if he can gets his voters out he will do well in the early states don't you worry about that

the polls massively understate him, he has pointed out that a lot of the polls leave him off their lists (see the youtube video further up) that a lot of his supporters were not registered republicans who voted at the last election or primary and that a lot of them might be young without landlines so the polling organizations don't contact them

Paul has his best chance in Iowa and New Hampshire because they're open primaries with no voter registrations you can just show up and vote or caucus so in theory if he can get enough of his supporters out these formats should favour him massively and he's spending and campaigning hard in those states while Guiliani and Thompson have already given up on them

Based on current polling data, McCain is the best general election bet for the republicans. (John Edwards is currently the best bet for the democrats)

Of the "top tier" candidates, they all have big problems with the base.
Giuliani's liberal position on social issues, Romney flip-flopping on abortion.

Huckabee's tax record is going to hurt him with the base, and in the general he would get absolutely killed once the dems started running attack ads on the national sales tax he wants to implement.

McCain is pretty much the only chance the republicans have of winning next fall IMO.

bingo :thumbsup

I would disagree. McCain really comes off like a guy that will say anything to get elected and many people think he is too much like Bush. I think the repub with the best chance to win it all would be Rudy. Here is why I say this.

As I said earlier the hard Christian right doesn't really love any of the candidates and least of all Rudy. That said they might back him (or for that matter any of them) if it comes down to facing Hilary because they will go with the "anyone but Clinton" mentality. This election is going to be less about values and morals and more about policy than the 2000 election (which was the last time we didn't have an incumbent running) so having someone who will pound the pulpit of morality won't really help - that message won't resonate outside the bible belt. In the end there is still a republican backlash happening in this country. The democrats have disappointed, but there are still more people that dislike republicans than ever before. When you add in that plus the overwhelming unpopularity of the president it will be hard for any republican to get elected. People don't really want a leader to tell them how to think or what to believe. They want someone that will fight terrorism, keep them safe and do something about immigration (and the economy). Rudy is republican enough to get the more moderate republicans behind him and I think much of the party would support him because they don't like Clinton (that is to say that Clinton actually wins the democratic nomination). He is also enough of a social moderate that he can pull in enough of the independent moderates. In the end most people outside New York only know him as the mayor that took charge on 9/11 and he is not about to let anyone forget that. When they go to the polls they would be more likely to pick the guy that doesn't panic than they are the person that they are unsure about.

In the long run they probably have about the same chance. It comes down to campaign strategy and what happens on the campaign trail. Bush got Kerry pretty good with that flip/flop stuff and Kerry put his foot in his mouth a few times and proved him right. Oh, and "Swift Boat Vets".

"It's the Economy, Stupid!" A serendipitious slogan that started as a sign in the campaign strategy room.

he has been elected to congress 10 times as a Republican and has been a Republican for over 30 years so he is pretty much "really" a Republican.


Paul is bringing more people to the party all the time, new people, people who dropped out and he is raising more money than any other GOP candidate. he is a GOP sensation

Republicans have run on an anti-war position before. Paul is running on President Bush's foreign policy in 2000, no nation building, no policing of the world, Nixon ran on the same policy, whenever they've ran on this policy the GOP have won elections, instead today they're losing elections like the congres with the opposite policy and the GOP risks putting the Democrats in power for a long time with this stupid foreign policy, it used to be the Democrats who were for the wars and the GOP for non-intervention until the former Democrats took over the Republican party (neocons), Paul will take it back in a true revolution

So you honestly believe that polling at 5% is going to win him the nomination?

Ron Paul supporters truly are delusional. It's one thing to stand for "the cause" and encourage people to have a closer look at his ideas....it's a completely other thing to guarantee a victory.

:1orglaugh

No comment necessary.

technically e-mailing for support of a political candidate is not considered spam under the law.....so tip to all you asshole bulkers out there

run your list with a link to the ron paul site....isp's can't filter it out, its not illegal

no one can guarantee victory but he will do well in Iowa and New Hampshire much more than the polls suggest that's what I think, thats what the Iowa Independent thinks and that's what the media in New Hampshire think so lets just wait and see...

whatever the outcome of the election Ron Paul will have a lasting effect on the GOP like Barry Goldwater in the 1960's paved the way for Reagan who was a close friend of Ron Paul as he was one of 4 congressmen who endorsed him for the Presidential nomination at the Republican convention in the 70's, btw Barry Goldwater Jnr endorses Ron Paul.

