voters.
Oh, but it must have been fun though. You canīt deny that.
Nevertheless, Ron Paulīs lack of presence in Iowa and New Hampshire could not counteract the bad impressions or the lack of any impression at all among voters. A good deal of them had no idea or very little idea of who Ron Paul was or what he stood for.
Perhaps a good campaign organization could have given the voters all the information they could possibly want about Rep. Paul. Unfortunately this was not to be either. The Ron Paul for President Campaign 2008 did not start out with a strategic plan to win the GOP nomination or with an operation already in place ready to go. Instead it started out as a lark. When Rep. Paul states that heīs amazed by how much support and money came into the campaign heīs being completely sincere because even he didnīt think his campaign was going to amount to much. Of course the main campaign grew as the money and support came in, but none of its top officials had any experience in running a national presidential campaign. Lew Moore was a staffer in a Congressional office. Kent Snyder and Joe Seeheusen were involved in Libertarian politics not Republican. Jonathan Bydlak and Jesse Benton might as well have been in high school for all the experience in national politics they had. This is not to denigrate their efforts, which Iīm sure were mighty and appreciated, towards the Ron Paul Revolution or to constantly second guess them, which is too easy to do in retrospect. But itīs safe to say they simply could not provide any kind of advantage to the campaign. Indeed, the national campaign had all it could do just to catch up with the Meetup.com groups, the Facebook.com groups and others who provided most of the muscle for the campaign. They were the ones who got it off the ground in many states before the nation campaign could hire local staffers and open campaign offices. They were the oneī who attended the straw polls and staffed state fair booths. They were the oneīs who sent out letters and Ron Paul DVDs to voter. They were the oneīs who did things like the Ron Paul Blimp, Ron Paul Radio, the You Tube videos and the money bombs.
The current campaign finance laws were intended to prevent corporations and other well-funded independent groups from coordinating with the official campaign. Yet, such laws only wind up hurting grassroots and citizens organizations more than they do the well-heeled (Thanks for nothing John McCain). The "official" Paul campaign was so paranoid about violating these laws that they barely communicated with the grassroots groups and inevitably tensions arose. Stories of conflicts between volunteers and paid staffers can be found on Ron Paul Forums (www.ronpaulforums.com) or on the Meetup.com web forums in states and places like Michigan, Illinois, Washington D.C., South Carolina, Indiana, New Hampshire and Alaska which hurt morale, wasted time and nearly derailed ballot access efforts. This is nothing new in presidential campaigns. Such conflicts have plagued other political insurgencies like the Goldwater, McGovern, Reagan and Perot campaigns. But this time, the lack of communication between both sides now had the force of law. Thus the "money bomb" fundraisers may have generated a lot of publicity, but they caused chaos in campaign headquarters because the campaign could not plan their budgets accordingly. They had no idea how much money was coming in and often times the money came too late to buy needed television time. Not only that, the campaign felt it could not take advantage of the talents of You Tube.com programmers, video makers and other organizers from across the country. Indeed, one could find commercials on You Tube far better made and more compelling than what the official campaign bought and paid for in advertising (which turned out to be a lot with not much to show for it). And the campaign and the grassroots waited until it was too late to organize individual precincts and conduct canvassing operations that would have made more of a difference in the late fall/early winter than waving signs would have by then.
The lack of a smooth running campaign filters its way to the political media and leaves more bad impressions to the voters. It unfortunate to think how much one has to toady to the fourth estate to get good coverage but thatīs the way it is and when you donīt return their phone calls, which was a common complaint many journalists had with the Paul campaign, they can justify their lack of coverage. Even a big Paul supporter like Phil Mulshine, a columnist for the Newark, N.J. Star-Ledger, chided the campaign for not letting enough journalistic outlets know about Paulīs big Philadelphia rally in November of 2007. And without any kind big name politicos on the team who knew the campaign press corps well, journalists had no idea how things were going inside the campaign nor did they have anyone to take their complaints or concerns to. No doubt this led to a lot of slights (in many cases deliberate) in the press towards the campaign that Paul supporters remain bitter about. Not to mention a snarky and condescending attitude from many reporters. It was clear they had no respect for Paulīs campaign, and their attitudes werenīt helped when their email boxes were jammed with comments from angry Paulites. Unfortunately the campaign did not give them much of a reason to respect it.
