a2planet2
07-08-2007, 03:39 AM
The Ron Paul campaign is focusing on winning over the Republican Party.
That's a good strategy. But then, there are also many people on the political Left who will support Ron Paul when they learn what he is doing and why. It's not as important as the Right just because a Right vote for Paul takes a vote away from another Republican candidate, whereas a vote from a Democrat does not. But still, it's good to do what we can.
It is difficult for many on the left to be persuaded to vote for Ron Paul in the primary. But here are some high-priority points to make whenever it is attempted:
-Be clear that you can only vote in one primary. Any vote for Ron Paul with another vote on the ballot for a democrat will void the entire ballot without your knowledge. Everyone who votes for Ron Paul needs to know how to vote correctly in the primary! In most states the Democrat must take the bold step of registering as a Republican and cancelling their membership in the Democrat party to vote for Ron Paul in the primary. In some states like Michigan and Georgia they have open primaries where your given a ballot with both partie's primaries on it, and if you vote in more than one--at all--your ballot doesn't count.
-Be clear why voting for Ron Paul is more important than voting for their Representatives. Voting in a primary at all is a major step for people, much less the Republican primary for a liberal! Conditions depend on your state, but in any case you will have to persuade your liberal friends that voting for Ron Paul in the primary is more important than voting for their preferred Democrat candidates for state and local offices. That's a big step for liberals! So you have to specifically say, "Yes, I am seriously saying you should vote for Ron Paul in the Republican primary." So they will know how serious we really are.
[B]-Answer the "why is he a Republican" question smoothly. If you get stuck on this question you've lost. It's really simple: What good are stated beliefs if the candidate doesn't have the record to support them? Ron Paul's Congressional record is absolutely consistent, while all the other guys are hypocrites for all kinds of reasons. That alone shows what Ron Paul's character is. While the media grilled all the "top tier" candidates about all their hypocrisies they had NOTHING on Ron Paul. And when you listen to his message, it's really quite good.
Prove that he CAN win. Democrats will endlessly throw the "he doesn't have a chance" crap at you. Throw back:
-Paul won the all the public post-debate polls
-Paul is more popular than Paris Hilton on the Internet
-Paul had more supporters to see him in Iowa than all his rivals put together
-Paul has more than double the Youtube subscribers of any candidate
-Paul has more money than John McCain in his campaign "war chest"
Issues:
Here are some thoughts based on a letter I wrote:
Yes, you are correct that he considers himself a conservative and makes no apologies for it.
But don't doubt that Paul is a master of politics. He's been in Congress 20 years and he wins by landslides, and the reason is that Paul's definition of conservatism is completely different from what the Republican party has become.
Many liberals don't realize what's happened in the Republican party over the last few years. First off they got beaten really badly in 2006. All of the local and state people are furious about what the Bush regime has done to destroy the party, but they don't talk about it because to do so would be heresy. Behind the scenes, Ron Paul is quietly turning the party against the neocons.
The Michigan GOP is furious because the Bush regime has driven so many people out of the party that they can't raise money anymore. Although the big-money players are still on board, the rank and file GOP absolutely despises the neocons. Meanwhile the neocons are all infiltrating the Democrats--look at Robert Kagan's
endorsement of Obama, a candidate who actually claims on his own campaign website that his Iraq policy is: "If the Iraqis are successful in meeting the 13 benchmarks for progress laid out by the Bush Administration, this plan also allows for the temporary suspension of the redeployment, provided Congress agrees that the benchmarks have been met."
Really! http://www.barackobama.com/issues/iraq/
Ultimately though, Obama's stance is irrelevant because the Democrats will pick Hillary. Nevermind the slaughter in Yugoslavia or the sanctions on Iraq throughout Clinton's term: people associate "Clinton" with "peace."
But Hillary is a warmonger. To see the difference between Hillary and Paul, just look at how Hillary explained in the CNN debate about deciding to go to war. She said she mistakenly trusted "President" Bush.
Well a lot of Americans didn't trust Bush in the first place, including Ron Paul, who voted against authorizing action against Iraq.
The thing about the Ron Paul campaign is that while the Democrats don't know who among their candidates is really anti-war--I mean, Kucinich and Gravel are anti-war, but they have very little support--Ron Paul is quietly taking over his entire party. All the old conservatives who are furious about what Bush has done to their party are flocking toward Paul. The party threw their own Obama into the race--Fred Thompson--but nobody is buying him because his stated beliefs are totally contradictory to his record. Ron Paul's record on the other hand is pure as driven snow.
