My Letter To Iowa

[WilliamC]

Greetings All,

This is my first post to the forums. I've been reading here for months and finally decided to delurk and make some small contribution to the grassroots effort. As a start I have gotten a list of 10 names of Iowans to write a letter to, which I am posting below. Please take the time to read and critique this letter. I am going to enclose a 2-page flyer about Ron Paul with it, the one titled "issues" from the campaign website, along with a printed copy of this letter. I had thought about handwriting it but the timeit would take and my poor penmanship makes that idea unappealing. I will sign each letter and include my full address and email so as not be be anonymous. At anyrate all constructive feedback will be appreciated.

William C Colley

Dear Mr./Ms. XXX,

I am writing in regards to the upcoming Iowa Caucus next January 3rd. Although I am a Mississippian I am very aware of the historically important role that your state plays in Presidential elections. As you have probably already noticed from the enclosed flyer I am promoting Republican Congressman Ron Paul. Please understand that I am neither paid by nor in contact with his official campaign but rather I am contacting you as part of a grassroots effort.

Since the enclosed flyer summarizes his positions better than I can I will not try to repeat that information in my letter. Rather, I will explain why I have been motivated to write to you personally. I am a married, working father of three wonderful children. My greatest desire is to have them grow up in a free and prosperous country where they can achieve their inherent potential as productive and happy individuals. I wish I could say that this outcome is a given in the United States, but I cannot. Each generation of Americans must work and sometimes fight to preserve our freedom and the idea that every citizen is free to live without having to rely upon, or be beholden to, a government that makes decisions for them. As I listen to the current crop of Presidential contenders most of what I hear from them is how they think they can best run our lives and spend our money. Only one voice is speaking for the individual, about restoring a limited government that exists solely to preserve our liberties, and about the heritage of our Constitution. That voice belongs to Ron Paul.

Today the Federal Government is over 9 trillion dollars in debt, and has obligated itself to spend over 70 trillion dollars in future payments. I fail to see how any person can believe that this is a healthy state of affairs or that it can lead to any other outcome but the eventual bankruptcy of our nation. It is terrifying to me that foreign governments like China and Saudi Arabia, which hold so much of this debt, can by simply deciding to sell their dollars for a more profitable investment cause the collapse of our economy and the end of our global dominance in world affairs. We are already seeing the beginning of this as the value of our dollar continues to decline to new lows seemingly every day . Despite assurances to the contrary by politicians and bureaucrats, inflation is already evident every time we fill our gas tanks or buy groceries. Yet instead of working to make the United States more independent and self-sufficient most of these same politicians are pushing for even more globalization by turning a blind eye to the massive problem of illegal immigration and supporting the diminishment of US sovereignty to international entities like the United Nations.

I do not pretend to be qualified to tell you for whom you should vote for President, but I do hope to persuade you to look at the positions espoused by Ron Paul. It is not an exaggeration for me to say he has the best voting record in Congress when it comes to supporting the Constitution; his record is unquestioned even by his opponents. Please visit his website at www.ronpaul2008.com, or call his campaign for more information at 703-248-9115. I believe that you will find for yourself that his honesty and integrity is far more persuasive than I am. Whatever your decision I encourage you to vote in the upcoming Iowa Caucuses. Thank you so much for taking the time to read this letter.

Yours In Liberty,

William C Colley

[WilliamC]

Bump for feedback

WilliamC

[klamath]

Very good letter. Very respectful and no ranting. Nice work.

[WilliamC]

Greetings All,

Topics move mighty quick off of the front page around here
I'll give this another bump or so then stop bothering yall.

WilliamC

[Brian in Maryland]

Nice. I wish I could write like that. I am making a copy as an example of clear and ( hopefully ) persuasive communication. Maybe it will inspire me to write some letters.

[WilliamC]

I'll send the first 10 of these out tomorrow, and will do some more this weekend.

I would ask for some applause, but I'm not Fred Thompson ;)

William C Colley

[kotetu]

Good one! I will applaud anyway! :D

[Myerz]

How do I get a list of address? I want to write some letters.

[WilliamC]

Greetings All,


How do I get a list of address? I want to write some letters.

I just sent a PM to Kotetu and all of a sudden I've sent out 130 letters and have another 100 I'm working on. It's addictive :)

For anyone who hasn't taken the time to do something like this please do so. I won't say that New Hampshire is going to be easy but Iowa seems a tougher State to get the message into and there are a lot more people to contact. But hey so long as everyone is doing something constructive that's what it's all about!

William C Colley

[Lucid American]

Good letter, thanks for posting.

Here's mine. I hope to start sending it out this week. I hope its length is not a detriment -- it fits on one page -- but I think it lays out my reasoning well and personally. Let me know if you seriously think it will just be thrown away, and I'll try to whittle it down further.

