Ron Paul is pulling in record amounts of cash… again. He’s already pulled in $3.5 million today.
Update: More than $6,000,000!
This post is in: Politics
Ron Paul is pulling in record amounts of cash… again. He’s already pulled in $3.5 million today.
Update: More than $6,000,000!
Comments are closed.
Jay
What happens to all of that money when his campaign goes blooie?
demimondian
Um…the presence of the money means that his campaign won’t go _blooie_.
I’m looking forward to the R ticket next year. The question is whether it’s Paul-Huckabee or Huckabee-Paul. I’m betting on the latter.
SGEW
Who cares about the cash? They have a BLIMP!! OMG!
Seriously, tho’ . . . I’m simply giddy over the possibility of Ron Paul getting a significant fraction of the caucus votes (NH?) and/or splitting off for an independent run. We all know that he’s a preposterous contender for President, but I can’t get enough of everyone’s reaction to his popularity: pure disbelief mixed with an uneasy dismissal . . . can you imagine how the chattering class would react when he keeps on campaigning well past the primary season? When his fanatical fanboys storm the Republican convention with, oh, I don’t know, giant robots screaming “Gold standard! Gold standard!” or something? Between Lieberman endorsing McCain, Huckabee’s (not-so-surprising) rise, and Paul’s enduring popularity there’s a lot of exploding heads around.
To tell the truth, I’m only following the electoral politics for their comedic value now. Alan Keyes! Mike Gravel! Ron Paul! Magnificent.
grumpy realist
Oh good god. The brain fries at the possibility of a Huckabee-Paul slate. (I’m still trying to figure out what their platform would be. Pro-life, getting rid of the IRS, and the Fair Tax are the only places there seems to be any possible intersections in the Venn diagram of their individual positions.)
It would also be a hoot to see if the slate would hold together until the election. And watching the rest of the Republican party go totally apeshit would be one for the history books.
Incertus (Brian)
Tell that to Howard Dean.
pseudonymous in nc
One advantage to Ron Paul as VP? He’d probably respect the constitutional limits of the office and do nothing but chair the Senate. No more fourthbranch.
But given the PaulPodPeople, I’m reminded of Chris Rock’s line about why there’ll never be a black VP.
Robert Johnston
Well, with Huckabee trying to reposition himself as hardcore on illegal immigration, and Paul having the absurd gold standard fetish, maybe we could have a hybrid compromise policy in which we round up illegal immigrants into concentration camps and use gold panned through slave labor as the backing for the dollar.
Elvis Elvisberg
Yes, Huckabee-Paul would make a lot of sense. Or maybe Alan Keyes will win the nomination and pick Christine Todd Whitman as his VP.
4tehlulz
I am intrigued by your ideas and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Psycheout
A fool and his money are easily parted.
STEVEinSC
They are the only two repuke candidates who distance themselves from bush’s war-mongering. Huck knew what he was doing and to whom he was communicating with the “Bush’s arrogant, bunker mentality” comment. I think there are a lot of conservatives out there who are not comfortable with “war without end” and trashing the constitution.
Ted
May Paul cause as much damage as possible to the republican coalition.
Davis X. Machina
The inevitable Paulista bolt from God’s Own Party still will only be the second-best-funded third-party run in history, because of Mr. Perot’s adventures.
Jake
sHucks would only back that if the illegal immigrants had HIV or AIDS.
The apeshitness will end when they have a Chosen One so don’t go over board with the popcorn purchases. I don’t care what they’re saying now about voting Democratic or not voting at all, 99.9% of those idiots are too far gone with the We Have 2 Beat The DemoNcRats GroupThink to do anything but follow whoever gets nomed. There’d be a week max of really amusing ZOMGing and O noesing, but before the month is out they’ll convince themselves that Huck and/or Paul are what they wanted all along.
Crap, what’s that play? Where the main character starts out buried up to her waist in a pile of dirt and winds up buried to her neck and never acknowledges her predicament?
Dan
The question is whether the Republican voters will be as willing as their pundits to drink the Kool-aid. I can imagine a good number of them sitting out the next election, no matter the nominee.
myiq2xu
Fixed.
cs
I gave money to Ron Paul today and have donated in the past too.
The main reasons I support him are the possibilities of ending the triple threat of the war on terror, the war on drugs, and the relentless expansion of government powers.
In terms of ending the war on drugs, Ron Paul is essentially the only electable option. Most Democrats and Republicans are more than happy to keep that atrocity going strong. Thats one of the biggest issues for me and there’s almost no one else brave enough to take it on.
I disagree with a lot of his domestic policies but I think the three things above are so very important, that I’ll put up with those disagreements. I really don’t like his pro-life position but the one right that the Democrats will actually fight for is keeping choice available, so I’m not too worried. Sadly, they won’t fight for any other rights, but they’re almost reliable on that one.
