fight4liberty
01-12-2008, 11:51 PM
Let me first recap what we know for sure at this stage of the campaign:
In the first phase of the campaign Ron Paul’s message spread like wildfire on the Intenet (primarily through YouTube) and brought us all together to form an army of die hard RP supporters. (I’m not talking here about those of us who already knew about RP before he announced he was running for president.)
Then we distinguished ourselves by pulling off the two record breaking money bombs culminating in the eye popping near $20 mil 4th quarter donations which got big time media attention.
We then entered, and are still continuing in, the next phase which basically involves translating our huge numbers on the Internet into votes in the primaries and caucuses.
This phase has a few significant barriers that the first phase did not have. For starters the vast majority of the voters to be reached with RP’s message do not have a connection to or do not use the Internet very much, but rather they rely almost exclusively on TV and the Old Media to get their news.
And second the Old Media employs various methods to prevent RP’s message from getting out to the public. (And, of course, the TV public isn’t even aware that this is happening. Compare this to the completely open and free wheeling access we all had on the Internet to discover RP and his message - yuk.)
Another of the methods the Old Media uses to stop RP’s message is the way they control the debates by giving him less time to speak and by giving him questions designed to distract him from his message. Unfortunately his message takes a lot more than the 8 or 9 minutes they typically give him.
And the only other major method of reaching the public is by TV advertising and they make it very expensive for even a 30 or 60 second ad so besides the high cost there is just no way that Ron can even begin to give the public enough information to understand his various “contraversial” positions.
So the strangle hold the Old Media has on the flow of information about RP has radically limited the public’s knowledge of his message so it is no wonder that so many people perceive him as too “extreme” or “radical” or a “kook”, etc. If the public doesn’t have enough information about why he takes these positions, what else can we expect?
Consider this, if someone came up to you, before you had gotten in depth knowledge about Ron Paul’s philosophy and positions, and he said, “There’s this guy running for president that wants to abolish the IRS and the income tax and the Dept of Education and the Environmental Protection Agency and the Dept of Home Land Security" , what would you have thought? Same as most people I would bet.
So there has been a very major change from the first phase to this second phase. The average TV public person doesn’t have a way to get in depth knowledge of RP like we did. That’s really the simplicity of it. And so far we haven’t figured out a way to provide the TV public in volume the knowledge they need to really understand RP and his message. Of course, we are making progress, but is there more we can do?
Like many of you I have spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to get around this Old Media black out and yesterday it hit me if we can’t bring them to the Internet/YouTube bring the “Internet” to them. OK, so what do I mean?
As I noted earlier most of us got our in depth knowledge from YouTube videos, right? So, you can put a lot of video footage on a DVD. And if we put the main information they need to know on DVDs and get it widely distributed they can discover what we all found out and become die hard RP supporters, too!
Of course, a few grass roots people have already put together some DVD’s and these are being given to MeetUp groups to be handed out by precinct canvassers and this is definitely a good action and will be continued. But is there another way to distribute them that would really get the volume up to the level it needs to be?
The official campaign must run TV commercials anyway, right? So, what if they added a line at the bottom of the TV screen that said:
“FREE DVD – Call 1-877- RonPaul or RonPaul2008.com”
Cool, huh? Of course, they would have to hire a professional call center to handle the high volume of incoming calls and to ship the free DVDs but the cost is usually per DVD ordered and shipped so it would be well worth it particularly because the people reaching to order it would by and large be “undecideds”. And each DVD would probably be viewed by others in the family or by friends as well.
And it could be done on a trial basis so that if there wasn’t enough volume of people ordering the DVD it could be discontinued.
And if the official campaign didn’t want to do it then if the grass roots people like the idea we can use a grass roots TV ad (like eLIB3RTY’s new commercial!) and run it ourselves!
So, rather than post another thread that expresses a new idea that never goes anywhere, I've made this a POLLING THREAD.
Thanks!
In the first phase of the campaign Ron Paul’s message spread like wildfire on the Intenet (primarily through YouTube) and brought us all together to form an army of die hard RP supporters. (I’m not talking here about those of us who already knew about RP before he announced he was running for president.)
Then we distinguished ourselves by pulling off the two record breaking money bombs culminating in the eye popping near $20 mil 4th quarter donations which got big time media attention.
We then entered, and are still continuing in, the next phase which basically involves translating our huge numbers on the Internet into votes in the primaries and caucuses.
This phase has a few significant barriers that the first phase did not have. For starters the vast majority of the voters to be reached with RP’s message do not have a connection to or do not use the Internet very much, but rather they rely almost exclusively on TV and the Old Media to get their news.
And second the Old Media employs various methods to prevent RP’s message from getting out to the public. (And, of course, the TV public isn’t even aware that this is happening. Compare this to the completely open and free wheeling access we all had on the Internet to discover RP and his message - yuk.)
Another of the methods the Old Media uses to stop RP’s message is the way they control the debates by giving him less time to speak and by giving him questions designed to distract him from his message. Unfortunately his message takes a lot more than the 8 or 9 minutes they typically give him.
And the only other major method of reaching the public is by TV advertising and they make it very expensive for even a 30 or 60 second ad so besides the high cost there is just no way that Ron can even begin to give the public enough information to understand his various “contraversial” positions.
So the strangle hold the Old Media has on the flow of information about RP has radically limited the public’s knowledge of his message so it is no wonder that so many people perceive him as too “extreme” or “radical” or a “kook”, etc. If the public doesn’t have enough information about why he takes these positions, what else can we expect?
Consider this, if someone came up to you, before you had gotten in depth knowledge about Ron Paul’s philosophy and positions, and he said, “There’s this guy running for president that wants to abolish the IRS and the income tax and the Dept of Education and the Environmental Protection Agency and the Dept of Home Land Security" , what would you have thought? Same as most people I would bet.
So there has been a very major change from the first phase to this second phase. The average TV public person doesn’t have a way to get in depth knowledge of RP like we did. That’s really the simplicity of it. And so far we haven’t figured out a way to provide the TV public in volume the knowledge they need to really understand RP and his message. Of course, we are making progress, but is there more we can do?
Like many of you I have spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to get around this Old Media black out and yesterday it hit me if we can’t bring them to the Internet/YouTube bring the “Internet” to them. OK, so what do I mean?
As I noted earlier most of us got our in depth knowledge from YouTube videos, right? So, you can put a lot of video footage on a DVD. And if we put the main information they need to know on DVDs and get it widely distributed they can discover what we all found out and become die hard RP supporters, too!
Of course, a few grass roots people have already put together some DVD’s and these are being given to MeetUp groups to be handed out by precinct canvassers and this is definitely a good action and will be continued. But is there another way to distribute them that would really get the volume up to the level it needs to be?
The official campaign must run TV commercials anyway, right? So, what if they added a line at the bottom of the TV screen that said:
“FREE DVD – Call 1-877- RonPaul or RonPaul2008.com”
Cool, huh? Of course, they would have to hire a professional call center to handle the high volume of incoming calls and to ship the free DVDs but the cost is usually per DVD ordered and shipped so it would be well worth it particularly because the people reaching to order it would by and large be “undecideds”. And each DVD would probably be viewed by others in the family or by friends as well.
And it could be done on a trial basis so that if there wasn’t enough volume of people ordering the DVD it could be discontinued.
And if the official campaign didn’t want to do it then if the grass roots people like the idea we can use a grass roots TV ad (like eLIB3RTY’s new commercial!) and run it ourselves!
So, rather than post another thread that expresses a new idea that never goes anywhere, I've made this a POLLING THREAD.
Thanks!