Dear _________,

I hope my letter finds you well. My name is Steve McCormack, and I am writing you today from Snellville, GA to ask you to support Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul in your upcoming caucus.

By now you may know something of Rep. Paul and his growing support nationwide, but I will start by telling you a little about myself. I am 34 years old and will celebrate 10 years of marriage with my wife Christy this June. We have three children, ages 9, 6, and 2, and work opposite shifts three days each week to make sure our children stay on the right track and our bills get paid. We attend church weekly and are also active in various ministries to help keep our local community strong.

I tell you all this, honestly, to strike a chord in your heart. Perhaps you are married, perhaps not. Perhaps you have children, perhaps not. Perhaps you attend church, perhaps not. However, you and I are both Americans, and that should mean something. As time goes on, however, it seems to mean less and less, which pains my American heart.

In 2000, I voted for the Republican candidate for President, a candidate who had campaigned on a platform of lower taxes and a humble, non-interventionist foreign policy. As we know all too well, all that changed on that sunny September morning in 2001.

By 2004, I was at a loss. The world had changed -- our nation had changed -- and in ways I did not feel good about. The talk then, as you'll remember, was about who "waffled" when and who "flip-flopped" and why. Frankly, I could not vote for either major candidate in good conscience -- a sentiment shared by 80 million other American voters.

Not long after, however, I discovered Ron Paul, and his message cut through my darkened discontent. And as I learned more about him, my heart sang! Here was a politician whose message was positively American: celebrate our differences; be self-responsible; keep our own money while protecting our own sovereignty; keep our soldiers home while instead waging peace through free trade; and most importantly, keep the puppets of government on their rightful strings.

Now, a politician's words are one thing, but what about actions? Ron Paul has been married to his wife Carol for 50 years, and they share five children, 18 grandchildren, and one great-grandchild. Dr. Paul served as a flight surgeon in the US Air Force from 1963-65 and achieved the rank of captain before serving in the Air National Guard until 1968. Following his service, Dr. Paul would eventually deliver more than 4,000 babies as an OB/GYN in Texas.

Over his 10 terms as a Republican congressman, Dr. Paul has become our nation's foremost champion of the Constitution. He has never voted for an unbalanced budget and never voted himself a pay raise nor participated in the lucrative Congressional pension plan. In fact, he did not even allow his children to accept government subsidized loans for college.

A brief look at his writings from his first term in Congress 30 years ago now prove tragically prophetic and weigh even more importantly today. Do not be fooled by those who label his policies "isolationist" in nature; look instead at how isolated we already find ourselves today. Regretfully, we have failed to heed too much of his wise counsel over the past three decades. Thankfully, we now have the rare opportunity to elect a leader truly worthy of the office.

Ron Paul is proof that principles and wisdom do still reside in Washington. Please consider voting for Dr. Ron Paul at your Republican caucus on January 3, 2008. Even though you are registered independent, you can register Republican on caucus night to vote for him. To learn more about Ron Paul, please visit his website www.ronpaul2008.com or email me at xxxxx@xxxxxxx.net.

Yours in Liberty (I liked this from William's above :D),
Steve McCormack

[Shak]

Hey Steve,

That's a very well written letter! Thanks for posting it here -- it gives me inspiration to improve my writing and write a letter myself!

[Tarabell952]

I thought the original intent of this campaign was that the letters were supposed to be handwritten. People are a lot more likely to read and take into conisderation a letter that has ben handwritten. It has that personal touch. I know that it takes much longer to write letters by hand, but I think you are much more likely to have an impact.

[WilliamC]

Greetings All,

Handwritting is great if you have good penmanship and lots of time. I wouldn't want to have someone try and ready my scribbling and to me it's better to reach more people rather than fewer. I am signing each letter and doing the envelopes by hand, I figure that will at least get the letter opened. But any positive message is a good one IMO.

William C Colley

[JMO]

Both people have very well written letters.

I agree about handwriting. Written letters are a lot more personal and more likely to be read.

[Tarabell952]

Thank you for all the help that you are doing, and your letter is great by the way. I just feel like people won't really take seriously a typed letter. It doesn't seem personal, like it's from a real person. I almost think you'd be likely to gain more supporters from 50 handwritten letters than 500 typed ones. If a letter is handwritten, people will think "Wow. Someone cares about this candidate so much that they took the time to write a personal letter to me, by hand. Wow! " I think it would make people really want to take a look at the candidate, that RP could really inspire someone to go to such lengths. Just my opinion. :)

[Lucid American]

Yeah, I know what you're saying, and I thought that was the original intent, as well, but I think that got lost somewhere.

I will write some letters by hand, as well, but that makes it much more time prohibitive. Perhaps I can write one really clear one, make a good scan and make high quality color copies.