And I also really like the style of the candidate. Ron Paul treats his audience like adults. He never panders and never gives up his core principles, even when he could score big with certain audiences if he did. I’ve seen him refuse to say certain things that the Religious Right wanted him to say. He is still a politician, with all the baggage that entails, but he’s one of the most honest I’ve ever seen.
I am surprised John doesn’t like him more. He seems, on paper, like he would be the perfect conservative candidate for him: passionately against the war and the erosion of basic rights, isn’t in bed with the Religous Right, wants to reduce the size and power of government, and is an honest guy not beholden to the usual unsavory suspects. He could remake the Republican Party into something decent again.
Robert Johnston
What happens to all of that money when his campaign goes blooie?
It gets invested in Ron Paul dollars, of course. Kinda like confederate dollars without the slavery.
grumpy realist
CS, the problem is that Ron Paul comes off as the crazy guy in the attic, what with his comments about going on the gold standard and getting rid of the IRS.
I do hope he comes in as one of the top three in Iowa, and it would be lovely if he could possibly get even higher in NH. If for nothing more than the “blow-the-reporters’-tiny-little-brains” factor. I think there’s a heck of a lot of interest about Ron Paul (on my trip to Austin I saw Ron Paul signs everywhere) and for the media to ignore him to the extent they have is horrible reporting. He DOES have quite a following among the younger population, and that should be considered.
So yeah, go Ron Paul for Republican nominee, and pass the popcorn.
srv
What cs said.
A vote for any other candidate besides Paul or Kucinich is objectively immoral and anti-American. That isn’t arrogant, it should be pretty obvious to anyone who is honest about the political landscape of this country.
Any other vote is for continuing the status quo: Pax Americana, GWoT, Drug War, Prison Industrial Complex, Surveillence Society and what-not.
Snicker all you want, but these crimes against the populace of the World and US pale in comparison to the risks of supporting this guy. I would much rather deal with the short-term risks of Roe-v-Wade falling. It’s going to happen anyway (unless Obama got multiple SCOTUS nominations), and we’re going to have to deal with 6 or 8 states banning it (effectively already banned in most of those, because they only have 1 or 2 clinics statewide).
srv
Yeah, Dick Cheney is saying he’s a 4th branch of gov’t, and not subject to oversight by Congress. And Ron Paul comes off as a nut.
Robert Johnston
Just because Dick Cheney comes off as a megalomaniacal serial killer doesn’t mean that Ron Paul can’t come off as the loopy guy wandering the streets in his bathrobe who doesn’t even know his own name. Dick Cheney is Tony Soprano; Ron Paul is Lyndon LaRouche. They’re nuts, both of them sufficiently so to disqualify them from public office in the minds of sane people, but that doesn’t mean they’re comparable.
myiq2xu
Too bad the nattering nabobs of negativism have already decreed that Ron isn’t a “serious” candidate.
maxbaer (not the original)
Nothing against Dr. Paul, because I think he’s interesting and maybe ahead of his time. But wouldn’t Vincent Gigante be the more appropriate comparison than LaRouche?
rachel
Sane people are all alike; every nut is nutty in his own way.
Dennis - SGMM
Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich serve the excellent purpose of making people think about those aspects of government that many of us take for granted. Gold standard? Well, maybe not but, I’m not that happy having money backed by the good faith and credit of the government either. IRS? It’s for sure that some agency of government needs to administer the tax code but it might be nice if the tax code was simplified to the point that you don’t need to be a lawyer or an accountant to understand it.
Incertus (Brian)
Making that claim is objectively immoral and anti-American, , and if you can tell me precisely what it means to be objectively immoral and anti-American–not some mealy-mouthed bullshit–then you’ll understand why your comment is so patently offensive.
Dennis - SGMM
The phrase “objectively immoral” is a non sequitur. Morality is subjective.
Gump
As a lawyer who makes his money by understanding our ridiculous tax code I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t say this. I have bills to pay.
Robert Johnston
Nah; Vincent was faking it. Have you ever seen Lyndon in a bathrobe?
Okay, neither have I. But I imagine Lyndon to be the genuine thing that Vincent was faking.
Robert Johnston
Morality may be subjective. But we are entitled to consider certain statements, such as statements claiming objective morality, as objectively amoral. Not, mind you, because such statements are with certainty objectively amoral, but because experience teaches us that people making such claims are amoral assholes with a sufficient degree of certainty that it’s almost certainly better to assume them to be so than to give them the benefit of the doubt.
Peter Johnson
Again, I wonder how much of Paul’s ill-gotten gains came from actual Republicans. Paul is a dangerous kook who would be more at home in the Democratic party.
All this money isn’t helping him much in the polls, now, is it?
Jake
Yeah, thanks. Please come back when you don’t sound like Rovetastic talking point.