There were other problems as well. Anecdotally one hears about a computer crash on the day of the Iowa caucuses that wiped out, without back-up, canvassing lists that over 300 student volunteers were going to use to get supporters out to the caucuses only to be waiting around all day until the problem could be repaired. One hears about how the lack of coordination between independent groups and the official campaign in New Hampshire led to duplicate phone banking efforts which more than likely drove New Hampshireites already inundated with phone calls nuts and lost votes accordingly. Paul could have won the Washington state caucuses if the official campaign in the state had not told some its supporters to list themselves as uncommitted at the caucus sites. One also hears about campaign offices stocked with few supplies, working phones or even campaign materials like signs and pamphlets due to backlogs from the printing company in Texas. Bill Hillsman, the Minnesotan who made the quirky but successful campaign ad commercials for insurgent candidates like Russ Feingold, Paul Wellstone and Jesse Ventura, reportedly contacted the national campaign about working for it yet never got his phone calls returned. And an anti-immigration ad that was supposed to be specifically tailored for Tom Tancredo supporters in Iowa, also ran in New Hampshire and may have turned off much needed independents in the Granite State.
All of these things in combination hurt the Paul campaign. But I will argue in Part II of the Ron Paul Postmortem, that even if everything went like clockwork Paul still would have fallen short of the Republican nomination due to forces it could not control or could have any affect on. Itīs these forces the Ron Paul Revolution will have to deal within in the future if itīs to have any lasting impact.
Sean Scallon is a freelance writer and newspaper reporter who lives in Arkansaw, Wisconsin. His work has appeared in Chronicles: A magazine of American Culture. His first-ever book: Beating the Powers that Be: Independent Political Movements and Parties of the Upper Midwest and their Relevance in Third-party Politics of Today is now out on sale from Publish America. Go to the their website at www.publishamerica.com to order a copy.
The Ron Paul Postmortem Part I - Autopsy of a Revolution
Sean Scallon
Sean Scallon is a writer and freelance journalist living in Arkansaw, Wisconsin. His weblog, Conservative Heritage Times, can be accessed using the link to the Author's Website below.
March 17, 2008
In 1967, Lt. Col. Joseph P. Mitchell wrote a book on the generals who fought in the American Revolution. The main thesis of his book was that while the romantic view of the war had the British Army beaten by simple farmers with pitchforks fighting in the militia, the reality was far different. Mitchell argued that while the militiaīs efforts were important, it was really the efforts of the Continental Army, led by George Washington, which ultimately compelled the British grant its American colonies independence. Or at least grant it quicker than maybe would have happened otherwise. After all, it took Irish rebels over 900 years just to establish an Irish "free state" using guerrilla tactics. It only took the Continentals two years after the battle of Yorktown to have the Treaty of Paris signed which recognized the new American state.
But it was no accident why militiamen were more lauded after the war than the Continental Army and why guerrillas, insurgents and revolutionaries are more romanticized than professional soldiers. The Founding Fathersī distrust of standing armies allowed such myths to take hold and suited the young nation some to have its people believe that all it took to defend it was the musket hanging from the walls of your log cabin, rather than a military establishment paid for through taxation and supplied with men through conscription.
Mitchell proved to be right with his history and what goes for war also goes for presidential campaigns as well. It may have been romantic to think the grassroots supporters of the insurgent Republican candidate, Texas Congressman Ron Paul, could have won the GOP nomination through sign waving, "money bombs" and Ron Paul Blimps. Yet the reality proved to be quite different. Winning presidential campaigns, even those that are insurgent campaigns against the party establishment like Barry Goldwaterīs or George McGovernīs, need the organization, the training and the discipline like that of the Continental Army in order to achieve success. Now that Ron Paul is "winding down" his campaign, itīs a good time to look back upon the effort to see what went wrong, what went right, what could have been done better and what forces were standing in Ron Paulīs way that would have ultimately kept him from winning even if everything ran as smooth as ice sheet after a zamboni has gone over it. Itīs also a good time to look at the possible future what has developed into a movement for better or worse.
Part I
Ron Paul was overwhelmingly re-elected to his Texas Congressional District recently by a two to one margin over his GOP primary opponent Chris Peden. Despite the lies and smears the neoconservative sock puppet was mouthing, Peden could barely make a dent in Paulīs strong support in CD-14. It just goes to show that when Ron Paul is able to campaign amongst people that know him well, he does well.
Getting the rest of the country to know Paul as well as they do in Galveston and Victoria was the biggest challenge the campaign would face and unfortunately it did not come close to meeting it. Especially in the two states that offered Paul the chance to best use his retail politicking skills, Iowa and New Hampshire. Given the fact that Paul is not exactly a very telegenic figure nor a compelling orator, being more at home giving speeches at Von Miesian conferences or a near-empty House chamber, it was imperative that Paul get to know as many voters in the first two and most important states in the process when it comes to setting the tone for the whole campaign.