I think some personal info in the typed letter would help to negate that, but you're right -- a hand-written one would reveal more "sweat equity" in sending it and might make the person more likely to read it.

I would like to think these people realize how important their geography makes them right now and would leave them more open to reading about new names, but I guess it wouldn't me. :)

[literatim]

Typing out a letter and sending it to an Iowan could cause more harm than good.

[Lucid American]

Typing out a letter and sending it to an Iowan could cause more harm than good.

Please elaborate?

Are Iowans against machine-printed fonts or something? ;)

[literatim]

Please elaborate?

Are Iowans against machine-printed fonts or something? ;)

Iowans don't really like being spammed by people from out of state.

[WilliamC]

Greetings All,


Typing out a letter and sending it to an Iowan could cause more harm than good.

Well I'm sorry to have caused another 100 letters worth of bad publicity then. But seriously, you think someone would deliberately vote against a candidate simply because they received a letter about them? Are we to think no other campaigns are doing mass mailings?

Well, we all do what we can :)

William C Colley

[JenH88]

We are not other campaigns- clearly. The original idea was to handwrite the letters- why would people have taken names deliberately knowing they weren't going to do them right?

[mathamagician]

William wonderful letter! This is exactly what we need! We need people to explain individually why they so strongly believe in Ron Paul. I believe you did an excellent job! One thing I might add is that I always think people find it very impressive to hear that he's voted down pay raises, doesn't participate in the pension program or junkets and returns a portion of his budget back to the treasury. It's very telling to hear of a politician who puts his money where his mouth is and I think this will be very positive for Independents.

[fortilite]

It's not possible to hand write 800000 letters by the 16th. As long as they open and read the letter and it's a good letter, that's what counts the most. It's better to print 800000 letters than hand write 100000. I just want to know that every registered independent will be getting a personalized letter.

[Tarabell952]

If enough peole write the letters it is possible. There are meetups all around the country getting their members to do this. IPeople could handwrite the letters for now, and then if closer to the deadline, there are still addresses, that's when we would just start typing them out.

[kotetu]

if only 1/2 of them read the letters, and 10% of those decide to vote for Ron Paul, that will be an extra 35,000 votes in Iowa. That is probably enough for him to win. :D

Hand write the addresses, hand sign them, even include a little note, etc, but get all 700,000 done! :D

[WilliamC]

Greetings All,


William wonderful letter! This is exactly what we need! We need people to explain individually why they so strongly believe in Ron Paul. I believe you did an excellent job! One thing I might add is that I always think people find it very impressive to hear that he's voted down pay raises, doesn't participate in the pension program or junkets and returns a portion of his budget back to the treasury. It's very telling to hear of a politician who puts his money where his mouth is and I think this will be very positive for Independents.

I'm including three pieces of campaign material with each letter, the two page "issues" flyer and a one page flyer with the basic slimjim information on it. That way I don't reiterate "talking points" in the letter but put my personal touch instead.

William C Colley

[WilliamC]

Greetings All,


We are not other campaigns- clearly. The original idea was to handwrite the letters- why would people have taken names deliberately knowing they weren't going to do them right?

Some of us aren't gifted with good handwriting. I'm really sorry if you think sending a printed letter is a bad idea, but I specifically brought this up before I sent a single letter out and didn't get negative feedback then. I totally agree a handwritten letter is more "personal", but so long as the message is positive do you honestly claim I'm doing more harm than good by sending mine? I would think someone willing spend their own time and money to do this is making a positive contribution, but that's just my take.


William C Colley

[JenH88]

oh Don't get me wrong, I don't think printed letters will result in a huge hatred of Ron Paul- lol, I'm just saying that we have a TON of interest in people doing this project- if possible we should hand write all the letters, if the deadline were tomorrow and we had thousands left to do, I'd say print em, but we're trying to stand out as much as possible. If you still wanted to contribute, help pay the postage for someone else who can input more time or has 'neater' handwriting. either way, the fact that the GRASSROOTS is personally touching every single independent voter in Iowa is just amazing!!!:D:eek: Either way the letters are done- I've never heard this done in a campaign.. even still- we are Ron Paul supporters, we like everything BIG, BOLD, and to STAND OUT. (I'm putting them in colored envelopes- people have been using the tactic for years, in a sea of white, something of color stands out) Either way, KEEP STUFFING THOSE ENVELOPES!!


Greetings All,



Some of us aren't gifted with good handwriting. I'm really sorry if you think sending a printed letter is a bad idea, but I specifically brought this up before I sent a single letter out and didn't get negative feedback then. I totally agree a handwritten letter is more "personal", but so long as the message is positive do you honestly claim I'm doing more harm than good by sending mine? I would think someone willing spend their own time and money to do this is making a positive contribution, but that's just my take.


William C Colley