I wouldn’t give a damn if you said “A vote for any other candidate besides Jake’s mom is objectively immoral and anti-American.” I’m fucking fed up with mouth-breathing assholes telling me, not just how I have to vote, but if I don’t vote a certain way I am an evil person who hates Umuricuh. (And so is mom.)
Nope, nope, nope and fuck you very much. If that’s the only way you can express yourself you’re too fucking stupid to be allowed near an electrical device. Stop chewing on the keyboard and go back to scribbling on paper bags with the fat crayons before you harm yourself.
I’ve spent seven years as a traitor terrorist-coddling Bible burning family hater and nearly three of decades as the biggest threat to civilization short of Earth-intercepting asteroids, and I refuse to accept “Do this r ur evile” from anyone, any more for any reason.
Piss off, shaddup and sit the fuck down.
Zifnab
Ron Paul believes in the Gold Standard, a border fence, and making abortion illegal. I don’t agree with any of those things, myself.
But if Paul wants to outlaw gay marriage, he has the decency to navigate the proper channels. When he presents an amendment to include the Department of Education in the constitution and the votes against it, he’s at least approaching government in the way the founders intended. “This is what I do/do not believe and this is how I am voting accordingly” is a refreshing change from “I’m a nebulous Constitutional Entity who can tell the governing legal system to go fuck itself.”
In that sense, Ron Paul happens to be a guy with opinions I disagree with. Dick Cheney’s opinions never enter into it because his megalomania supersedes the debate. If Dick was pushing for an end to the war in Iraq, universal health care, and renewable energy reform in the same way he opposes them, I’d still have a serious issue with Cheney because his methods are so blatantly, offensively illegal.
Unfortunately, Paul isn’t even a Senator, just a lowly Congressman. I haven’t seen him wield the levers of power on par with filibuster much less “executive privilege” so I don’t honestly know whether he’ll run off and Cheney the system the moment he realizes he can get his way if he just smashed through all the rules.
So I’m still voting for some combination of Obama/Edwards given the chance. I haven’t seen either of those two guys run roughshod over the existing legal system and they actually support my political beliefs to some extent.
That said, I would never ever compare a Ron Paul supporter (or his sanity) to a Dick Cheney supporter. The two are about as far apart ideologically as night and day.
DougJ
I realize this is off-topic, but it is GOP campaign related: what is the deal with the Romney campaign’s sick fixation with Tom Brady? Here’s a campaign adviser today:
And here’s a recent article on the Romney kids (via TBogg)
What’s this all about?
Cindrella Ferret
Indeed.
**********************************************************************
I don’t understand why Ron Paul is the nut? I have taken an objective look at his policy stands, and the idea of a return to the old fashioned Federalism is quite appealing. More local control and less interference from Washington very intriguing. The return to the gold standard seems odd, but other than that I can’t say that I am philosophically opposed to much else in his platform. The fact that he is unafraid of saying exactly what he would like to do as President, without parsing every fucking word, is also quite refreshing. But he is running for the Republican nomination which makes him a NO GO on my list. Until Republicans grow up and get rid of this insane push for constant war and endless abrogation of the 4th Amendment I can’t consider any of them.
The Democratic choices, well most of them, seem to be more reasonable. Although I admit to a very high degree of skepticism when it comes to their commitment to 4th Amendment rights. The only real hope for the Constitution is to have Democrats control both houses of the Congress and the Presidency. That will wake up all the dumb fucks who think the Bill of Rights (except the 2nd Amendment!) are just guidelines. You put Obama, Edwards or Clinton in the White House with a Democratic majority in Congress and the wingnuts will have a come to Jesus moment, as it were. Suddenly they will recall the Rule of Law, the 4th Amendment, and all those other conveniently forgotten bedrock principles they supposedly stand for. I’m pretty sure they will fuck us on taxes, but that is only money. You can always make more money. I’m not worried about 2nd Amendment issues because quite a few of the new Democrats are from the West and South (Shuler, Tester and Webb come to mind) so they won’t let the liberals go crazy with gun control.
I still scoff every time I think of talk radio back in 2000 during the Florida recall. I should have recorded some of those calls and all the screaming about the Rule of Law.
But 9/11 changed everything!
In a manner speaking. It exposed the so-called conservatives for what many of them are: cowards. They have shown themselves to be afraid of their own shadows, and willing to throw away civil liberties for the transitory safety of living in a police state. It ain’t easy being a chairborn ranger.
Speaking of Jonah Goldberg, did he survive his foray into enemy territory with all those dirty hippies looking to take a piece out of his ample hide? I can imagine him waking up in the middle of the night screaming about being pelted with organic vegetables and tofu! Oh the horror. The sheer horror of being Jonah.
demimondian
I was going to go off on a truly righteous rant, but Jake beat me to it.
