G-khan
08-25-2007, 02:29 PM
Ron Paul finally gets mentioned in the Columbus newspaper. It's not a news story, it is an op-ed piece on the editorial page.
http://www.dispatch.com/live/content...7.html?sid=101 (http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/editorials/stories/2007/08/25/heub25.ART_ART_08-25-07_A10_687MIL7.html?sid=101)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Little-known candidate big on YouTube
Saturday, August 25, 2007 3:25 AM
By J.H. HUEBERT
If the usual polls are any indication, our next president probably will be -- God help us -- Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama, Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson or John McCain.
But if popularity on the YouTube.com video-sharing Web site is any prediction of who will win, a study by Ohio State University law professor Edward Lee suggests that Americans can look forward to four years of President Paul.
Lee's study, published on his Web site, youtubepresident.blogspot.com -- shows that Rep. Ron Paul's videos have been viewed, on average, more 60,000 times each. That's almost double the views of the first runner-up, Sen. Clinton, D-N.Y., who averages about 30,000 views per video. And it's light years ahead of the supposed Republican front-runners, who barely register at all.
At this point, many of you may be wondering, "Just who is this Ron Paul?" And you can't really be faulted for not knowing. He's rarely (though increasingly) mentioned in the mainstream press, and traditional polls show his support among prospective Republican primary voters at about 3 percent. But there is a serious, real-life candidate behind this Internet phenomenon. Specifically, he's a 72-year-old, 10-term Republican congressman and obstetrician/gynecologist from Texas. He stands out from the Republican pack not only for his online fan base, but also for his uncompromising opposition to the war in Iraq and his support for limiting the federal government to its constitutionally enumerated powers.
That means Paul would bring the troops home immediately and eliminate vast portions of the federal government, including the Internal Revenue Service. That approach might not be very popular in Washington, but as the YouTube study shows, apparently quite a few people want to watch videos about it.
But will that spell real-world success in the end? After all, lots of things could explain a candidate's YouTube popularity that don't mean anyone's going to vote for him.
But Lee doesn't think Paul's success can be brushed off easily. The videos are high-quality, he says, but not something people would watch for pure entertainment.
"What's really impressive is that he doesn't really have 'one big hit,' " says Lee. Instead, all of Paul's videos get tens of thousands of hits. In contrast, Clinton, his closest competitor, got a high average because of just one gimmick video. Lee also notes, by the way, that his study shouldn't be considered an endorsement of any candidate.
In Columbus, as in many cities across America, Paul's supporters are ready to take his campaign beyond the Internet and directly to the voters. The Columbus Ron Paul support group on the Web site www.meetup.com (http://www.meetup.com/) has more than 200 members, and at least 50 of them showed up at a recent organizational meeting to plan events promoting their candidate in this area.
Over the months ahead, you may be seeing them at fairs, festivals, OSU games and anywhere else there are likely to be crowds or TV cameras. And Paul supporters are putting their money where their mouths are: They have contributed nearly $3 million in small donations, giving him more cash on hand than Sen. McCain, R-Ariz.
Interestingly, the anti-war Paul also leads all Republican candidates in contributions from members of the U. S. armed forces, with about 50 percent of the total from those troops.
Whether Paul's ideas will take hold beyond his present supporters remains to be seen. To succeed, they'll have to combine a new technology with a very old American idea: that a small group of dedicated men and women can provoke their more-complacent neighbors to join a revolution for liberty and limited government.
J.H. Huebert is a Columbus attorney and an adjunct faculty member of the Ludwig von Mises Institute.
jhhuebert@jhhuebert.com.
http://goldismoney.info/forums/images/misc/progress.gif http://goldismoney.info/forums/images/buttons/edit.gif (http://goldismoney.info/forums/editpost.php?do=editpost&p=709839)
http://www.dispatch.com/live/content...7.html?sid=101 (http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/editorials/stories/2007/08/25/heub25.ART_ART_08-25-07_A10_687MIL7.html?sid=101)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Little-known candidate big on YouTube
Saturday, August 25, 2007 3:25 AM
By J.H. HUEBERT
If the usual polls are any indication, our next president probably will be -- God help us -- Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama, Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson or John McCain.
But if popularity on the YouTube.com video-sharing Web site is any prediction of who will win, a study by Ohio State University law professor Edward Lee suggests that Americans can look forward to four years of President Paul.
Lee's study, published on his Web site, youtubepresident.blogspot.com -- shows that Rep. Ron Paul's videos have been viewed, on average, more 60,000 times each. That's almost double the views of the first runner-up, Sen. Clinton, D-N.Y., who averages about 30,000 views per video. And it's light years ahead of the supposed Republican front-runners, who barely register at all.
At this point, many of you may be wondering, "Just who is this Ron Paul?" And you can't really be faulted for not knowing. He's rarely (though increasingly) mentioned in the mainstream press, and traditional polls show his support among prospective Republican primary voters at about 3 percent. But there is a serious, real-life candidate behind this Internet phenomenon. Specifically, he's a 72-year-old, 10-term Republican congressman and obstetrician/gynecologist from Texas. He stands out from the Republican pack not only for his online fan base, but also for his uncompromising opposition to the war in Iraq and his support for limiting the federal government to its constitutionally enumerated powers.
That means Paul would bring the troops home immediately and eliminate vast portions of the federal government, including the Internal Revenue Service. That approach might not be very popular in Washington, but as the YouTube study shows, apparently quite a few people want to watch videos about it.
But will that spell real-world success in the end? After all, lots of things could explain a candidate's YouTube popularity that don't mean anyone's going to vote for him.
But Lee doesn't think Paul's success can be brushed off easily. The videos are high-quality, he says, but not something people would watch for pure entertainment.
"What's really impressive is that he doesn't really have 'one big hit,' " says Lee. Instead, all of Paul's videos get tens of thousands of hits. In contrast, Clinton, his closest competitor, got a high average because of just one gimmick video. Lee also notes, by the way, that his study shouldn't be considered an endorsement of any candidate.
In Columbus, as in many cities across America, Paul's supporters are ready to take his campaign beyond the Internet and directly to the voters. The Columbus Ron Paul support group on the Web site www.meetup.com (http://www.meetup.com/) has more than 200 members, and at least 50 of them showed up at a recent organizational meeting to plan events promoting their candidate in this area.
Over the months ahead, you may be seeing them at fairs, festivals, OSU games and anywhere else there are likely to be crowds or TV cameras. And Paul supporters are putting their money where their mouths are: They have contributed nearly $3 million in small donations, giving him more cash on hand than Sen. McCain, R-Ariz.
Interestingly, the anti-war Paul also leads all Republican candidates in contributions from members of the U. S. armed forces, with about 50 percent of the total from those troops.
Whether Paul's ideas will take hold beyond his present supporters remains to be seen. To succeed, they'll have to combine a new technology with a very old American idea: that a small group of dedicated men and women can provoke their more-complacent neighbors to join a revolution for liberty and limited government.
J.H. Huebert is a Columbus attorney and an adjunct faculty member of the Ludwig von Mises Institute.
jhhuebert@jhhuebert.com.
http://goldismoney.info/forums/images/misc/progress.gif http://goldismoney.info/forums/images/buttons/edit.gif (http://goldismoney.info/forums/editpost.php?do=editpost&p=709839)