Paul has a few issues that liberals won't like: abortion, illegal immigration, and health care are the big three. But what liberals don't realize is that he is NOT a
conservative fascist.
On abortion, Paul says, "the government shouldn't really be in charge of this." He considers himself pro-life but come on: he's a conservative Christian Texan obstetrician who has delivered over 4,000 babies, who can blame him for being pro-life? Most importantly, his stance is that it should be a state issue, not a federal issue. That alone makes him more moderate than most candidates calling themselves "pro-life."
On illegal immigration, Paul's position is, "If we have a law we should enforce it."
That's all there is to it. We pay for a massive immigration bureaucracy when our economy is in trouble instead of enforcing our own immigration law. This isn't "hating immigrants" it is obeying policy.
The other big issue is health care. "SiCKO" started off with a scathing indictment of the insurance and pharmaceutical lobbies--something Paul would completely agree with, having never accepted their money--but then devoted most of the film to making the case of governent-managed care. Paul's position is, "Excuse me, but what evidence do we have of government management having ever been effective?"
This is what liberals need to understand about health care:
The insurance and pharmaceutical companies have ALREADY INFILTRATED government offices. Maybe the Bush regime is to blame but that doesn't matter: what matters is that the people are already there. If we were to turn health care over to the government, what we'd actually be doing is empowering the bureaucracy that the insurance/pharma industries have already taken control over.
This is why Paul's message: LIMITED GOVERNMENT is so important.
Ron Paul is anti-war, anti-globalization, and ardently pro-freedom. His record of defending the Constitution is perfect.
This is how we know we can trust him to be true to his word. How can we deny a candidate who has such a proven record?
Trust Paul. He knows what is really going on and he knows how to market his platform to win the Republican party. He is making great progress and he is upsetting the status quo in ways the anti-war Democrats could hardly imagine. He is rallying the Right against the war! We should be grateful.
Even if the Paul campaign is not as great as I insist it is, just imagine if Paul won the GOP nomination: we'd have a lot less to worry about next November.
That's a good strategy. But then, there are also many people on the political Left who will support Ron Paul when they learn what he is doing and why. It's not as important as the Right just because a Right vote for Paul takes a vote away from another Republican candidate, whereas a vote from a Democrat does not. But still, it's good to do what we can.
It is difficult for many on the left to be persuaded to vote for Ron Paul in the primary. But here are some high-priority points to make whenever it is attempted:
-Be clear that you can only vote in one primary. Any vote for Ron Paul with another vote on the ballot for a democrat will void the entire ballot without your knowledge. Everyone who votes for Ron Paul needs to know how to vote correctly in the primary! In most states the Democrat must take the bold step of registering as a Republican and cancelling their membership in the Democrat party to vote for Ron Paul in the primary. In some states like Michigan and Georgia they have open primaries where your given a ballot with both partie's primaries on it, and if you vote in more than one--at all--your ballot doesn't count.
-Be clear why voting for Ron Paul is more important than voting for their Representatives. Voting in a primary at all is a major step for people, much less the Republican primary for a liberal! Conditions depend on your state, but in any case you will have to persuade your liberal friends that voting for Ron Paul in the primary is more important than voting for their preferred Democrat candidates for state and local offices. That's a big step for liberals! So you have to specifically say, "Yes, I am seriously saying you should vote for Ron Paul in the Republican primary." So they will know how serious we really are.
[B]-Answer the "why is he a Republican" question smoothly. If you get stuck on this question you've lost. It's really simple: What good are stated beliefs if the candidate doesn't have the record to support them? Ron Paul's Congressional record is absolutely consistent, while all the other guys are hypocrites for all kinds of reasons. That alone shows what Ron Paul's character is. While the media grilled all the "top tier" candidates about all their hypocrisies they had NOTHING on Ron Paul. And when you listen to his message, it's really quite good.
Prove that he CAN win. Democrats will endlessly throw the "he doesn't have a chance" crap at you. Throw back:
-Paul won the all the public post-debate polls
-Paul is more popular than Paris Hilton on the Internet
-Paul had more supporters to see him in Iowa than all his rivals put together
-Paul has more than double the Youtube subscribers of any candidate
-Paul has more money than John McCain in his campaign "war chest"
Issues:
Here are some thoughts based on a letter I wrote:
Yes, you are correct that he considers himself a conservative and makes no apologies for it.
