NPR: A New Brand of Paul Gains Support in Iowa

[tsai3904]

A New Brand Of Paul Gains Support In Iowa

It's still more than 15 months until the Iowa caucuses, and no one in the crowded field of Republicans with presidential ambitions has announced. But things are already happening in Iowa, especially for Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky.

Paul has reached out to Iowans who never considered voting for his father, Ron Paul, who made a respectable third-place showing there in 2012.

He's still popular with his father's old supporters. Many of them are in the so-called liberty faction of the Iowa GOP.

A group of them meet Tuesday nights in a Des Moines hotel bar for a gathering called "Liberty on the Rocks." These 20 or so liberty Republicans are mostly veterans of the 2012 Iowa campaign of Ron Paul. To them, it was a movement of ideas, not just politics.

...

Audio and story:
http://www.npr.org/2014/09/10/347424406/a-new-brand-of-paul-gains-support-in-iowa

[r3volution 3.0]

Greatest hits...


For 26-year-old IT specialist Adil Khan, it's about Austrian economics. It's about abandoning policies of tax, spend and borrow. As he explains it, "this idea that if you tax from one area, it's going to be affecting a certain industry or it's going to be affecting the industry as a whole, and it really doesn't create anything." For 42-year-old Jeremy Goemaat, who owns a computer billing company, it's about a return to the gold standard. Or some other standard — private bank notes: "Is it the government's right to outlaw other currencies? Now, if you want to put your trust in small bank X, go for it."

NPR asked a bunch of people about Austrian economics (a subject utterly alien to 99% of readers), and then included the two least articulate responses in this piece, without any background or explanation whatsoever, which has the effect of making the subject look "kooky" to the average reader.


This summer Rand Paul took a couple of steps that appealed to groups his father didn't click with. At the Iowa State Republican Convention in June, he criticized disproportionately long criminal sentences for blacks.

Huh? Libertarians haven't been interested in reducing sentences for non-violent drug offenses? Of course, NPR knows perfectly well that this has long been a libertarian issue, so what was the purpose of this blatantly false statement? Note how they don't reference drug sentencing reform, but rather "criminal sentences for blacks." Aha, there's your reason: NPR wanted to imply that Ron Paul and his supporters wouldn't be interested in black issues because....well, the readers can draw their own conclusions. *cough*racist*cough*


Critchfield is a local Republican leader in Newton, which is a traditionally Democratic suburb of Des Moines. He calls himself a guns-and-taxes Republican. Keep taxes low; let people keep their guns for hunting.

Not a hit on Rand, but worth noting. The underlined is not in quotes, so did Critchfield actually cite hunting as the reason for the private ownership of firearms, or did (vociferously anti-gun) NPR come up with that (ridiculous srrawman) reason on its own?


That scored him points for pragmatism with Republicans like Critchfield. Whether it will cost him points with his father's true believers isn't clear yet.

True believers....*cough*cult*cough

[Jeremy]

Greatest hits...



NPR asked a bunch of people about Austrian economics (a subject utterly alien to 99% of readers), and then included the two least articulate responses in this piece, without any background or explanation whatsoever, which has the effect of making the subject look "kooky" to the average reader.



Huh? Libertarians haven't been interested in reducing sentences for non-violent drug offenses? Of course, NPR knows perfectly well that this has long been a libertarian issue, so what was the purpose of this blatantly false statement? Note how they don't reference drug sentencing reform, but rather "criminal sentences for blacks." Aha, there's your reason: NPR wanted to imply that Ron Paul and his supporters wouldn't be interested in black issues because....well, the readers can draw their own conclusions. *cough*racist*cough*



Not a hit on Rand, but worth noting. The underlined is not in quotes, so did Critchfield actually cite hunting as the reason for the private ownership of firearms, or did (vociferously anti-gun) NPR come up with that (ridiculous srrawman) reason on its own?



True believers....*cough*cult*cough
Stop being a negative nancy. It was a good piece.

