Ron Paul Republican Destroys Neo-Con Rival

[Phantom]

Ron Paul Republican Destroys Neo-Con Rival

by Colin
May 7, 2008

Yesterday we talked a little about B.J. Lawson (http://www.lawsonforcongress.com/), a 33-year old with no political experience, running for congress in North Carolina. Last night, Lawson destroyed his opponent with over 70% of the vote. The key is, that Lawson did it primarily on his own merits, without the help of many Ron Paul supporters.

Ron Paul pulled down a little over 7% with 37,392 votes statewide. Lawson received 70% of the vote with a total of 24,410 in just his district. Take Durham County (http://www.durhamcountync.gov/departments/elec/Documents/Binder1.pdf), for example, where Ron Paul received 690 votes but Lawson pulled in 4,501. That means a lot of John McCain, Mike Huckabee or “None of the Above” supporters went with Lawson over the toe-the-line Republican challenger Augustus Cho.

This results in an interesting analysis: while republicans do not like Ron Paul, they do like his message. Obviously, Lawson (as we mentioned yesterday) has a slightly less-aggressive tone than Paul, but his philosophical arguments remain almost identical. Cho (who is also a presbyterian minister) was a bastion of neo-con, neo-fascist philosophy - he sounded exactly like a mix between Mike Huckabee and Fred Thompson (debate: Part 1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXAa_Nf5ggo), 2 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tp5FmrStj5A), 3 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcBLUatNADk), 4 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbRyC9WAJOw), 5 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AJtRzROGvE)) - two of the candidates beloved by more traditional republicans.

The next big test of course, is what a more conservative, constitutional and philosophically consistent republican will do against a democrat - especially an incumbent like David Price (http://www.davidprice.campaignoffice.com/). Cho declared of his opponent:

It’s going to take a true republican to beat David Price. Not a libertarian closet-republican… whose essentially going to divide up our party. If you support Ron Paul, then you know what? You need to support my young primary opponent because he’s a Ron Paul libertarian: 100%. If you go to his webpage, everything he stands for is right there. I call him Ron Paul Jr., because that’s what he is.

He’s not going to beat David Price. When David price looks at this guy, he’s going to look at him and spit him out.

While it is clear that Lawson has an uphill battle, it is just as clear that Ron Paul’s message can win within the republican party. In fact, Ron Paul’s message may be the only thing that can save the GOP in congress - which is looking like it’s going to get obliterated (http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0508/10138.html) this November.

Link (http://zealfortruth.org/2008/05/ron-paul-republican-destroys-neo-con-rival/)

For more articles on Ron Paul and the revolution, please visit the first link below.

[Aratus]

au~h2o! shades of 1960 now hinting at 1964...!
interesting sweep by lawson! au~h2o ~~~YES!

[Conza88]

Lawson won by a landslide, cus he opponent was especially facistly retarded. He did it for himself, out in the open & not with a media slick campaign..

Also, the MSM nation wide, hadn't targeted him for "kook" "fringe" "can't win" ANYTHING LIKE THAT..

What you are looking at, is RON PAUL'S POTENTIAL, had the media not fked shit up.

Regardless, delegates are there for the taking. ;)

[Knightskye]

People are fine with Ron Paul as a Congressman, they just don't want him as President. It's not that they don't like him - which is what the article seemed to imply.

[Gadsden Flag]

^^^ That's true.

Back in February, I talked to someone who was voting for Romney, but said he thought that Ron Paul would be a superb speaker of the house and said that if there was a candidate like RP running for congress in Missouri, he would vote for the guy.


This was a very in-tune-to-politics guy, and also very conservative. I don't know him that well but I am guessing he is a pro war person who acknowledges RP's conservative credentials on economics and government waste, etc.

[nate895]

People are fine with Ron Paul as a Congressman, they just don't want him as President. It's not that they don't like him - which is what the article seemed to imply.

Only 40% of New Hampshire GOP voters said they liked him. That is really low compared to the other candidates. It is the fact that he shocked them at the May debate with his stance on foreign policy.

[Knightskye]

Only 40% of New Hampshire GOP voters said they liked him.

Was it a poll about presidential candidates? If it was, that proves me right.

[JMann]

Only 40% of New Hampshire GOP voters said they liked him. That is really low compared to the other candidates. It is the fact that he shocked them at the May debate with his stance on foreign policy.