Ignoring the reality of Paul’s beliefs, and ignoring the history of corruption in Kucinich’s past, I won’t take orders from anyone, anywhere about how I will vote if I want to avoid being evil.
RSA
That may be true, but I don’t think that Paul’s views on many important issues are shared by any but a very small percentage of the public, i.e., the libertarians. He has the right idea about the Iraq war, privacy, and a perhaps a couple of other things, but in other ways (e.g., on Social Security, health care, the environment, racism) I don’t think his ideas are workable (or even very good).
Robert Johnston
He may have the right ideas on these matters, but if he does so it’s manifestly for the wrong reasons. It’s vastly more important, in considering a candidate for President, to consider how he will react in the future than how he’s felt about specific topics in the past, and the quality of a candidate’s reasoning is a far better indicator of future behavior than the fact that, by sheer luck of the draw that happened to align a particular candidate’s insanity with reality on an occasion or two, he somehow managed to come to a conclusion more sensible than the conclusions reached by complete morons.
grumpy realist
Libertarians just don’t come off as being serious. Half of them seem to want to live in a Mad Max movie and the other half think that you can live in a Mad Max movie and have a high level of technology. And all of them hate taxes, particularly progressive taxes. (They abhore it when I tell them to think of taxes as insurance against getting hanged from lampposts.)
(And could they PLEASE stop with that “an armed society is a polite society” gibberish? If that’s so, then Baghdad must be a fuckin’ Edwardian tea party.)
grumpy realist
Libertarians just don’t come off as being serious. Half of them seem to want to live in a Mad Max movie and the other half think that you can live in a Mad Max movie and have a high level of technology. And all of them hate taxes, particularly progressive taxes. (They abhor it when I tell them to think of taxes as insurance against getting hanged from lampposts.)
(And could they PLEASE stop with that “an armed society is a polite society” gibberish? If that’s so, then Baghdad must be a fuckin’ Edwardian tea party.)
Robert Johnston
Sorry, they [libertarians] can’t. Libertarianism is all about rejecting empirical reality in favor of the rose colored glasses of utopian unreality, so the objective fact that armed societies as a general–though not absolute–rule see an awful lot more pointless violence and murder than unarmed societies is not allowed to impinge upon their view of the world.
Asking a libertarian to stop propounding antiempirical gibberish is like asking the universe to stop existing. The universe, by definition, is that which exists, and a libertarian, by definition, can’t stop talking nonsense beyond the comprehension of people capable of reason.
RSA
The worship of Robert Heinlein (okay, and Ayn Rand) is one of the least attractive aspects of libertarianism.
cs
Basically I’m leaning libertarian because of the past seven years. I think a natural distrust of government and the ways in which government wants to increase it’s powers is a good thing. The lack of this distrust is one of the things that gave Cheney / Bush such an easy time doing what they wanted.
Pure libertarianism probably wouldn’t work. A more pragmatic version of it would probably be one of the best things that could happen to this country. For one thing, it would mean the past seven years couldn’t be repeated.
The Other Steve
That’s one of the things, I don’t think many Democrats have fully come to grips with. They still think govt is going to help them, but they don’t seem to acknowledge what will happen in 12 years when Jeb Bush is elected and turns the Dept of Good Cause into another whackjob outfit.
srv
Shit, I thought everyone had already gone to bed.
objectively in the sense “objectively pro-terrorist”, which Robert should understand well. It’s the glennuendo schtick his ilk is so skilled at, and throwing down the LaRouchite crap.
It saddens me to say it, but it turns out Darrell was probably right all along. The left here are hypocrites. We can see the likes of many here rant nonstop about torture and the evils of Shrub and Dick, but when we hear what Nancy and Harry knew all along, not a FUCKING peep.
Not only have you been the rights b***ch for the last seven years, YOUVE BEEN A HYPOCRITE ABOUT IT.
I guess it’s all that moral relativism. You just want to keep enabling y’alls party first. It’s. who. you. are.
The vast majority of RP fanboys are not libertarians. Not even close. They aren’t ideological randians or larouchites, they just want a change from the status quo y’all enable at every turn.
demi, go back and march to Hillary’s orders.
Randolph Fritz
Folks, isn’t anyone just the least bit scared? An authentic fascist (or at least at least once-was fascist, or person with fascist ties, or something else nasty, who doesn’t seem to have had a change of heart) in the running for the Presidency, or one heartbeat away? I don’t know about you, but I’m scared.
srv
GW tore down the goal post, put it on a truck, and drove it to Guantanamo. The Dems have spent the last two years trying to figure out whether the other goal post should be moved 5 yards or 10 yards to compensate. And then giving up and offering to move it back behind the end zone.
And if you don’t think that’s the proper response, you’re a LaRouchite nut.
Like John had his Schaivo epiphany, I’ve come to realize my fellow travelers here are even more brain dead than she was.