That is true. With the right strategy you can make any candidate, bad or good, look amazing. I always tell people to look at the 2000 election. While Bush was governor of Texas that state ranked last in environmental quality and bottom 5 in strength of economy and quality of education. Al Gore was handed the presidency on a silver platter. Things were relatively peaceful, the economy was chugging along and things were pretty good. All he had to do was point out that Bush was a failure as a governor and that if elected president he would bring those problems to the entire nation. Gore refused to attack him and he refused to pull out Bill Clinton, who , despite his problems, was a pretty popular president when he left office. Bush's people polished him up and he ran a brilliant campaign. Kick in a little help from his peeps in Florida and include the old people in Florida being confused by the ballot and he won when he probably should have lost in a landslide.

With enough money and the right plan any candidate can be sold the public.

i dnt understand it either, but whtevr just let it be...

Ron Paul is running on Bush's foreign policy from 2000 and he is called a whackjob! LMAO!

btw, your probably not seeing Ron Paul's ads because he is concerntrating them in the early states besides does he need to advertise in Oregon im sure that state will turn out for him in large numbers. I also don't know when your primary is, it might not be as "important" as some others if you know what I mean.

Nice. I hope someone hears you.

thats all you need to know...

So very well said. Nice examples.

Ron Paul winning the Republican nomination would be the best thing to happen to democrats in a lonngggggg time.

Once the 200 million plus Americans unfamiliar with him hear about some of his wackier ideas they will turn out in record numbers to vote for the Democratic nominee no matter who he/she may be.

Ron Paul...a democratic dream. Maybe I should donate money to the cause too.

What confuses me is why people dont like Ron Paul... do they enjoy war? Do they enjoy income taxes? I dont get it

1. He is a republican that looks more like a libertarian than anything else. In Texas is is going to be very hard to get elected as anything but a republican. Obviously people like the job he is doing because he is getting reelected. But I if you look at his positions on most issues he is more libertarian than republican. You can dress a duck up in a sheep suit, it doesn't mean it's not still a duck. Here is a quote from CNN, "Paul, who ran for president as a Libertarian in 1988, is the sole Republican candidate to call for a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq." Sounds to me like a guy who knows he can't win as a libertarian so he goes with the party that will best help him.

2. I'm not an expert but here is a nice graph http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/index.asp it shows that as of Q3 of 2007 paul had raised around 8 million. He said his goal for Q4 was 12 million and he will probably raise around 15-18 that puts him at around 26 million which is still in 4th place on the list and about 1/3rd of what Romney has raised. I wouldn't consider someone who is a sensation on myspace, youtube and facebook a GOP sensation. Many of these supporters are probably not even going to be able vote for him in the primaries because they are either unregistered or registered in the wrong party. We aren't talking about a general election here, we are talking about the republican primary. Remember Howard Dean? He was the internet darling. The guy with all the small campaign contributions and they guy a lot of people picked to win it. Then they found out when called upon to actually get out and vote, the keyboard warriors were busy playing world of warcraft.

3. I understand that republicans have run on anti-war platforms in the past but in most of those cases they were wars started by the opposite party. it is easy to say, " they screwed it up, I'll fix it." It's not so easy to say, "we screwed it up, I'll fix it." Lets not forget that the hard conservative right still believes strongly in the war in Iraq and they are the ones that run the party. Love it or hate it the republican party has sold their souls to the Christian right in order to win elections. They picked their bride and married her, divorcing her won't be so easy.

you are uninformed. that is why you don't get it.

I can guarantee you our primary isn't very important :) We are towards the end of the cycle so things are pretty much wrapped up by the time it gets to us. You are right, he is probably focusing his money in the early states and is hoping to make a statement in them by winning or finishing high up. That is what Kerry did in 2004. He came out of nowhere early on and rode that momentum to the nomination. Oregon loves a non-traditional candidate so he probably does have some good support here.

enlighten me

he wants to kill the department of education.

he wants to get rid of any government run teacher certification board. essentially allowing a bunch of private companies to certify everyone and anyone under the sun.

now imagine there being no public schools. you have 2 options. send your kid to a 15,000 a year private elementary school or home school. imagine the repercussions. millions of uneducated and mis-educated americans.

he wants to kill brown vs. the board of education. essentially opening schools for segregation based on race and gender.

he doesn't believe in the separation of church and state. this guy is itching to have intelligent design taught in class rooms.

i only touched upon the education system...i can go on...