Unfortunately, Rep. Paul spent the least amount of time all of the GOP candidates in both Iowa and New Hampshire. For this we can only blame candidate himself for this damaging mistake. While much-lampooned-as-lazy Fred Thompson spent the New Yearīs weekend traveling through every frozen town in Iowa (and probably hating every minute of it), Paul spent his time by the fire in his Lake Jackson home reading policy manuals, or at least thatīs what his campaign said he was doing. Well, Thompsonīs last minute bus tour worked. He won 13 percent of the vote ahead of Paulīs 10 percent and kept his campaign going long enough to affect the outcome. Had Thompson finished behind Paul, there was a very good chance he would washed his hands of his whole wasted campaign there and then. Instead, the result was well enough to allow him to campaign with a straight face in South Carolina and help John McCain win that crucial state in Republican politics and subsequently win the nomination.
Why did Paul spend so little time in such crucial states? Paul made it clear that despite campaigning for the highest office in the land, he was not going to stop doing his day job. He refused to miss any Congressional votes or committee meetings while campaigning. That meant only campaigning on weekends and not only that, campaigning in other early states as well like Nevada, South Carolina, Michigan and Wyoming which spread him too thin. Truly this was a noble gesture, considering how much time away from work candidates like Senīs. Barak Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Chris Dodd and John McCain spent away from their day jobs and shows how serious Paul is about representing his constituents. Itīs also utterly inane. No member of Congress who runs for president gets punished by the voters if they spend a little more time running for president than voting on a resolution establishing National Artichoke Day. For some odd reason Paul thought he had to do this (maybe to cast the dissenting vote). Not only did this gesture put him at a disadvantage to those members of Congress willing to shirk their duties as they tried to climb the Washington food chain, Paul was even more disadvantaged in a GOP field top heavy with candidates like Mitt Romney, Rudy Guliani, Fred Thompson and Mike Huckabee who had no day jobs and could campaign in Iowa and New Hampshire as long and as often as they liked. Once again, the voters of Iowa and New Hampshire have shown they will not vote for phantoms. You either show up and speak to the voters and listen to them or you will not win.
By not spending as much time as he could in Iowa and New Hampshire, the only impressions of Ron Paul voters had of him were either in the televised debates (assuming they tuned in) where he got little time to speak at all; in the news, where he was hardly featured at all (Except on internet, where one doesnīt find a lot of Republicans over 45 years old who made up the majority of GOP primary voters); or on talk radio where the impression was overwhelmingly negative. Perhaps they got their impression of Dr. Paul from his supporters. Sometimes these supporters made good impressions. Other times they did not and unfortunately this did not balance itself out. Heckling other candidates, reportedly bothering people in line to see Santa Clause in New Hampshire, having neo-Nazis and 9-11 Truthers give money or take pictures with Dr. Paul, shouting obscenities at Bill Clinton, giving the big (and deserved) FU to Frank Luntz or chasing Sean Hannity across a parking lot while he did his own version cutting and running, didnīt exactly endear Rep. Paul to the voters.
Oh, but it must have been fun though. You canīt deny that.
Nevertheless, Ron Paulīs lack of presence in Iowa and New Hampshire could not counteract the bad impressions or the lack of any impression at all among voters. A good deal of them had no idea or very little idea of who Ron Paul was or what he stood for.
Perhaps a good campaign organization could have given the voters all the information they could possibly want about Rep. Paul. Unfortunately this was not to be either. The Ron Paul for President Campaign 2008 did not start out with a strategic plan to win the GOP nomination or with an operation already in place ready to go. Instead it started out as a lark. When Rep. Paul states that heīs amazed by how much support and money came into the campaign heīs being completely sincere because even he didnīt think his campaign was going to amount to much. Of course the main campaign grew as the money and support came in, but none of its top officials had any experience in running a national presidential campaign. Lew Moore was a staffer in a Congressional office. Kent Snyder and Joe Seeheusen were involved in Libertarian politics not Republican. Jonathan Bydlak and Jesse Benton might as well have been in high school for all the experience in national politics they had. This is not to denigrate their efforts, which Iīm sure were mighty and appreciated, towards the Ron Paul Revolution or to constantly second guess them, which is too easy to do in retrospect. But itīs safe to say they simply could not provide any kind of advantage to the campaign. Indeed, the national campaign had all it could do just to catch up with the Meetup.com groups, the Facebook.com groups and others who provided most of the muscle for the campaign. They were the ones who got it off the ground in many states before the nation campaign could hire local staffers and open campaign offices. They were the oneī who attended the straw polls and staffed state fair booths. They were the oneīs who sent out letters and Ron Paul DVDs to voter. They were the oneīs who did things like the Ron Paul Blimp, Ron Paul Radio, the You Tube videos and the money bombs.