[anaconda]

Americans are such pansies and suckers for the oil lobby and the globalists. So apparently all that people need to do to goad the U.S. into a war is dress up like foreigners, grab a couple of Americans and a camcorder, and pretend to be some group they don't like? Means, motive, opportunity. Americans are the stupidest people in the world.

[Matt Collins]

Stop being a negative nancy. It was a good piece.
There are such things as subtle hit pieces...

[WD-NY]

Greatest hits...



NPR asked a bunch of people about Austrian economics (a subject utterly alien to 99% of readers), and then included the two least articulate responses in this piece, without any background or explanation whatsoever, which has the effect of making the subject look "kooky" to the average reader.



Huh? Libertarians haven't been interested in reducing sentences for non-violent drug offenses? Of course, NPR knows perfectly well that this has long been a libertarian issue, so what was the purpose of this blatantly false statement? Note how they don't reference drug sentencing reform, but rather "criminal sentences for blacks." Aha, there's your reason: NPR wanted to imply that Ron Paul and his supporters wouldn't be interested in black issues because....well, the readers can draw their own conclusions. *cough*racist*cough*



Not a hit on Rand, but worth noting. The underlined is not in quotes, so did Critchfield actually cite hunting as the reason for the private ownership of firearms, or did (vociferously anti-gun) NPR come up with that (ridiculous srrawman) reason on its own?



True believers....*cough*cult*cough

Please repost this entire comment/critique in the comments section of the article so that NPR readers can see it :)

[extortion17]

Uhhh . . .

(Rand)"Paul has reached out to Iowans who never considered voting for his father, Ron Paul, who made a respectable third-place showing there in 2012."

who ever wrote that second clause
"...Ron Paul, who made a respectable third-place showing there in 2012"
is some sort of ill-informed idiot

2012 Presidential hopeful Congressman Dr. Ron Paul (R-14th Texas) won ALL the delegates at the GOP National Convention from the Iowa caucus delegation -

so isn't it more correct to say Ron Paul won the caucus state of iowa when they picked delegates in June 2012 (one of the last in the nation that is what Iowa does).

[jmdrake]

There are such things as subtle hit pieces...

And there's such a thing as a decent article that an oversensitive person mis-interprets as a hit piece. Really? Criticizing the article for including a quote from a supporter about Austrian economics? And no, it's not the responsibility of the journalist every time he digs up some bit of information that his audience may not have heard about to turn the entire piece into a dissertation on the subject and go and find some expert to talk about it. To the average NPR reader the discussion on Austrian Economics will sound like supply side economics and while the average NPR listener might not agree, he/she will not consider it any more "nutty" than any other GOP economic plan.

Now I will agree that the part about the unfair criminal sentences and "reaching an audience that didn't click with his father" is more than a bit unfair because A) Ron Paul made the same argument way back in 2008 and B) Ron Paul had more support among blacks than any other republican candidate. That said, Rand has been more overt in his outreach by going to Howard and other HBCUs. He's not just pushing his ideas there. He's building relationships with people some of whom will have his back later. The criminal reform bill that he introduced with Cory Booker (black democrat senator from New Jersey) can have a huge impact.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/rand-paul-cory-booker-team-bipartisan-reform-criminal-justice-system/

As for the "cult" thing? Well I think we do act cultish at times.

[jmdrake]

Uhhh . . .

(Rand)"Paul has reached out to Iowans who never considered voting for his father, Ron Paul, who made a respectable third-place showing there in 2012."

who ever wrote that second clause
"...Ron Paul, who made a respectable third-place showing there in 2012"
is some sort of ill-informed idiot

2012 Presidential hopeful Congressman Dr. Ron Paul (R-14th Texas) won ALL the delegates at the GOP National Convention from the Iowa caucus delegation -

so isn't it more correct to say Ron Paul won the caucus state of iowa when they picked delegates in June 2012 (one of the last in the nation that is what Iowa does).

The biggest value in the Iowa Caucuses is not the number of delegates you get but the headlines of "winning" the first in the nation poll. Rand needs to win that outright and decisively. Had Ron Paul won the straw poll outright the media wouldn't have been able to bury the story the way it did.