Incertus (Brian)
Paul is a dangerous kook who would be more at home in the Democratic party.
Riiiight. Because us Democrats are all about reducing the power of federal government to nothing and turning over all power to corporations, we’re all about the gold standard and ending gun control. Look, I can understand if you don’t want Paul in your party, but don’t try to foist him off on us. We have enough crazy people without taking yours on.
srv
Come on, all you shriekers, tell us how the Dems will change things:
Harry bends over, again
It just doesn’t stop:
BUWAHAHAHAHA
By all means, you moral midgets, go out and vote for more of this.
demimondian
You’re right, srv, I could vote to end all this nonsense. I could vote for Dennis “Just a little crooked” Kucinich, the boy wonder from Cleveland. Yeah…um, no, I don’t think so. Or I could vote for Ron “Well, I think drugs should be legalized!” Paul. Ri-ight.
Or maybe, just maybe, I could tell the hyperventilating nimrods who say that kind of thing that they’re…presumptuous hyperventilating nimrods? You know, that sounds like the best choice to me.
So, srv? You’re a presumptuous, precious, hyperventilating nimrod.
Cain
Reid is a fucking tool. I was not happy to hear of not only his capitulation but also going out of his way to ignore a hold put in by Dodd on that particular bill. Now Dodd is out there doing a filibuster trying to make sure that companies are held accountable for their law breaking. The man (Reid)cannot lead. He needs to get the boot.
I can understand if he has a razor thin majority and he’s not going to be able to pass bills. But by god, use the fucking authority you got man and make the opposition party work hard for it. Make them filibuster on everything coming through. Jeezus! What the fuck is wrong with these guys? I bet I can strategize better than these fools. In fact maybe we should set up a site and do their work for them. Like the paint by numbers set. Open source politics… (I bet we can do teh Iraq war that way too)
As for who to vote for. I’m voting for either Dodd or Kucinich. I might consider voting for Ron because at least we might let go some of the power bushco has grabbed up. I don’t know. I’m cynical about Obama, Clinton and Edwards. Anything hyped by the press (our great annointers of political power) should be suspect. I’m probably coming off as some kind of tin-foil retard but I’ve seen enough shit from the press to know that something isn’t on the up and up.
cain
pseudonymous in nc
I’d be skeptical of his appeal in a state so dependent upon the farm subsidies that Paul opposes. He can get away with it in his own district, but Iowa’s not Texas. NH? Different again.
People who say he’d be more at home in the Democratic party are using the wrong metric. He’d make a great presidential candidate, 100 years ago.
srv
You must feel really out of place in your work environment.
myiq2xu
I agree. As a matter of fact, I don’t agree with RP on very many issues.
But it is not the job of the government or the media to decide who the “serious” candidates are or who the voters get to choose from.
The essence of democracy is that the people get to decide things, not the government or some NGO (non-governmental oligarchy.)
myiq2xu
I agree. As a matter of fact, I don’t agree with RP on very many issues.
But it is not the job of the government or the media to decide who the “serious” candidates are or who the voters get to choose from. Part of wisdom is realizing that you might be full of shit.
The essence of democracy is that the people get to decide things, not the government or some NGO (non-governmental oligarchy.)
cs
Interesting that you would describe it as a ‘Schiavo’ moment, srv, because I’m starting to think of it as the same way. The catalyst has been how they’re expressing their opposition to Ron Paul.
If someone doesn’t want to vote for him because they hate the idea of the gold standard, or because they’re very pro-choice, or for any of the other policy disagreements, then that’s fine. I don’t have a problem with that at all.
But the reasons are essentially boiled down to: big, powerful government is great so long as we’re the ones with the power. The only problem was Bush/Cheney and once they’re gone, we’ll only use the power of government to make everything come up roses again. We’ll only intrude into your life to make things better.
The naiveté goes further. Apparently not only do liberals love paying taxes, but they don’t have a problem with the IRS and its destructive powers nor do they have a problem with the annual confusing invasion of privacy involved in filing returns. Any serious reform is apparently a bad idea, especially if it might lead to the rich paying less, never mind the fact that the rich already pay less based on percentages. And the people that fall afoul of the IRS are only criminals who deserve their fate.
And they all terribly hate the racist things Ron Paul might have written in the early 90’s, but they’ll happily support a candidate who will say all the right things about race while sending millions of minorities into the prison-industrial complex due to draconian drug laws. As long as the speech is politically correct, they don’t care about the practical effect of those policies and how minority communities are decimated.
Despite being a liberal for much of my adult life, I’m so tempted to say “fuck ’em” because I’m really sick of the shallowness of their convictions. The only thing that would make me vote Democrat in the future is that the alternative is currently worse.
srv
cs,
Firebombing aside, this crowd has really become a sad bunch.
