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Rocky Mtn Liberty Lover
07-06-2007, 09:42 PM
For those interested, I did an article search on Factiva and found the following recent RP supporters letters to newspapers in California, Iowa, and Florida (sorry for the rather lengthy post):

The Fresno Bee
July 5, 2007
Ron Paul is 'rare'
Geoffrey Smith [letter June 30] believes "we need a president who has the courage to do what is right; not just what is politically expedient." I agree. Now, let me tell you why that candidate's name is Ron Paul, not Barack Obama.
Ron Paul is rare among politicians. Integrity and honesty are important to him. His principles have yet to be corrupted. His voting record is consistent, because he actually upholds his oath to support and defend the Constitution.
He opposed the Iraq war from the start, because he knows war, like taxes, inflation, debt and unsecured borders, is one of the primary threats to our liberty.
Sen. Obama, like all the "first-tier" candidates, has the establishment's stamp of approval. He is beholden to the same interests that have been ruining America for the past 150 years. Sen. Obama is only different from President Bush on the surface. A vote for Sen. Obama changes nothing. A vote for Ron Paul is a vote for freedom, peace and prosperity -- that changes everything!
Unfortunately, you won't hear about Ron Paul in the mainstream media. Visit www.ihateronpaul.com to discover why, or visit his official Web site www.ronpaul2008.com to learn more.
Michael Varin
Fresno

Florida Today
July 4, 2007

Ron Paul's candidacy unfairly overlooked
Kenneth Hughes
Merritt Island
There is a great injustice going on in America and the media is not saying anything about it.
Presidential candidate Ron Paul, a congressman from Texas, was kept out of the presidential candidates' June 30 forum in Des Moines, Iowa.
The Iowans for Tax Relief and Iowa Christian Alliance had not invited Paul to take part in this event.
I was appalled to hear this and even more disappointed in the top media outlets that have not even made this discrimination front page news.
How can we pretend to have a democracy in America and not allow all of the legitimate candidates equal time in a round-table discussion? How can we set this type of example to Iraq and its people?
We are showing the world that only the rich and powerful can run this country.
Americans used to pull for the underdog -- the person who had strong principles and consistently worked hard to do what is right.
America is losing the spirit that motivated our forefathers to make this country great.

The Des Moines Register
July 3, 2007

Let's hear from all candidates
Shame on Iowans For Tax Relief and the Iowa Christian Alliance for not inviting Ron Paul to their June 30 debate ("Candidate's Exclusion From Forum Criticized," June 21). It is bad enough that the two major parties have already severely limited our choices in any given election.
I thought the purpose of election debates was to instruct and inform the electorate on the issues and where the candidates stand on them. How can we learn of any different or fresh ideas when only the "mainstream" candidates are invited to debate?
- Pete Starkovich,
Cedar Rapids.
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Perhaps Iowans For Tax Relief should have examined national polling before excluding Ron Paul from their June 30 forum. As Paul has been polling in second place, excluding Paul speaks volumes about the credibility of the organization.
- Bradley David Aukes,
Dubuque.

RON PAUL UNDERSTANDS THE MIDDLE EAST
SCOTT E. CRAWFORD Findlay
315 words
3 July 2007
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Kudos for profiling Republican Ron Paul ("An Article about Presidential Candidate Ron Paul," May 24, The Morning File). It was ironic that these so-called Republicans cited Ronald Reagan to justify our constant involvement in the Middle East. After Lebanese terrorists attacked U.S. barracks in the region, President Reagan wisely decided to withdraw from the region, realizing that ideology there was far too backward to be amended, and that remaining in the region only increased animosity towards our country.
Later, George H.W. Bush was hounded for not "completing the job" in the first Persian Gulf war. But he, too, realized that there would be no escape route. Indeed, the Republican Party has long been considered isolationist. Calvin Coolidge, Sen. Robert Taft, Dwight Eisenhower, Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan are considered the founders of modern conservatism, and generally favored a noninterventionist foreign policy.
Yet Ron Paul is the only Republican candidate today who stated (based on the 9/11 commission report) that our involvement in the Middle East has greatly intensified anti-American sentiment in the region. And we have been heavily involved in many ways, including the 1953 overthrow of democratically elected Iranian leader Mohammed Mosaddeq, Saddam Hussein's rise to power and our payment of $3 billion a year to Israel.
We see ourselves as peacekeepers and defenders of democracy, but Arabs think we're hypocritical. We allow Israel to have nuclear weapons, but not Iran. We refused to talk much to the Palestinians, leading to the election of terrorist group Hamas, with whom we still won't negotiate. To Palestine, we were hypocritical for cutting off financial and political support, even though their elections were very democratic.
Ron Paul pointed this out, and was crucified. However, Ronald Reagan, after seeing Rep. Paul, is most likely smiling.

