wbbgjr
09-30-2007, 02:17 PM
Here's a nice article with a great title "NO CHANCE TO WIN"
I copied it for you guys in case you guys didn't want to boost his views though there is a comment section. At the very least I hope it inspires people to prove him wrong.
__________________________________________________ ______
No chance to win
Ron Paul has an audience and funding -- and some issues the contenders won't touch
September 30, 2007
BY RON DZWONKOWSKI
FREE PRESS COLUMNIST
Ron Paul admits he doesn't know where his campaign for president is going.
Not the White House, that's for sure, but Paul has been surprised by the size of the crowds he's drawing and the money he's raising, so he figures to stick with it a while longer, including through the Jan. 15 Michigan primary.
Advertisement
"The money's coming in," Paul said during a meeting earlier this month with the Free Press editorial board. "And when you get 1,200 people at a rally, college students, the antiwar people, the people against big government ... something is going on in this country."
Maybe so, but Republican Paul will hedge his bet by also filing for re-election to his U.S. House seat from the 14th District of Texas, which runs along the southern Gulf Coast of the Lone Star State. What the heck, the way the primaries are all bunched up early next year, he only needs to hang in on his presidential bid until Feb. 5, when the nominees will likely be decided. Meantime, Paul is a legitimate enough candidate to be invited to all the debates, meet with editorial boards, and generally get his message out in ways that would not be available to a mere congressman.
He is actually getting more attention now than in 1988, when he was the Libertarian Party candidate for president and finished third behind George H.W. Bush and Michael Dukakis, but with less than one-half of 1% of the national vote.
Paul wouldn't agree, but he is among what critics consider "vanity candidates" or limited-issue folks who clog up the early going in every presidential race. With just a few months left before the primaries, the Republicans at the moment have only four candidates with a chance of winning the nomination, and the Democrats have three. Yet when the candidates assemble, you have a mob -- 10 on the Republican side and eight Democrats, all sharing space and time, most of them dreaming that lightning will strike -- everybody else -- or trying to be credible enough to be considered for vice president.
This year's crowd actually prompted one political scientist, Dr. Michael Coulter of the Center for Vision and Values at Grove City College, a small Christian school 60 miles from Pittsburgh, to suggest in a recent essay that U.S. House members should be banned from running for president.
"Americans do not see House members as presidential material," Coulter wrote, noting that only one, James Garfield in 1880, has ever won the White House.
But if the likes of Ron Paul, Ohio's Dennis Kucinich and Colorado's Tom Tancredo want to invest their time in quixotic quests, and people are willing to give them money to do it, don't they have a right?
"Responsible individuals do not waste the time and money of volunteers," says Coulter. "One does not take soldiers into a battle that one cannot win. ... More significantly, vanity campaigns waste the American public's time, because the candidates are given an opportunity to participate in television debates and other events. Vanity campaigns also further trivialize the presidential race.
"If these candidates are running to change public opinion, they should drop out and write a book."
Coulter puts Paul in the "less than no chance" category for winning the White House, which is accurate. The major Republican candidates are especially loath to share stages with him, because only Paul can say he voted against both the Iraq war and the Patriot Act, which will resonate with the party's core conservatives. Paul also voted against awarding a Congressional Gold Medal to civil rights icon Rosa Parks, not because he didn't admire her, but because he doesn't think that's what Congress should be spending the public's money to do.
Paul said he actually once walked the aisles of the House asking members to donate from their own pockets for medals, convinced that any such awards are beyond the constitutional authorization of Congress to make with public funds.
A physician, Paul says the key to solving the nation's health care problem lies in cutting taxes by reducing foreign entanglements and giving people more of their own money to get the best insurance they can afford. He'd also cut prison costs by legalizing personal drug use, would consider setting up zones with no taxes of any kind as a way to lure people back into cities, and get the United States immediately out of Iraq.
"We just rushed in," Paul said. "We just rush out."
Those aren't the kind of things you hear from the candidates with a chance of winning. But as long as the campaign is giving him an audience, Ron Paul will be saying them to as many people as he can reach and letting the crowds decide where he's going next year.
RON DZWONKOWSKI is editor of the Free Press editorial page. Contact him at dzwonk@freepress.com or 313-222-6635.