After years of seeing them rant and rave and tear their hair out, Harry will rape them in the ass again this week, and they’ll just mumble a little and move on. If that.
It’s pretty obvious that the Jakes, demis, grumpys and ppGaz’s of this site really aren’t that different – their ideology is about party and power. Not what’s right or wrong (that would be some absolute for which would offend someone).
None of the Dems will roll back any of this shit. Not one IOTA. Not Hillary, not Obama, not National Security wonks Biden or Dodd. Oh, sure, they’ll submit some worthless legislation in 2009 to try to placate the hard left, and after the wingnuts and Fox beat them over the head with it, it will be dropped (which of course will serve as fodder for the wingnuts in 2010). And the troops will stay in Iraq. And you won’t hear ppGaz ranting about any of it.
It’s a pretty sad day when the only leftists with a consistent ideology are Loose Changers.
Psycheout
“ispulling” “Mor ethan” ???
Don’t post drunk!
Psycheout
Word. Especially that srv guy. Sad, isn’t it?
cleek
wait, i thought Wingnut Parade Day was Tuesday ! crap.
RSA
My mistake; I was assuming this from Paul’s platform and history. If what you’re saying is right, his supporters sound like the same kind of voters who went for Ross Perot.
Jake
All right sweetheart since you insist on playing with the computer and pretending you can read, maybe you can answer a hypothetical question that the RiCons dodge all of the fucking time:
Let’s say your compelling arguments have convinced me that people who vote for anyone but DK or RP are evil traitors. What should I do when our neighbors start sticking Obama, Edwards, Guliani, Thompson signs in their front yards? According to your talking points these people aren’t just misguided or ignorant, they don’t just have political ideas that differ from mine. Nope, they’re EVIL. They HATE AMERICA.
What should I do about them? I can’t call the police because our evilcorporatefascist masters haven’t made it illegal to vote for any particular candidate. But these guys are without morals and they’re traitors. It’s like I’m surrounded by Devil worshiping baby raping Benedict Arnolds and no one will listen to me. What the fuck should I do about these people bent on destroying all that is good and the entire country. Help me out here srv. What do you intend to do with you see evil traitors driving down the street with Clinton 08 stickers on their car?
I mean, it has to be more than curling your lip and muttering hypocrites, doesn’t it? Because if you see someone who is immoral and anti-American, if you don’t take steps to stop them, your lack of action equals complicit agreement with their behavior. You become an immoral traitor even if you do cast your vote for RP or DK.
So please, give me, give all of us some guidelines for actions we can take when the law is no help but we know there are evil people around us.
PaulW
He’s getting all this money, and yet everyone’s acting like Rudy and Mitt are the major players. How much are they able to raise in a single day (seriously, what are their fundraising numbers like)?
Another thing, there are caps on how much a person can donate, right? So this isn’t just a handful of deep pockets inflating the numbers, correct?
Jen
Third party candidate, baby! Go, Nader, I mean, Ron Paul!
Michael D.
Another thing, there are caps on how much a person can donate, right? So this isn’t just a handful of deep pockets inflating the numbers, correct?
Correct on both counts. I read this morning that there were 40,000 donations and 29,000 new ones, although I can’t find the link about the 29K new donors.
Michael D.
I don’t think Ron Paul has a prayer at becoming president. I think the good thing about this money is that it will allow him to stay in the race, regardless of his numbers.
The closer he gets to the end, and the more the field is whittled down, the more his ideas will get a fair airing. We have 9 people on stage now competing for airtime. If the field is reduced to Romney, Giuliani, Huckabee and Paul, he’ll hopefully get more time to speak. Not only that, but it might JUST tell the Republican party that people are very fed up with them and that Gosh, maybe they DON’T represent republicans after all.
Dennis - SGMM
The outpouring of donations to Ron Paul seems more like a protest against a Republican party bereft of ideas and absolutely lacking an attractive candidate. If it’s one thing America is tired of it’s the policies and practices of the Bush administration. Despite that, every one of the Republican front runners is promising more of the same. I’m certain that many of Paul’s supporters truly believe in him, I’m almost as certain that many of his other supporters are in flight from Romney, Giuliani and Huckabee.
The Other Steve
srv – Who the fuck cares about immunity?
So you’re going to sue the phone company for complying with the orders of a federal agency? What the fuck good will that do? The issue here isn’t the phone companies, it’s the federal agency overreaching. All you’ve done by misdirecting outrage at the phone companies is distract fro the central issue.
The problem isn’t Harry Reid.
The problem is YOU.
Punchy
Reading this thread, I realize this site has more Johnsons than Ron Jeremy’s Christmas Poon Party.
The Other Steve
Yeah, i think it’s a good thing. He won’t get the nomination, but at least he has a chance to destroy the other guys in the debates.
The Other Steve
Well, obviously. Ron Jeremy doesn’t do gay porn.