Speak Out ... Ron Paul gives new hope
our readers
463 words
2 July 2007
The Anniston Star
Re "Zombies on stage" (H. Brandt Ayers column, June 24):
How much I enjoyed H. Brandt Ayers' column. I have been a life-long Democrat, bordering on libertarian, and Ron Paul has given me hope for change that I haven't felt since the first time Bill Clinton ran for president. Because I know Paul is speaking the truth and has given me even more hope for the future of this once-great country. As residents of Florida have to acknowledge party affiliation when they get their driver's licenses, this will be the first time in my life that I will register as a Republican, and I couldn't be more excited about it. I have contributed $500 to Paul's campaign, something I have never done in the past.
Paul's campaign is giving a lot of people who felt their feelings were being ignored in Washington a renewed spiritual uplift. People who tell it like it is are starting to speak up and demand that the politicians in Washington listen to us. It is time for true change, and Paul is the only candidate who practices what he preaches.
My thanks to The Star for that wonderful article, and keep up the good work despite the naysayers.
James Powell
Pensacola, Fla.

The last letter piqued my interest in the original article, so here it is:

H. Brandt Ayers: Zombies on stage
863 words
24 June 2007
The Anniston Star

Was I wrong! I thought that the one hopeful legacy of the Iraq tragedy was that it had killed off the Bush Doctrine of preventive war (war to prevent war).
As it turns out, there needs to be more discussion over more time for the American people to make a firm decision about the wisdom of starting a war with Iraq. Only a 47- to 45-percent majority turned thumbs down on the decision, and those with close friends or family in Iraq backed the invasion 53 to 43 percent.
This is according to the trusted Pew poll. Yet, even those close to soldiers now serving disapproved of Bush's job performance by margins almost as large as the general population.
If the doctrine of pre-emptive war had been as dead as I thought it was (as it is with large majorities of Democrats and a bare majority of independents), the GOP debate in New Hampshire would have been the Night of the Living Dead.
Indeed, the 10 dark suits and red ties on stage were little more animated than zombies. Zombie-like, they repeated support for starting the war - popular with their base but a policy rejected by all Republican presidents until Bush.
Before outlining the radical breach with bipartisan American values and traditions caused by the doctrine, here's a couple of extracts from the debate, an acrobatic one from Mitt Romney and a straight-on answer from Rudy Giulliani.
The question from CNN's Wolf Blitzer was: If we knew then what we know now, was it the right decision to invade Iraq?
Romney: "Well, I answered the question by saying it's a - it's a non sequitur, it's a null set kind of question, because you can go back and say, if we knew then what we know now, by virtue of inspectors having been let in and giving us that information, by virtue of if Saddam Hussein had followed the U.N. resolutions, we wouldn't be having this - this discussion. So it's a hypothetical that I think is an unreasonable hypothetical. And the answer is, we did what we did; we did the right thing based on what we knew at that time. I think we made mistakes following the conduct - or the collapse of Saddam's government."
Giulliani: "Absolutely the right thing to do. It's unthinkable that you would leave Saddam Hussein in charge of Iraq and be able to fight the war on terror. And the problem is that we see Iraq in a vacuum. Iraq should not be seen in a vacuum. Iraq is part of the overall terrorist war against the United States."
Each of the other candidates in turn backed the shoot-first, regret-later doctrine, with one exception, Texas Rep. Ron Paul, the only GOP candidate who voted against authorizing the use of force in Iraq.
"We in the past have always declared war in the defense of our liberties or to go to the aid of somebody," he said. "But now we have accepted the principle of pre-emptive war - we have rejected the Just War theory of Christianity."
Though Paul is given no chance of winning the nomination, the Texas congressman has a long view, first elected in 1976. He could remember policies of containment and deterrence, begun under Truman a half-century ago, that kept at bay the Soviet Union, which had real doomsday weapons.
President Eisenhower had two teams argue the merits of containment and a more aggressive policy of "rolling back" the Soviets from Eastern Europe. He heard the arguments of both sides in the White House Solarium, the family room. The World War II commander decided containment was the wiser policy.
Ike was asked at a 1954 press conference what he thought of preventive war. "A preventive war, to my mind, is an impossibility," Eisenhower said. "... I don't believe there is such a thing, and frankly I wouldn't even listen to anyone seriously that came in and talked about such a thing."
Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Carter, Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Clinton all followed that bipartisan agreement on containment. As the late great historian Arthur Schlesinger writes in his War and the American Presidents, "During the long years of the Cold War, preventive war was unmentionable. Its advocates were regarded as loonies."
In Truman's memoirs he gave his opinion on preventive war in a typically brisk fashion, "There is nothing more foolish than to think that war can be stopped by war. You don't 'prevent' anything by war but peace."
Yet now every serious Republican candidate for the presidency advocates a revolutionary policy that is not only contrary to the combined wisdom of presidents since World War II but was actively scorned by them.
Maybe it's a good thing that this is such a long electoral process. As these candidates monotonously advocate views alien to our tradition and past wisdom, voters may conclude that zombies need the peace of the political graveyard.

