A blimp is a BAD IDEA - here is why

[cajuncocoa]

It helps feed the narrative that Ron is quirky and an odd ball... you didn't see any other candidates with a blimp did you?

Matt, I find it hard to believe you've ever taken even one Marketing class, much less minored in Marketing after reading this comment from you.

[Suzanimal]

I don't think I ever +rep someone who lives in the South, unless I have been drinking.

You must've been $#@!faced the night you repped me.

[Danke]

You must've been $#@!faced the night you repped me.

That wasn't me.

[Suzanimal]

That wasn't me.

I can prove it.

[Danke]

I can prove it.

DNA?

[Suzanimal]

DNA?

"Danke Dollars"

[bunklocoempire]

I don't think I ever +rep someone who lives in the South, unless I have been drinking.

Uff da.

[jmdrake]

And they don't make up enough people to win a Republican primary. So if you want to win a Republican primary then you have to market to the Republican base..... duh.....

Well if that base is booing your candidate when he talks about the golden rule and war then you have to pull in somebody else from somewhere.

It helps feed the narrative that Ron is quirky and an odd ball... you didn't see any other candidates with a blimp did you?

Actually another candidates, Huckabee I believe, totally ripped off the "Ron Paul's air force" idea at least in Tennessee. I saw airplanes pulling "Vote for Huckabee" signs righ up to the day of election.

[Matt Collins]

Matt, I find it hard to believe you've ever taken even one Marketing class, much less minored in Marketing after reading this comment from you.

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/personal-incredulity

[Matt Collins]

Well if that base is booing your candidate when he talks about the golden rule and war then you have to pull in somebody else from somewhere.

No, it means you shape your message so that the audience doesn't boo you.

[jmdrake]

No, it means you shape your message so that the audience doesn't boo you.

If you're not the candidate you like the ability to "shape the message." So as if you are working in the campaign your job is to find people most responsive to your candidate's message since you can't shape it.

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/black-or-white

[acptulsa]

No, it means you shape your message so that the audience doesn't boo you.

We can't afford to buy Fox from Rupert Murdoch.

The target audience you think we should focus on to the exclusion of every other American will vote for Rin Tin Tin if Rupert Murdoch tells them to (Santorum was hardly smarter), Rupert Murdoch won't tell them to vote for someone who might actually represent them, and we can't afford to buy Fox News.

We tell you we are growing the party, you see numbers proving the party is growing and you know the only area of growth it has is us, and in all your minor marketing moguldom you spend all your time telling us you have no time because you're too busy telling us we don't count and our new recruits don't count.

If Henry Ford had been stupid enough to refuse to sell cars to people who had never owned a car before, you'd have never heard of Henry Ford. You'd be more likely to have heard of E.L. Cord or Erksine than Henry Ford.

If Henry Ford had been stupid enough to refuse to sell cars to people who had never owned a car before, you'd have never heard of Henry Ford.

You're trying to deflect us from success and redirect us into complete irrelevance.

And you seem proud of it.

yourlogicalfallacyis spending all your time trying to torpedo our initiatives instead of coming up with complimentary initiatives has led to failure, and will continue to. Provided we're stupid enough to listen to you.

To follow your guidance is to put all our hopes in one basket--and the name of that basket is, I sure hope Rupert Murdoch likes Rand better than his father. I don't know about you, but I'm not stupid enough to hold my breath on that one.

[cajuncocoa]

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/personal-incredulity

I gave you a neg rep for this. The whole "logical fallacy" response gets old, especially since (in this case) you snipped off the part of my quote that explained why I expressed "personal incredulity". Your credibility suffers when this is the only kind of response you can give, therefore, your reputation took a hit.

[cajuncocoa]

No, it means you shape your message so that the audience doesn't boo you.

You could always have had Ron come out sounding like John "Warmonger" McCain, or Rick "Holier-than-Thou" Santorum. The audience would have been jumping out of their seats to cheer him on (that's the GOP you want to impress!)

But that's not Ron. Ron Paul, Inc. might have been able to convince him he was losing, but you couldn't give him a reason to sell his soul. Thank God.

[willwash]

Yes, yes we did.

Heady days, united in one common purpose.