DougJ
Srv, I sympathize but I think you’re laying it on a little thick. If you don’t think Edwards, for example, would be a huge departure from Bush you’re not being honest with yourself.
Cyrus
Well, that settles it. There’s no way I’m voting for Harry Reid for president now.
Wait, they don’t? Sure, Ron Paul is popular because he’s the non-Republican Republican. But how much of that is crossover appeal and/or people who aren’t normally involved in politics?
Probably even more importantly, of the “real” Republicans among his supporters, how many have become disaffected only because things have become screwed up? I read an interesting article around 2005 which was basically in response to all the people who complain that the problem with Bush is that he’s too liberal. The article went on to argue that Bush’s presidency is an inevitable consequence of right-wing thinking, but also said almost offhandedly that those same people were happy to support Bush and call him conservative back in 2003 or so.
How many disaffected Republicans are disaffected because they’ve realized that the current Republican platform — pandering to theocrats, cutting taxes while increasing spending, invading any country whose name begins with I, and “not talking” about “enhanced interrogation” for “detainees” — is morally wrong and a bunch of horrible ideas in the long run, and how many are disaffected just because they can read polls, found out about a bunch of sex scandals and don’t have their Great Wall of Texas yet?
Zifnab
I don’t know about the former, but the later I’m betting clock in at around 28%.
The John Cole ex-R reformed conservatives are notable in that they have finally laid down the “Democrats are worse!” rhetoric and halted their campaign against the “liberal” stereotype. These are the guys that woke up one morning to Terry Shavio and warrantless wiretapping and endless war and decided they actually didn’t like it.
The die-hard Hugh Hewitt / Glenn Reynolds / Dan Riehl faux-libertarians and social cons are notable because they continue to stress the “Democrats are worse!” meme despite all the gripping and groaning about the current failed Bush Admin or the looming threat of a Hucka-candidate. These are the guys who will continue to support the Rs because the Dems just aren’t pandering to them and the Rs at least do a job of faking it.
I don’t know anyone who is precisely happy with the Bush Administration. But the last few hold-outs tend to cling to the notion that a Gore or Kerry Presidency would have been that much worse (for them), because Gore or Kerry wouldn’t continue to cut their taxes or build a Big Texas Fence or invade Iran or do whatever other loopy dead-end idea the Republicans are pimping.
TheFountainHead
Awww, c’mon. What did Ayn Rand ever do to you? I keep Atlas Shrugged by my bedside. You can hardly compare her take on the world to that of the Paulites, can you? I mean, they’re monsters from the same ooze, but mutated in very different ways.
cleek
‘notable’ works, but i would’ve gone with ‘deplorable’ or ‘obviously full of liquefied shit’
Doug H.
All that money and the momentum is still going to Huckabee. Has Paul broke double-digits in Iowa yet?
Oh, and srv: As someone familiar with Paul’s winking and nudging of Stormfronters and as a voter in Kucinich’s district who’s watched him spend the last five years doing nothing but make vanity runs for President while our damn city is crumbling, all I have to say is this:
Fuck You And The Horse You Rode On.
RSA
Aside from boring me with ponderous, uninformed attempts to revolutionize philosophy? Mainly providing a shallow rationalization for selfishness and greed being key human virtues.
TheFountainHead
I know, paying a man a wage worth his labour and respecting him for it is an awful ideal to uphold.
srv
No. They’re people disaffected by what you enable. I was walking down a rural Berkeley street last week and counted six RP signs in peoples windows. And I wasn’t even looking for them. None of these people voted for Perot and none of their neighbors were out stoning them.
Try stop pushing the same buttons in the voting booth and expecting a different result.
Wow. So the only issue is that Republicans did it and I don’t support it? You people, you don’t have a clue. Who the f**k do you think reads Glenn Greenwald? Republicans?
Jeez, coming from you? What EXACTLY would President Edwards roll back? He’d pick up that phone and call the DOJ/FBI/NSA and say “turn all that bad stuff off”? He’ll call the CIA and say “stop torturing”? He’d depart from nothing, other than dialing back and leaving it as an established precedence for his replacement to reastablish at will. You really think Edwards is any different from Nancy and Harry? Please detail these nuances for us.
No, but you’re going to vote for a Senator or Congressman just like him.
Jake
That can’t be right, we’re not talking about an hour out of one day every few years, we’re talking about evil traitors who won’t go away after they’ve voted for someone besides RP or DK. I want them stopped now, off the streets, before they do any more harm. How will who I vote for change that?
over_educated
Ayn Rand is the bane of my existence. Seriously, Rand is a philospher you read in your first year of college when you were really, really into “Rush,” and had just moved out of your Emo phase.
I find most fervent Rand adherents tend to be folks whom Rand would classify as total drains on society. Eg… Rand is a popular philospher among hard-core MMORPG raiders, whom on various occassions equate their quest for video game excellence with mankinds quest for greatness (I kid you not, I’ve seen multiple folks compare their video game exploiuts with the moon landing).