1) he has ran in Republican primaries and unseated Republican congressmen to get the nomination for congress, he IS a Republican and has been elected 10 times as one to the US Congress, he is accepted as a Republican and has never had the whip withdrawn even when he rebelled in the 1990's, Newt Gingrich never disciplined him because he is a respected Republican with his own mind

2) Ron Paul's campaign has steadily built through the year, he will be the top fund raiser this quarter and has been half of the year. Romney is writing cheques to himself and Guiliani is working connected networks and employee's of corporations to get $2300 contributions, he will outraise both of them this quarter depending on what Mitt gives himself. Mitt's campaign would be broke without his own bank propping it up. many of the campaigns spend money like drunken sailors (an example of what they would do in Government perhaps) but Ron Paul adheres to his principles and spends frugally, he stays in motels and up until last week was travelling commercially. Romney has aired literally thousands of expensive TV ads all year in Iowa and NH and is being beaten in the official polls in Iowa by Mike Huckabee who until this quarter had not raised much at all.

Howard Dean was the official polling front runner who couldnt win Iowa and subsequently collapsed, Howard Dean raised money on the internet but no where near as much as Ron Paul and Ron Paul is yet to peak in the polls and still has a few weeks to go.

3) Except they're not winning elections they're losing elections like the US congress and if they have a pro-war nominee for President they will lose to the Democrat. Ron Paul is also attracting a lot of people to the party, so many have left and are disgusted but now they're coming back, democrats are switching for Paul, freedom unites people and so does Ron Paul's message

Here are a few reasons why. These are quotes from Paul:

"You wanna get rid of drug crime in this country? Fine, let's just get rid of all the drug laws. "

A lot of people don't like any candidate who speaks about legalizing drugs.

or this one from an interview:

Jan Mickelson: One of my litmus test questions to find out what kind of thinking process a candidate has done on this, is to ask my test question. Test question is: do you think that Roe v. Wade is the law of land?

Ron Paul: Well, they call it the law of the land, but I want to clarify that by getting rid of it. I think this is one example of the courts overstepping their bounds tremendously. Texas had a law against this violent act, and it went in to the federal courts and the Supreme Court. They overruled the state law, which should have been legitimate, and then came down on the side of legalizing killing a fetus, even into the 3rd trimester. But the fastest way to accomplish this is not through a constitutional amendment, or waiting till you get enough justices to overrule. You can pass a law in the Congress, which denies jurisdiction to the federal courts. So if Iowa or Texas or any state passes a law against abortion, you can't get it into the federal courts, and the states would decide this issue, as they decide all issues of violence: murder, manslaughter, theft, all this things are supposed to be state issues.

As soon as you start talking about making abortion illegal you alienate about half the nation.

And where in the US Constitution does it mandate the federal government to run a Department of Education? Ron Paul follows the Constitution and will adhere to the pledge of allegiance. if more politicians actually did that then the US Government wouldnt be trillions of dollars in debt and have hundreds of military bases around the world

as for church and state you're wrong on that, he supports the constitution and the founders position.

I don't claim to be an expert in Ron Paul. I like a lot of what they guy says, and there is a lot that I don't like too. To me he is just like the other candidates - some good about him, some bad, some unknown.

Answer me this. If he is such a strong republican why did he run for president in 1988 as a libertarian?

if anyone was wondering what tired/borderline scary cliche's i was referring to on page 1. just look above.

he is not talking about making it illegal he is talking about supporting states rights to do what they want to do. he does have a personal position of being against abortion but he wouldn't dream trying to frame a federal law nor would it pass, he wants to leave it to states

as for drug laws well the war on drugs has truly failed and some states like CA have legalized marijuana for medicinal purposes only to have the Feds INFRING E on their rights, enter their state and arrest medical patients! unbelievable!

Ron Paul is a strong supporter of states rights

But you didn't answer the questions. Without any type of educational oversight from the government there will only be those levels set by existing (and new) private schools. Public schools will all but cease to exist and the quality of education in this country could dramatically sink.

Sure the founding fathers didn't write all this into th constitution, but then the founding fathers weren't overseeing a country that was a world super power and in charge of one of the top 2 biggest economies in the world. Without education this country will fail miserably. Without some sort of rules and oversight the quality of the educational system could sink very fast. We would would have liberty, yes and we will know the pledge of allegiance, but sadly we will have to memorize it because we won't be able to read it.

Actually TRUE republican values are in fact libertarian for the most part. What passes off as republican values now is what the jesus feaks decided they should be 30 years ago when they highjacked the party. Go to the libertarian aprty website adn read about what thier views are and tell me how that is not republican?