But don't doubt that Paul is a master of politics. He's been in Congress 20 years and he wins by landslides, and the reason is that Paul's definition of conservatism is completely different from what the Republican party has become.
Many liberals don't realize what's happened in the Republican party over the last few years. First off they got beaten really badly in 2006. All of the local and state people are furious about what the Bush regime has done to destroy the party, but they don't talk about it because to do so would be heresy. Behind the scenes, Ron Paul is quietly turning the party against the neocons.
The Michigan GOP is furious because the Bush regime has driven so many people out of the party that they can't raise money anymore. Although the big-money players are still on board, the rank and file GOP absolutely despises the neocons. Meanwhile the neocons are all infiltrating the Democrats--look at Robert Kagan's
endorsement of Obama, a candidate who actually claims on his own campaign website that his Iraq policy is: "If the Iraqis are successful in meeting the 13 benchmarks for progress laid out by the Bush Administration, this plan also allows for the temporary suspension of the redeployment, provided Congress agrees that the benchmarks have been met."
Really! http://www.barackobama.com/issues/iraq/
Ultimately though, Obama's stance is irrelevant because the Democrats will pick Hillary. Nevermind the slaughter in Yugoslavia or the sanctions on Iraq throughout Clinton's term: people associate "Clinton" with "peace."
But Hillary is a warmonger. To see the difference between Hillary and Paul, just look at how Hillary explained in the CNN debate about deciding to go to war. She said she mistakenly trusted "President" Bush.
Well a lot of Americans didn't trust Bush in the first place, including Ron Paul, who voted against authorizing action against Iraq.
The thing about the Ron Paul campaign is that while the Democrats don't know who among their candidates is really anti-war--I mean, Kucinich and Gravel are anti-war, but they have very little support--Ron Paul is quietly taking over his entire party. All the old conservatives who are furious about what Bush has done to their party are flocking toward Paul. The party threw their own Obama into the race--Fred Thompson--but nobody is buying him because his stated beliefs are totally contradictory to his record. Ron Paul's record on the other hand is pure as driven snow.
Paul has a few issues that liberals won't like: abortion, illegal immigration, and health care are the big three. But what liberals don't realize is that he is NOT a
conservative fascist.
On abortion, Paul says, "the government shouldn't really be in charge of this." He considers himself pro-life but come on: he's a conservative Christian Texan obstetrician who has delivered over 4,000 babies, who can blame him for being pro-life? Most importantly, his stance is that it should be a state issue, not a federal issue. That alone makes him more moderate than most candidates calling themselves "pro-life."
On illegal immigration, Paul's position is, "If we have a law we should enforce it."
That's all there is to it. We pay for a massive immigration bureaucracy when our economy is in trouble instead of enforcing our own immigration law. This isn't "hating immigrants" it is obeying policy.
The other big issue is health care. "SiCKO" started off with a scathing indictment of the insurance and pharmaceutical lobbies--something Paul would completely agree with, having never accepted their money--but then devoted most of the film to making the case of governent-managed care. Paul's position is, "Excuse me, but what evidence do we have of government management having ever been effective?"
This is what liberals need to understand about health care:
The insurance and pharmaceutical companies have ALREADY INFILTRATED government offices. Maybe the Bush regime is to blame but that doesn't matter: what matters is that the people are already there. If we were to turn health care over to the government, what we'd actually be doing is empowering the bureaucracy that the insurance/pharma industries have already taken control over.
This is why Paul's message: LIMITED GOVERNMENT is so important.
Ron Paul is anti-war, anti-globalization, and ardently pro-freedom. His record of defending the Constitution is perfect.
This is how we know we can trust him to be true to his word. How can we deny a candidate who has such a proven record?
Trust Paul. He knows what is really going on and he knows how to market his platform to win the Republican party. He is making great progress and he is upsetting the status quo in ways the anti-war Democrats could hardly imagine. He is rallying the Right against the war! We should be grateful.
Even if the Paul campaign is not as great as I insist it is, just imagine if Paul won the GOP nomination: we'd have a lot less to worry about next November.