Ron Pauls 15 minutes are up (Mother Jones Blog)

[InRareForm]

http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2011/08/ron-pauls-15-minutes-are

[DUNCANownsKOBE]

thats what the corporate media has been preaching and wants you to think, at first they tried ignoring him and that didnt work, then they tried saying that he "can't win" and that he's a "fringe candidate," now they want to give him a little publicity then say okay his time is up. nuh uh, daddy-O. Ron Paul is hands down the favorite to win the republican nomination, and there ain't a damn thing the neocons or gas companies can do about it.
Ron Paul took the Republicans' cookie in Iowa and made them like it

tee, hee

[Wild Cobra]

thats what the corporate media has been preaching and wants you to think, at first they tried ignoring him and that didnt work, then they tried saying that he "can't win" and that he's a "fringe candidate," now they want to give him a little publicity then say okay his time is up. nuh uh, daddy-O. Ron Paul is hands down the favorite to win the republican nomination, and there ain't a damn thing the neocons or gas companies can do about it.
You might be right.

[SnakeBoy]

at first they tried ignoring him and that didnt work

1988 campaign


then they tried saying that he "can't win" and that he's a "fringe candidate,"

2008 campaign


now they want to give him a little publicity then say okay his time is up.

2012 campaign


You're right, he just won't go away and there is nothing anyone can do about it.

[Wild Cobra]

1988 campaign



2008 campaign



2012 campaign


You're right, he just won't go away and there is nothing anyone can do about it.
LOL...

Still, if he can pull off the republican primary, he could easily be "president Paul."

Did Reagan quit after only receiving one electoral vote?

[SnakeBoy]

Still, if he can pull off the republican primary, he could easily be "president Paul."


But he can't.

Besides my man McCotter is just playing possum before he snatches the nomination from all the pretenders.

[Capt Bringdown]

Ron Paul is certainly to the left of Obummer, but then again who isn't?

[JoeChalupa]

He won't win the nomination and we all know it.

[RandomGuy]

Ron Paul is hands down the favorite to win the republican nomination

:rollin
This is not the first election cycle I have heard that from Paultards like you.

I noticed that you didn't address the points in the article.

Could Ron Paul Win in New Hampshire? (2007) (http://spurstalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=68942)

Ron Paul has more cash than McCain, third overall in GOP (2007) (http://spurstalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=73350)

et cetera

et cetera

et cetera

6 pages of threads, all from the 2008 election cycle, all with fanatics falling all over themselves to predict an "absolutely sure" GOP nomination, and then on to the White House.

The article in the OP said that he is a known quantity. People found out all they wanted to, and didn't vote for him the first two times he ran for president.

[RandomGuy]

there ain't a damn thing the neocons or gas companies can do about it.

The gas companies are rootin' for him...


Market Process Restoration Act of 1999. H.R. 1789 , 1999-05-13. Repeals United States antitrust law (which limits cartels and monopolies), with intent to restore market economy benefits.

Because free markets work so much better when controlled by monopolies and cartels.

[Spurminator]

http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2011/08/ron-paul-and-michele-bachmann

Manufacturing irrelevance
Aug 18th 2011, 14:40 by W.W. | IOWA CITY

WHEN I got to the Ames Straw Poll Saturday, my confidence that Michele Bachmann would win was immediately shaken by the size of the crowds clad in red Ron Paul t-shirts. Mr Paul's tents on the grounds of the Hilton Coliseum seemed more bustling than the others. The remarkably young Ron Paul team seemed especially motivated and efficient in herding fellow Paulites to the polls. And after the polls had closed, well more than half of the remaining participants waiting in the coliseum for the announcement of the results were in Ron-Paul red. I actually found myself mildly worried that Mr Paul would win, thereby establishing in the media's eyes the insignificance of the straw poll and ensuring a larger than normal stream of articles like this one (http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/08/iowas-straw-poll-suicide-ames-now-irrelevant/243566/) about the insanity of paying so much attention to the preferences of Iowans.