Rand is the philospher for losers who think they are Howard Roark, but are really Ellsworth Tooey (or more realistically some guy walking down the street in a bathrobe talking to his toaster).
demimondian
Rand’s work is reworked German Romanticism, celebrating der Wille den Ubermensche for self-styled democrats. She liked to talk about rationalism, but preached something akin to warmed over Nietsche, with all the utopian authoritarianism and none of the great poetry.
chopper
that’s quite an assumption you’ve made there.
i love how it went from ragging on dem voters for harry reid, which means fuck all except to those dems in nevada, to ‘well, i just know you’re going to vote for a congresscritter just like him’. it’s kinda funny. no, wait, the other thing…tedious.
Doug H.
Way to make friends and influence people there, champ.
What exactly would President Paul and President Kucinich roll back? Have you even read about Kucinich’s merry stint as mayor of Cleveland?
Power corrupts, absolute power is really neat.
srv
I’ve said Harry and Nancy repeatedly. Right here. They are the defacto party leaders of the House and Senate. They are your deciderers. Why don’t you tell us who you voted for, and then who they voted for? Barring maybe Feingold, the odds are you’re just another chump.
Bubblegum Tate
Ding ding ding! We have a winner! Plus, there ‘s the issue of the supremely annoying Randroids, but I don’t think it’s fair to lay that entirely on Rand herself.
Anyway, it’s worth noting that Ron Paul has some pretty vocal support here in the Bay Area. I’m assuming that much of this support is over the Iraq issue, but still…quite the motley crew Paul is assembling.
grumpy realist
Go over to the Atlantic and read some of the threads there.
I don’t know who are more annoying, the Rombots, the Huckabee Jesus-freaks, or the Paulbots.
The Paulbots are particularly hysterical. We’re getting the same old trope about how “standard polling” doesn’t accurately measure the depth of support for Ron Paul because so many of his devotees have only cellphones (didn’t I hear the same argument w.r.t. Kerry?) and how the amount of noise Ron Paul has been getting on the internets accurately measures the amount of support Ron has in general because the population on the internets is an accurate microcosm of America. Hee.
When Ron Paul fails to get the Republican nomination, I’m sure we’ll get all sorts of accusations from conspiracy buffs laying the dirty deed to the FED, the IRS, or “the Republicans.”
Look, I sorta like Paul, but he’s got a bunch of real wackos waving him around as a banner.
Start popcorn, ladies and gentlemen, we’re in for a fun ride.
Grumpy Code Monkey
That’s it. I’m going to build my own Great Wall of Texas, because frankly, that sounds cool. ‘Cept I’m building it around Austin to keep all the Californians out.
Seriously, y’all gotta stop coming here. It’s getting annoying.
Speaking as a Democrat, hell yes Reid and Pelosi and all the rest of those bastards need to go home. I want 100% turnover in 2008.
chopper
well that settles it. i’m never voting for either of those two for party leadership positions ever again.
you’re the one with mind-reading abilities, why don’t you tell me who i voted for?
Cyrus
I live in Vermont. One of my Senators is Patrick Leahy and the other is Bernie Sanders. Before Sanders, it was Jim Jeffords, who made international news when he left the Republican Party way back in 2001. Nobody is perfect, but from a liberal point of view, there are very few better. And my House Representative, Peter Welch, was one of only about 15 in the House who didn’t vote for that stupid “Yay Christianity!” resolution a few weeks ago. I guess you could complain about him merely voting “present” instead of a full-throated “no.”
They all vote for agricultural subsidies, because that’s Vermont. But on the whole, especially on rule of law and related issues, I think my representatives have done much better than most, since you asked. Should I campaign against them when they’re up for reelection because they haven’t introduced articles of impeachment or managed to magically get themselves into Harry Reid’s position, or what? What, exactly, is your point?
MJ
Since he has a lot of cash coming but is still no where in the polls it makes me think a lot of his money is coming from the far left.
The Other Steve
Wow, way to miss the point.
Who the fuck cares about Republicans. What I’m talking about is the perpetual outrage causing you to waste all of your time on meaningless windmill tilts.
The Other Steve
If you spend much time over in the /. geek world, there is actually a large amount of support for him that isn’t far left.
I’m in IT, so I encounter them all the time.
Randolph Fritz
Perhaps not. But Huckabee/Paul looks depressingly plausible. The Religious Right and the Fascists, together at last.
Well, at least it won’t be the lesser of two evils.
Aaron
Good for Ron Paul. Of course its a shame that its in the service of some idiotic nutjob who wants to abolish the federal government.
Gold standard my ass.
Asti
Right, it will be both, together at the same time, if this were to happen we’re truly f*cked!!