I miss 2007, badly.

The good old days FTW!

[amy31416]

No, it means you shape your message so that the audience doesn't boo you.

Are you getting "booed" as an alleged rep/liaison to various campaigns, or do you think that "we" adore you?

[acptulsa]

Are you getting "booed" as an alleged rep/liaison to various campaigns, or do you think that "we" adore you?

Who, us?

Haven't you figured out yet we don't count? We are the new generation of Republican supervoters, but we don't count.

We aren't an audience, we're Collins' Roadies. We are serfs to be used and abused. Our job is to come up with--and finance, and implement--out of the box ideas so Collins can claim full credit for them if they work and lambaste us about them if they don't.

He doesn't have to craft his message for us. Unless he isn't being abusive enough to keep us in our subservient place, of course.

[jmdrake]

The good old days FTW!

Thank you for posting that! This is worth more the all the focus groups in the world. This movement needs to recapture its passion.

[willwash]

Thank you AF for rekindling the fire in the old guard. Don't listen to the little $#@!s who say "thanks for getting this going, but the grownups will take over now." This is OUR revolution, and it lives on despite the attempts to homogenize and commoditize it into some pussyfoot empty shell version of itself.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the moneybombs. It's particularly depressing to me to see the official campaigns "schedule" a moneybomb because of an invention of the grassroots, then milk it by extending it through a weekend. Makes me sick. The whole point of the Remember the 5th of November and the Tea Party moneybombs (That's how the present day "tea party" movement got its start btw...from the Ron Paul grassroots) was to show the political power of a decentralized, motivated grassroots base...and those moneybombs raised orders of magnitude more than the McRib ones we saw in the 2012 campaign.

So if the political "experts" would stop telling us how insignificant and weak that base is, I would appreciate it. You're like the guy who joined the Patriot side in 1782 pissing on the Valley Forge veterans.

[acptulsa]

yourlogicalfallacyis-youdon'tknowhowtodoanythingbutloseagainbutthinkwe' llputyouincharge

[mosquitobite]

No, it means you shape your message so that the audience doesn't boo you.

oh wait... isn't this exactly what Tom Woods said that the job of a campaign manager was... the one you and Benton got all butthurt about because he had the gall to say it... ON THE INTERNET?!?

So you have one or two choices with this line of thought, Matt.

Either you and Benton thought Ron Paul was a horrible candidate that couldn't be taught to tailor his message so therefore didn't try. Instead you settled for 2nd place.
or
Benton failed as a campaign manager.

What am I missing as an option?

[mosquitobite]

The good old days FTW!

This was either late 2007 or 2008. Our local meet-up:

[willwash]

This was either late 2007 or 2008. Our local meet-up:

The fire, intensity and authenticity of the 2008 campaign were so real and invigorating. I've never felt more alive than in the period of about May 2007 to January 2008 or so.

It still chokes me up looking back on all we accomplished. Look at them! United, not by professional campaign staffers and feelgood cookie cutter platitudes, but by our common love of liberty, each group expressing it in its own unique way, tailored to the local community. It was the ultimate "f**k you!" to the establishment.

I respect what Collins is trying to do--that fire and intensity are enormous weapons at Ron/Rand's disposal, but he and his ilk need to realize that by their very nature any attempt to harness, channel or control these weapons will backfire and ultimately serve to extinguish that very fire. Rand 2016 is going to have to come to grips with this if it is to succeed.

[jmdrake]

The fire, intensity and authenticity of the 2008 campaign were so real and invigorating. I've never felt more alive than in the period of about May 2007 to January 2008 or so.

It still chokes me up looking back on all we accomplished. Look at them! United, not by professional campaign staffers and feelgood cookie cutter platitudes, but by our common love of liberty, each group expressing it in its own unique way, tailored to the local community. It was the ultimate "f**k you!" to the establishment.

I respect what Collins is trying to do--that fire and intensity are enormous weapons at Ron/Rand's disposal, but he and his ilk need to realize that by their very nature any attempt to harness, channel or control these weapons will backfire and ultimately serve to extinguish that very fire. Rand 2016 is going to have to come to grips with this if it is to succeed.