Paul's position rub a lot of Republicans wrong. The partisans in the party get very defensive about the Iraq war and don't care to hear opposing views. I don't blame then for that because I'm pretty sure most of the honestly are afraid of 'Islamo-fascist' and the perceived threat the terrorist pose to their children and grandchildren.

I can see how that approval number from NH was so low because of the heavy negative attacks Dr. Paul received during the primary at that time and Paul did little during the debates to rebuff the attacks.

In the general election Lawson will need to build a coalition of anti-war, pro-liberty voters which I think there are a lot in the 4th district.

[crazyfacedjenkins]

Ron Paul Republican Destroys Neo-Con Rival

by Colin
May 7, 2008

Yesterday we talked a little about B.J. Lawson (http://www.lawsonforcongress.com/), a 33-year old with no political experience, running for congress in North Carolina. Last night, Lawson destroyed his opponent with over 70% of the vote. The key is, that Lawson did it primarily on his own merits, without the help of many Ron Paul supporters.

Ron Paul pulled down a little over 7% with 37,392 votes statewide. Lawson received 70% of the vote with a total of 24,410 in just his district. Take Durham County (http://www.durhamcountync.gov/departments/elec/Documents/Binder1.pdf), for example, where Ron Paul received 690 votes but Lawson pulled in 4,501. That means a lot of John McCain, Mike Huckabee or “None of the Above” supporters went with Lawson over the toe-the-line Republican challenger Augustus Cho.

This results in an interesting analysis: while republicans do not like Ron Paul, they do like his message. Obviously, Lawson (as we mentioned yesterday) has a slightly less-aggressive tone than Paul, but his philosophical arguments remain almost identical. Cho (who is also a presbyterian minister) was a bastion of neo-con, neo-fascist philosophy - he sounded exactly like a mix between Mike Huckabee and Fred Thompson (debate: Part 1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXAa_Nf5ggo), 2 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tp5FmrStj5A), 3 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcBLUatNADk), 4 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbRyC9WAJOw), 5 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AJtRzROGvE)) - two of the candidates beloved by more traditional republicans.

The next big test of course, is what a more conservative, constitutional and philosophically consistent republican will do against a democrat - especially an incumbent like David Price (http://www.davidprice.campaignoffice.com/). Cho declared of his opponent:

It’s going to take a true republican to beat David Price. Not a libertarian closet-republican… whose essentially going to divide up our party. If you support Ron Paul, then you know what? You need to support my young primary opponent because he’s a Ron Paul libertarian: 100%. If you go to his webpage, everything he stands for is right there. I call him Ron Paul Jr., because that’s what he is.

He’s not going to beat David Price. When David price looks at this guy, he’s going to look at him and spit him out.

While it is clear that Lawson has an uphill battle, it is just as clear that Ron Paul’s message can win within the republican party. In fact, Ron Paul’s message may be the only thing that can save the GOP in congress - which is looking like it’s going to get obliterated (http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0508/10138.html) this November.

Link (http://zealfortruth.org/2008/05/ron-paul-republican-destroys-neo-con-rival/)

For more articles on Ron Paul and the revolution, please visit the first link below.

I can see how Lawson won just looking at how this debate went: http://blog.lawsonforcongress.com/2008/02/15/the-great-debate/

[nate895]

Was it a poll about presidential candidates? If it was, that proves me right.

http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/primaries/results/epolls/index.html#NHREP

If it doesn't go directly to page 3, just skip to there and he's below John McCain's numbers.

[brandon]

I don't want to diminish Lawsons victory, but I wouldn't read to much into it. I have a feeling the reason he won by such a wide margin was simply because he has a good name. Most people voting know little to nothing about congressional candidates in the primary. Based on name alone, it is pretty easy to understand why a republican in NC would chose "William Lawson" over "Augustus Cho"

Of course Lawson is a much better candidate in ever facet (not just platform, but public speaking and personality) , but I doubt many of the voters really knew this.

[MMolloy]

Paul's position rub a lot of Republicans wrong. The partisans in the party get very defensive about the Iraq war and don't care to hear opposing views. I don't blame then for that because I'm pretty sure most of the honestly are afraid of 'Islamo-fascist' and the perceived threat the terrorist pose to their children and grandchildren.

I can see how that approval number from NH was so low because of the heavy negative attacks Dr. Paul received during the primary at that time and Paul did little during the debates to rebuff the attacks.

In the general election Lawson will need to build a coalition of anti-war, pro-liberty voters which I think there are a lot in the 4th district.