It turned out that I was not wrong to wonder if Ms Bachmann would really pull it off. It was a squeaker. Mr Paul fell short by less than 1% of the vote. But, to the surprise of absolutely no one, Ms Bachmann scored a legitimising media boost from her victory while Mr Paul's near-win scored him bupkis. Even Jon Stewart says so!

But wait! If Jon Stewart is pointedly chastising the media for ignoring Ron Paul, and Jon Stewart is himself part of the media, is the media really ignoring Ron Paul? It is, yes. The subject of Ron Paul remains as willfully overlooked as an American war crime, even as the question of the justice of Ron Paul-neglect has become a white hot topic. Even Mr Stewart's amusing segment, which persuasively makes the case that much of the media has in fact conspired to slight Mr Paul, is not about Mr Paul so much as whether there is too little in the media about Mr Paul. And the generous Mr Stewart is at odds with the prevailing opinion that the media's present pattern of Ron Paul non-coverage gets it just about right. Here's Kevin Drum (http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2011/08/no-ron-paul-doesnt-deserve-any-more-attention) of Mother Jones. Here's Steve Kornacki at Salon (http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/08/16/ron_paul_2012/). Here's Eric Zorn at the Chicago Tribune (http://blogs.chicagotribune.com/news_columnists_ezorn/2011/08/why-the-media-ignore-ron-paul.html). Here's Dan Amira at New York (http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2011/08/sorry_jon_stewart_ron_paul_is_1.html). They speak with one voice: Mr Paul is a marginal candidate with a proven base of highly-motivated supporters who turn out in droves for mock-electoral trifles, but he lacks the the broader base of support necessary to qualify as a contender worth covering.

Though I think there's something to this line of thought, I also think there's something insidiously circular about it. Perhaps the best way to grasp this complaint is to compare Mr Paul's coverage to Ms Bachmann's. Both serve in the House of Representatives, though Mr Paul's record of service is decades longer. Both are significant figures within the populist tea-party movement. Real Clear Politics's average of recent national polls (http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/us/republican_presidential_nomination-1452.html) puts Ms Bachmann and Mr Paul at 9.6% and 8.8% of the Republican vote, respectively. Of course, poll results aren't independent of press coverage. Ms Bachmann, for reasons known only to the gods, has been lavished with media attention, even before dipping a toe in the presidential water. Yet she remains at least as unviable a candidate as Mr Paul is said to be. Indeed, had the media hivemind determined early on to treat Ms Bachmann as a badly underqualified tenderfoot legislator who was for a time the tea-party flavour of the month, chances are she'd be noshing deep-dish with Herman Cain at 5%. And had the hivemind resolved to treat Mr Paul as a conservative elder statesmen whose memorable 2008 run (http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2007/12/ron-paul-blim-1/) for the GOP nomination prepared the ideological ground for the tea-party movement and helped get his son elected to the senate, he very well might look like a "top-tier" candidate in this election season's weak Republican field.

Anyway, as David Weigel of Slate noted yesterday (http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2011/08/17/poll_ron_paul_bests_bachmann_in_new_hampshire.html ), a new Magellan poll shows Mr Paul leading Ms Bachmann in New Hampshire. Here's how the candidates are stacking up in the Granite State:

Romney - 36%
Perry - 18%
Paul - 14%
Bachmann - 10%
Cain - 3%
Huntsman - 3%
Gingrich - 2%
Santorum - 1%

One of the arguments for Ron-Paul radio silence is that he has not built significantly on his 2008 support. But as Mr Weigel reports, "Paul's polling at about twice what he scored in New Hampshire last time. With Gary Johnson getting no traction, and with Democrats having no real cause to vote in their primary, that's a lot of libertarian and anti-war voters in play. One in seven voters back him; these are voters that Perry and Bachmann would like if they're going to surprise in New Hampshire and start playing in the other states."