2012 was different than 2008 and 2016 will be different as well. I hope the grassroots will be able to recognize and capitalize on those differences. It's no longer going to be about "Who is Ron Paul"? People know who he is..and Rand. Taking over the talk radio airwaves with intelligent calls (something one of our local leaders thought about in 2008 but didn't get implemented) will be very important. I personally sensed the frustration of people wanting to do "sign waves" even back in 2008 when Ron Paul was already pretty well known and nobody showing up for phone banking. One critical error the campaign made was counting on hordes of people to turn into hordes of volunteers willing to do phone banking and door knocking. Life just doesn't work that way. I'm not exactly sure what to do, but I do know that professionals need to be hired for each state to make sure the mundane things nobody wants to do gets done. (Gathering enough signatures for ballot access for example.) And in some cases, robocalls can do the work. We don't need humans to remind people who are Ron Paul supporters to go vote. Let a machine do that. Or send a reminder text. And for the work that volunteers have to do, maybe have some kind of incentive program. A free t-shirt for X number of completed calls for example.

[cajuncocoa]

It helps feed the narrative that Ron is quirky and an odd ball... you didn't see any other candidates with a blimp did you?

Matt, I find it hard to believe you've ever taken even one Marketing class, much less minored in Marketing after reading this comment from you.

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/personal-incredulity

I gave you a neg rep for this. The whole "logical fallacy" response gets old, especially since (in this case) you snipped off the part of my quote that explained why I expressed "personal incredulity". Your credibility suffers when this is the only kind of response you can give, therefore, your reputation took a hit.

I'm going to give you (Matt) the benefit of a longer explanation now that I'm on the laptop...

You started by saying "you didn't see any other candidates with a blimp did you?"

This does not support your theory that the blimp is a bad idea; in fact, it does just the opposite. (That's what I meant when I said "I find it hard to believe you've ever taken even one Marketing class, much less minored in Marketing after reading this comment from you." And I thought my meaning was obvious.)

When your advertising campaign looks just like everyone else's, people get bored. They stop watching. They throw your brochures away. They hang up on your phone calls. That's not to say you shouldn't do phone banking or mail-outs in a political campaign, but when you have the opportunity to do something different, something that hasn't been done before, something that might make people talk and will get attention for your candidate.....you do it.

You almost can't avoid seeing something up in the sky with a message on it: a blimp, an airplane with a banner, etc. You can't hang up on that or throw it in the trash. You can't change the channel or turn it off. It's up there, you see the message; and after a while, you would begin to wonder (if you didn't know already) who is this Ron Paul person whose name is on that blimp in the sky?

I live in a suburb of New Orleans. My city hosts Super Bowls, Sugar Bowls, NCAA Championship Games, NBA All-Star Games, Mardi Gras, a major golf tournament, Final Four tournaments, New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, and many other events. At every one of those events there is a blimp flying over the city: Direct TV, Bud Light, Met Life, Virgin....all of these brands have thought it was worthwhile to advertise that way. I guess they're nuts, right? And guess what? I still remember them out of all the advertising that I see during Super Bowl and Sugar Bowl week. Why? Because it's different.

[acptulsa]

Why? Because it's different.

I'm not sure he's saying it didn't get Ron Paul attention. I think his problem is it gave Fox the chance to make fun of Ron Paul.

And God knows Fox wasn't making fun of Ron Paul one little bit before that blimp appeared...

Collins exhorts us to play by the rules while Preibus is busy changing the rules. Yet Matt will deny to his dying day that he was--wittingly or unwittingly--helping Preibus out with that.

[Anti Federalist]

I gave you a neg rep for this. The whole "logical fallacy" response gets old, especially since (in this case) you snipped off the part of my quote that explained why I expressed "personal incredulity". Your credibility suffers when this is the only kind of response you can give, therefore, your reputation took a hit.

So did I...really tiresome.

[mosquitobite]

The fire, intensity and authenticity of the 2008 campaign were so real and invigorating. I've never felt more alive than in the period of about May 2007 to January 2008 or so.

It still chokes me up looking back on all we accomplished. Look at them! United, not by professional campaign staffers and feelgood cookie cutter platitudes, but by our common love of liberty, each group expressing it in its own unique way, tailored to the local community. It was the ultimate "f**k you!" to the establishment.