I copied it for you guys in case you guys didn't want to boost his views though there is a comment section. At the very least I hope it inspires people to prove him wrong.
__________________________________________________ ______
No chance to win
Ron Paul has an audience and funding -- and some issues the contenders won't touch
September 30, 2007
BY RON DZWONKOWSKI
FREE PRESS COLUMNIST
Ron Paul admits he doesn't know where his campaign for president is going.
Not the White House, that's for sure, but Paul has been surprised by the size of the crowds he's drawing and the money he's raising, so he figures to stick with it a while longer, including through the Jan. 15 Michigan primary.
Advertisement
"The money's coming in," Paul said during a meeting earlier this month with the Free Press editorial board. "And when you get 1,200 people at a rally, college students, the antiwar people, the people against big government ... something is going on in this country."
Maybe so, but Republican Paul will hedge his bet by also filing for re-election to his U.S. House seat from the 14th District of Texas, which runs along the southern Gulf Coast of the Lone Star State. What the heck, the way the primaries are all bunched up early next year, he only needs to hang in on his presidential bid until Feb. 5, when the nominees will likely be decided. Meantime, Paul is a legitimate enough candidate to be invited to all the debates, meet with editorial boards, and generally get his message out in ways that would not be available to a mere congressman.
He is actually getting more attention now than in 1988, when he was the Libertarian Party candidate for president and finished third behind George H.W. Bush and Michael Dukakis, but with less than one-half of 1% of the national vote.
Paul wouldn't agree, but he is among what critics consider "vanity candidates" or limited-issue folks who clog up the early going in every presidential race. With just a few months left before the primaries, the Republicans at the moment have only four candidates with a chance of winning the nomination, and the Democrats have three. Yet when the candidates assemble, you have a mob -- 10 on the Republican side and eight Democrats, all sharing space and time, most of them dreaming that lightning will strike -- everybody else -- or trying to be credible enough to be considered for vice president.
This year's crowd actually prompted one political scientist, Dr. Michael Coulter of the Center for Vision and Values at Grove City College, a small Christian school 60 miles from Pittsburgh, to suggest in a recent essay that U.S. House members should be banned from running for president.
"Americans do not see House members as presidential material," Coulter wrote, noting that only one, James Garfield in 1880, has ever won the White House.
But if the likes of Ron Paul, Ohio's Dennis Kucinich and Colorado's Tom Tancredo want to invest their time in quixotic quests, and people are willing to give them money to do it, don't they have a right?
"Responsible individuals do not waste the time and money of volunteers," says Coulter. "One does not take soldiers into a battle that one cannot win. ... More significantly, vanity campaigns waste the American public's time, because the candidates are given an opportunity to participate in television debates and other events. Vanity campaigns also further trivialize the presidential race.
"If these candidates are running to change public opinion, they should drop out and write a book."
Coulter puts Paul in the "less than no chance" category for winning the White House, which is accurate. The major Republican candidates are especially loath to share stages with him, because only Paul can say he voted against both the Iraq war and the Patriot Act, which will resonate with the party's core conservatives. Paul also voted against awarding a Congressional Gold Medal to civil rights icon Rosa Parks, not because he didn't admire her, but because he doesn't think that's what Congress should be spending the public's money to do.
Paul said he actually once walked the aisles of the House asking members to donate from their own pockets for medals, convinced that any such awards are beyond the constitutional authorization of Congress to make with public funds.
A physician, Paul says the key to solving the nation's health care problem lies in cutting taxes by reducing foreign entanglements and giving people more of their own money to get the best insurance they can afford. He'd also cut prison costs by legalizing personal drug use, would consider setting up zones with no taxes of any kind as a way to lure people back into cities, and get the United States immediately out of Iraq.
"We just rushed in," Paul said. "We just rush out."
Those aren't the kind of things you hear from the candidates with a chance of winning. But as long as the campaign is giving him an audience, Ron Paul will be saying them to as many people as he can reach and letting the crowds decide where he's going next year.
RON DZWONKOWSKI is editor of the Free Press editorial page. Contact him at dzwonk@freepress.com or 313-222-6635.