angrydragon
07-06-2007, 10:32 PM
Good stuff thanks!!

Michael Varin
07-11-2007, 11:31 PM
Another member of my Meetup group had a letter printed in our local newspaper today. That's two in six days.

The Fresno Bee
Ignoring Ron Paul
07/11/07 04:31:36

I am not generally a reader of The Bee. Commentaries like your July 6 piece on the importance of YouTube in elections remind me why. You published a lengthy commentary about the growing importance of YouTube and Google in today's politics, dropping such names as John McCain, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards, while completely leaving out the single most popular name on YouTube, and the Internet in general: Ron Paul.

He surpasses all the other Republicans by a wide margin, and gives even the top-ranking Democratic candidates a run for their money in terms of online exposure.

This mainstream media blackout on the single most important candidate in this election cycle has got to stop. You're going to lose credibility in the eyes of readers once Ron Paul's presidential campaign has gained widespread exposure without receiving so much as a stitch of coverage by The Bee.

Daryl Sawyer
Clovis

Michael Varin
08-15-2007, 04:37 AM
I don't know how it's going else where, but we've had a steady flow of letters to the editor about Ron Paul.

Here are two more from my meetup group.

Ron Paul's the man
8/9/07

Jack Smith (letter Aug. 4) asked: "Now show me the Republican candidate who has promised to get this country out of this senseless [war in Iraq]." Because he asked for it, let me introduce Mr. Smith to the best kept secret of the 2008 presidential campaign -- Ron Paul.

Ron is a 72-year-old retired obstetrician from Texas. He's been married to his wife, Carol, for 50 years. He has spent 20 years in Congress. Despite this, he does not accept his lucrative congressional pension and he returns a portion of his annual congressional office budget every year. His honesty and integrity are unparalleled. His refusal to be corrupted is illustrated by his impeccable voting record. He is the only candidate who stands for the very foundation of America -- liberty.

Dr. Paul has true grass-roots support (the meetup.com group in Fresno grows by one or two members daily). Go to http://www.ronpaullibrary.org and start reading. You will see that he is the only candidate who deserves your vote.

By the way, he has opposed the war in Iraq since the very beginning, and will bring the troops home immediately.

Michael Varin

Fresno


Paging Dr. Paul
08/12/07 07:40:32

Well, here we are again, shortly after a Republican debate, and the ABC News Internet poll shows another landslide for Rep. Ron Paul. More than 55,000 votes were submitted, with 35,000 for Rep. Paul, the physician from Texas. But if you read the papers after the debate, you would have no indication of any showing by Rep. Paul.

In poll after poll, Rep. Paul dominates -- CNN, Fox, MSNBC, ABC. What will be the excuse for suppressing after he wins the Iowa straw poll later this week? Don't be afraid of Rep. Ron Paul -- he is just the medicine America needs.

Steve Wayte
Fresno

And today there was the first letter from someone NOT in our group.

Creeping revolution
08/14/07 05:34:52

For 35 years, I have received the Conservative Index, which rates members of Congress on their adherence to the limitations placed on government by the Constitution -- in other words, conserving or retaining the principles on which this country was founded. When the index came out this time, the name had been changed to Freedom Index, with a note advising that because the title of "conservative" had been used by so many politicians to deceive the voters, the word had lost its original meaning!

Only one congressman, Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, and one senator, Tom Coburn, R-Oklahoma, earned a perfect score of 100%.

I find that rating all California congressmen together, they voted constitutionally just under 38% of the time; Democrats 26%, Republicans 61% on the same legislative issues. That's not acceptable considering the consequences. Rep. Jim Costa and Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer's scores added together are only 16% constitutional.

It seems to me that all legislators can disagree and still stay in the bounds of the Constitution, but every unconstitutional bill that is passed is actually a revolution on the installment plan. I am certain you won't like the result!

Glenn H. Rider
Hanford