I agree with you about 2008 and disagree with jmdrake that 2012 had the same fire. I was just as involved then (have pictures of me dressed as Lady Liberty in Ron Paul gear) but the intensity and the connectedness just wasn't there. By now, "they" had tailored the message so that it was Republicans only. In 2008, many of the people in the meet-up had been liberal, apathetic, anarchist, libertarian, and republican. That's what made it so unique and appealing, imo. It was the idea that PRINCIPLED leadership could unite us that made it such a fire to the grassroots.

Then came along the marketers and in 2012 made him "Republican". I do think we could have won Iowa & NH, and might actually have.

Our enemy is still the media. If we can't figure out a way to breach that for 2016, TPTB will never let it happen. Think if we had an unbiased media that reported on the 11/5 and 12/16 moneybombs. Think about had they made it headline news that some outside candidate has TONS of support and people should check him out. Alas, we know that's not how the story was written.

What's different now? In '07/'08 we had meet up. By 2012 Facebook was the major connector, but FB seems to encourage couch activism versus really getting together and uniting a movement.

What we need to be discussing NOW and getting going is our alternatives. Thinking outside the box, how do we recreate the passion of '07/'08 - "grassroots liaisons" aside...

[Anti Federalist]

Well, the only issue I have with that, is the target audience.

"Mainstream" GOPers hate and do not want freedom any more than Marxist democrats do.

We're trying to sell freedom candidates to people who emphatically and repeatedly made it clear they "do not want".

So I still say that the unconventional means of getting new blood into the system, people who DO want freedom, is the only way this is ever going to work politically.

Which is, needless to say, next to impossible, even if you win, you lose (Ronald Reagan anybody?).

So I hold almost zero hope that anything will ever be accomplished politically.

The system has "the system" pretty well locked down.

2012 was different than 2008 and 2016 will be different as well. I hope the grassroots will be able to recognize and capitalize on those differences. It's no longer going to be about "Who is Ron Paul"? People know who he is..and Rand. Taking over the talk radio airwaves with intelligent calls (something one of our local leaders thought about in 2008 but didn't get implemented) will be very important. I personally sensed the frustration of people wanting to do "sign waves" even back in 2008 when Ron Paul was already pretty well known and nobody showing up for phone banking. One critical error the campaign made was counting on hordes of people to turn into hordes of volunteers willing to do phone banking and door knocking. Life just doesn't work that way. I'm not exactly sure what to do, but I do know that professionals need to be hired for each state to make sure the mundane things nobody wants to do gets done. (Gathering enough signatures for ballot access for example.) And in some cases, robocalls can do the work. We don't need humans to remind people who are Ron Paul supporters to go vote. Let a machine do that. Or send a reminder text. And for the work that volunteers have to do, maybe have some kind of incentive program. A free t-shirt for X number of completed calls for example.

[Anti Federalist]

I agree with you about 2008 and disagree with jmdrake that 2012 had the same fire. I was just as involved then (have pictures of me dressed as Lady Liberty in Ron Paul gear) but the intensity and the connectedness just wasn't there. By now, "they" had tailored the message so that it was Republicans only. In 2008, many of the people in the meet-up had been liberal, apathetic, anarchist, libertarian, and republican. That's what made it so unique and appealing, imo. It was the idea that PRINCIPLED leadership could unite us that made it such a fire to the grassroots.

Then came along the marketers and in 2012 made him "Republican". I do think we could have won Iowa & NH, and might actually have.

Our enemy is still the media. If we can't figure out a way to breach that for 2016, TPTB will never let it happen. Think if we had an unbiased media that reported on the 11/5 and 12/16 moneybombs. Think about had they made it headline news that some outside candidate has TONS of support and people should check him out. Alas, we know that's not how the story was written.

What's different now? In '07/'08 we had meet up. By 2012 Facebook was the major connector, but FB seems to encourage couch activism versus really getting together and uniting a movement.

What we need to be discussing NOW and getting going is our alternatives. Thinking outside the box, how do we recreate the passion of '07/'08 - "grassroots liaisons" aside...