The current campaign finance laws were intended to prevent corporations and other well-funded independent groups from coordinating with the official campaign. Yet, such laws only wind up hurting grassroots and citizens organizations more than they do the well-heeled (Thanks for nothing John McCain). The "official" Paul campaign was so paranoid about violating these laws that they barely communicated with the grassroots groups and inevitably tensions arose. Stories of conflicts between volunteers and paid staffers can be found on Ron Paul Forums (www.ronpaulforums.com) or on the Meetup.com web forums in states and places like Michigan, Illinois, Washington D.C., South Carolina, Indiana, New Hampshire and Alaska which hurt morale, wasted time and nearly derailed ballot access efforts. This is nothing new in presidential campaigns. Such conflicts have plagued other political insurgencies like the Goldwater, McGovern, Reagan and Perot campaigns. But this time, the lack of communication between both sides now had the force of law. Thus the "money bomb" fundraisers may have generated a lot of publicity, but they caused chaos in campaign headquarters because the campaign could not plan their budgets accordingly. They had no idea how much money was coming in and often times the money came too late to buy needed television time. Not only that, the campaign felt it could not take advantage of the talents of You Tube.com programmers, video makers and other organizers from across the country. Indeed, one could find commercials on You Tube far better made and more compelling than what the official campaign bought and paid for in advertising (which turned out to be a lot with not much to show for it). And the campaign and the grassroots waited until it was too late to organize individual precincts and conduct canvassing operations that would have made more of a difference in the late fall/early winter than waving signs would have by then.
The lack of a smooth running campaign filters its way to the political media and leaves more bad impressions to the voters. It unfortunate to think how much one has to toady to the fourth estate to get good coverage but thatīs the way it is and when you donīt return their phone calls, which was a common complaint many journalists had with the Paul campaign, they can justify their lack of coverage. Even a big Paul supporter like Phil Mulshine, a columnist for the Newark, N.J. Star-Ledger, chided the campaign for not letting enough journalistic outlets know about Paulīs big Philadelphia rally in November of 2007. And without any kind big name politicos on the team who knew the campaign press corps well, journalists had no idea how things were going inside the campaign nor did they have anyone to take their complaints or concerns to. No doubt this led to a lot of slights (in many cases deliberate) in the press towards the campaign that Paul supporters remain bitter about. Not to mention a snarky and condescending attitude from many reporters. It was clear they had no respect for Paulīs campaign, and their attitudes werenīt helped when their email boxes were jammed with comments from angry Paulites. Unfortunately the campaign did not give them much of a reason to respect it.
There were other problems as well. Anecdotally one hears about a computer crash on the day of the Iowa caucuses that wiped out, without back-up, canvassing lists that over 300 student volunteers were going to use to get supporters out to the caucuses only to be waiting around all day until the problem could be repaired. One hears about how the lack of coordination between independent groups and the official campaign in New Hampshire led to duplicate phone banking efforts which more than likely drove New Hampshireites already inundated with phone calls nuts and lost votes accordingly. Paul could have won the Washington state caucuses if the official campaign in the state had not told some its supporters to list themselves as uncommitted at the caucus sites. One also hears about campaign offices stocked with few supplies, working phones or even campaign materials like signs and pamphlets due to backlogs from the printing company in Texas. Bill Hillsman, the Minnesotan who made the quirky but successful campaign ad commercials for insurgent candidates like Russ Feingold, Paul Wellstone and Jesse Ventura, reportedly contacted the national campaign about working for it yet never got his phone calls returned. And an anti-immigration ad that was supposed to be specifically tailored for Tom Tancredo supporters in Iowa, also ran in New Hampshire and may have turned off much needed independents in the Granite State.
All of these things in combination hurt the Paul campaign. But I will argue in Part II of the Ron Paul Postmortem, that even if everything went like clockwork Paul still would have fallen short of the Republican nomination due to forces it could not control or could have any affect on. Itīs these forces the Ron Paul Revolution will have to deal within in the future if itīs to have any lasting impact.
Sean Scallon is a freelance writer and newspaper reporter who lives in Arkansaw, Wisconsin. His work has appeared in Chronicles: A magazine of American Culture. His first-ever book: Beating the Powers that Be: Independent Political Movements and Parties of the Upper Midwest and their Relevance in Third-party Politics of Today is now out on sale from Publish America. Go to the their website at www.publishamerica.com to order a copy.