Libertarians are for

Lower taxes
Smaller government
gun rights
personal retirement accounts
are against government funded health care

Now how exactly are these "radical" views of a nutjob who is not really a republican?

http://www.lp.org/issues/issues.shtml

the dept of education has been around since 1980, the US coped fine before then and I'm sure it will if it was abolished

this is NOT a new position for a Republican like Ron Paul:

----
A previous Department of Education was created in 1867 but soon was demoted to an Office in 1868. Its creation a century later in 1979 was controversial and opposed by many in the Republican Party, who saw the department as an unconstitutional, unnecessary federal bureaucratic intrusion into local affairs.

Unlike the systems of most other countries, education in the United States is highly decentralized, and the federal government and Department of Education are not heavily involved in determining curricula or educational standards (with the recent exception of the No Child Left Behind Act). This has been left to state and local school districts. The quality of educational institutions and their degrees is maintained through an informal private process known as accreditation, over which the Department of Education has no direct public jurisdictional control.

Rather, the primary function of the Department of Education is to formulate federal funding programs involving education and to enforce federal educational laws regarding privacy and civil rights.

On March 23, 2007, President Bush signed into law H.R. 584, which designates the ED Headquarters building as the Lyndon Baines Johnson Department of Education Building.[2]

President Ronald Reagan promised during the 1980 presidential election to eliminate the Department of Education as a cabinet post,[1] but he was not able to do so with a Democratic House of Representatives. In the 1982 State of the Union Address, he pledged, "The budget plan I submit to you on Feb. 8 will realize major savings by dismantling the Department of Education."[2] Throughout the 1980s, the abolition of the Department of Education was a part of the Republican Party platform, but the administration of President George H.W. Bush declined to implement this idea.

In 1996, the Republican Party made abolition of the Department a cornerstone of their campaign promises, calling it an inappropriate federal intrusion into local, state, and family affairs.[2] The GOP platform read: "The Federal government has no constitutional authority to be involved in school curricula or to control jobs in the market place. This is why we will abolish the Department of Education, end federal meddling in our schools, and promote family choice at all levels of learning."[2][3] During his 1996 presidential run, Senator Bob Dole promised, "We're going to cut out the Department of Education."[3] A 1997 survey conducted by Congressman Ron Paul found that 54% of his constituency wished to abolish the federal Department of Education.[4]

In 2000, the Republican Liberty Caucus passed a resolution to abolish the Department of Education.[5]
---

You realize there wasn't a Dept of Education until the 1970s.

On the flip side the whole "local control" is best is also BS. In my shitty ass county everything thing is run by ingorant inbred hillbillies that probably didn't pass high school themselves.

For example my son had to start school on August 1st this year. WTF is that about? It was also a wednesday. Why not start school on a Monday? We have a tax free holiday for school supplies and clothers in my state unfortunately it didn't start until August 3rd two days AFTER school started. No worries the teachers didn't require the kids to have any supplies until the next monday. So basically for the first 3 days of school kids did NOTHING. So why fucking start school so early?

Also instead of having four 9 week quarters like 99% of all schools systems have, we have 6 six week grading periods.

By the way the first 3 weeks of August it was 100 degrees everyday so way to go on wasting my tax $$ on high electric bill to cool the schools down.

This is the kind of retarded shit you get when you have "local control"

Did I say he was radical? Did I say he was a nutjob? Have I said anything negative about Paul at all? No, I said he has only the smallest chance of winning and that his position is a minority one.

Did I say he wasn't really a Republican? No, I said "Even though a Republican he's pretty much a libertarian". That is very true. He is an elected Republican
with strong libertarian beliefs.

There's no such thing as TRUE republican values. That's like saying that only people who hold one set of beliefs are TRUE americans. Ron Paul is more libertarian (today's standards) than any elected Republican president ever.

I agree. The war on drugs has failed and is a huge waste of money. Still there are many people that do not want to see drugs legalized.

When it comes to abortion he is basically saying he wants to make it so that states can make it illegal. He admits that the current law can't be touched without a major shift in the court, but he still wants it outlawed and sees this as a way around the federal law.

First of all John Edwards beat all top 5 republican candidates in recent polling. If Ron Paul was running many indeprendant sna nd even democrats would vote for him. If republicans rather be stupid and vote for Hillary or Obama then that's their stupidity. Remember Ross Perot was even nuttier and somehow got 1 in 5 voters to vote for him.

I hear all the time the GOP say they believe in smaller government, lower taxes, gun rights. Go look at the libertarian party platform and tell me how that is different than what the GOP says it stands for?

This is where he is being a bit hypocritical.

Kerry was polling lower than Ron Paul is 2 weeks before the primaries. Polls mean nothing.