I think there is one key element that many people forget to take into account when analyzing how people think about issues or candidates:

Once a person votes for a particular candidate, they have invested part (scale is very variable) of their EGO in that candidate. They have a tendency to defend the candidates position even if they would not have defended the same position before voting for that individual.

When things are presented in an even more polarized fashion (which the media excells at) such as the last presidential race, this tendency to IDENTIFY with 'their' candidate is reinforced or grows stronger.

I think it is very conceivable that many people might oppose the war in Iraq but if asked "Did you support the president's decision to attack Iraq?" they would say yes.

This same ego investment occurs with parties as well.

Just some food for thought when considering what verbage to use in persuading someone to OUR cause. :cool:

[vegetarianrpfan]

I don't want to diminish Lawsons victory, but I wouldn't read to much into it. I have a feeling the reason he won by such a wide margin was simply because he has a good name. Most people voting know little to nothing about congressional candidates in the primary. Based on name alone, it is pretty easy to understand why a republican in NC would chose "William Lawson" over "Augustus Cho"

Of course Lawson is a much better candidate in ever facet (not just platform, but public speaking and personality) , but I doubt many of the voters really knew this.

I wholeheartedly disagree, as a District 4 resident myself. Augustus Cho was the establishment candidate, the former county chair and well-known to almost all the area's GOP faithful, a columnist in the Chapel Hill News and given lots of local press coverage, sometimes even more than BJ. He often told the story of how he came from Korea as a legal immigrant and contrasted that with illegal immigrants-- a hit with the party crowd as you can imagine.

I don't think that BJ won due to racism on the part of the GOP voters-- he won through a hard-fought campaign in which he made an effort to talk with people and ask for their vote, he had volunteers out canvassing all the time, TV and radio ads that were highly effective, a great website and blog where he actually talks to people, and he is photogenic, classy and very articulate with his ideas. All of the above worked to triumph over the fact that he might hold views that the average District 4 Republican disagrees with, such as ending the war.

I don't think that this is how Ron Paul's campaign for president would have gone if the media hadn't been stacked against him. First of all, the media is still stacked against BJ and would often feature Cho just attacking BJ and giving him the last word. Secondly, BJ has run a fantastic campaign so far, with many dedicated and hard-working volunteers. Ron Paul did not run a fantastic presidential campaign, and frankly some of his staff was absolutely awful and ruined any chance he might have had. Press conferences and events that weren't publicized, surveys and requests from media and groups that weren't answered, emails that were ignored while staff watched Youtube videos all day-- that is no way to run a campaign.

This is perhaps how RP's presidential campaign would have gone if he had talented staff members at the top who were better organized.

Another fact that may be relevant is that BJ is more articulate than Dr. Paul. I love RP and think he's a great speaker, especially with how he uses no notes and speaks so eloquently just about his ideas, but in debates he would just have so much to say and so little to say it in that he would get ahead of himself and start a new sentence before he was done with the first, which doesn't come off well to people who don't know the ideas. BJ is very articulate and gets the same ideas across in a succinct and impressive way. He will be excellent in a debate with Price if/when that happens.

It's a fact that people like handsome, articulate speakers and that works to BJ's advantage.

[JMann]

Will any of us forget the Paul's campaign dis'ing Neal Boortz on super-Tuesday. I remember listening to the show and Boortz plugging Paul's segment and then out of know where Boortz announced that Paul wouldn't be appearing and he proceeded to spend the next two hours ragging Paul.

Awful politics that was.

[imblest]

Ron Paul Republican Destroys Neo-Con Rival

by Colin
May 7, 2008

Yesterday we talked a little about B.J. Lawson (http://www.lawsonforcongress.com/), a 33-year old with no political experience, running for congress in North Carolina. Last night, Lawson destroyed his opponent with over 70% of the vote. The key is, that Lawson did it primarily on his own merits, without the help of many Ron Paul supporters.


I live in Wake County, NC, of which a fair portion is the 4th district, although I am not in that district myself. I agree that many of the people who voted for BJ are not Ron Paul supporters. However, I know of many RP supporters who did help with BJ's campaign. I have a BJ Lawson bumper sticker and handed out Lawson literature to friends in the 4th because it is vital to have other liberty-minded representatives in Congress to help Dr. Paul in the cause. BJ's opponent in Nov epitomizes the liberal establishment, has been there for over 20 years, and needs to GO! :D

[LittleLightShining]

... I'm pretty sure most of the honestly are afraid of 'Islamo-fascist' and the perceived threat the terrorist pose to their children and grandchildren.



I know you're not responsible for this new word, but what does it mean? I just don't get it.