None of this implies that Mr Paul deserves Ms Bachmann's ridiculous level of coverage. He doesn't. Rather, I think Ms Bachmann deserves to be treated like the unprepared also-ran she is. If a Ron Paul victory in Ames would have unmasked the straw poll as a colourful but politically irrelevant spectacle, Michele Bachmann's victory ought to have done the same. But it didn't because the MSM likes Michele Bachmann; it made Michele Bachmann. She's a photogenic embodiment of a certain polarising brand of conservatism that makes good copy and great TV. By contrast, Ron Paul is a goofily avuncular non-comformist ideologue who speaks unutterable truths about American foreign policy and delivers incessant indignant harangues about the monetary system that approximately no one in the media understands. I think Mr Paul's influence on the ideological cast of American conservatism has been underestimated and underreported, but to take even his influence, if not his candidacy, more seriously would require the talking haircuts and the newspaper typing corps to wrestle with a charged set of geopolitical and economic topics they would rather continue helping Americans not understand. So Ron Paul's a proven loser we can neglect with a clear conscience, while it is a matter of great public interest whether or not Michele Bachmann actually attended a family reunion, because, you see, the winner of the Ames straw poll is a real up-and-comer who's pulling down a fearsome 10% in national polls (http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/us/republican_presidential_nomination-1452.html), right up there with non-candidates Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin. Right up there with Ron Paul.

[Parker2112]

The gas companies are rootin' for him...



Because free markets work so much better when controlled by monopolies and cartels.

When will you learn that our campaign finance laws ENSURE that the best/easiest way for corps to secure monopolies is through big govt? Are you really naive enough to still think that the govt protects us from monopolies?

Important regulations are generally written by those who would be regulated, and then submitted through bought/paid politicians on both sides. We see the results all around us.

Are you dense enough to believe that this corrupt system provides you with consumer protection? Or prevents corps from looting our wealth, trashing our environment, and stealing our govt?

POWER MUST BE DECENTRALIZED IF WE ARE TO HAVE ANY FUTURE. That is what you need to wrap your head around, RG.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/17/opinion/17douthat.html


If consolidation creates a crisis, the answer is further consolidation. If economic centralization has unintended consequences, then you need political centralization to clean up the mess. If a government conspicuously fails to prevent a terrorist attack or a real estate bubble, then obviously it needs to be given more powers to prevent the next one, or the one after that.
The C.I.A. and F.B.I. didn’t stop 9/11, so now we have the Department of Homeland Security. Decades of government subsidies for homebuyers helped create the housing crash, so now the government is subsidizing the auto industry, the green-energy industry, the health care sector ...
The pattern applies to personnel as well as policy. If Robert Rubin’s mistakes helped create an out-of-control financial sector, then naturally you need Timothy Geithner and Lawrence Summers — Rubin’s protégés — to set things right. After all, who else are you going to trust with all that consolidated power? Ron Paul? Dennis Kucinich? Sarah Palin?
This is the perverse logic of meritocracy. Once a system grows sufficiently complex, it doesn’t matter how badly our best and brightest foul things up. Every crisis increases their authority, because they seem to be the only ones who understand the system well enough to fix it.

[Parker2112]

when you consolidate power, it makes the purchase of that power much easier. Coupled with our campaign finance failures, we have ensured corruption. We have already don ethat. The old tendency to trust the altruistic aims of public servants is completely outdated. Trust only that money flows right into the pockets of politicians and we will continue to be extracted until the system is no more.

Send the power back to the states, where public servants are much more visible and accountable. The founding fathers foresaw the potential, which is why they created checks and balances. Those checks are being eliminated by big money these days. The federal govt is a failed exercise. time to pull the pull the plug on this bloated beast.

[Parker2112]

and what about the monopoly over the currency that you hypocritically support in the Fed? Wear egg much?

4VrjSzERvcs

[Parker2112]

RG, the truth doesnt jibe with the shit you so sheepishly fear, and the big govt propoganda you mindlessly parrot.