Can We Start Thinking Realistically Now?

[CJP]

EC, this is (had been) a good thread. Tao, et al., are thinking about the long term. Even if Dr. Paul wins, we must turn this one-shot campaign into a long-term movement.

You seem to exhibit a sort of fanaticism in which you cannot allow yourself to accept any realism in the face of a setback.

Progress is made by accepting reality for what it is, learning from it, and trying again using what you learned. Repeat as necessary until the goal is accomplished.

If you can't deal with that, please go ahead and do what you said you would do: put all these people on your ignore list. That way, their thoughtful comments will go unnoticed by you and the rest of us can have a discussion. Thanks.

 

[Electric Church]

The best course of action unless a miracle happens will for each meetup group in every congressional district to get together and find a candidate to run for congress in November. If it is a Democrat district run as Republican. If its the other way run as Libertarian or a Democrat.

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[Electric Church]

Brainstorming:

If you are a recent 'freedom 7ov3er', what made you like Ron Paul's message ?

Now, imagine you never heard Ron Paul on the internet or in a debate... and carefully watch and listen to all his 'mainstream' ads ... would they appeal to you if you did not know Dr. Paul ?

Not to me anyway... NEVER ! (What I mean by that, is that these messages show him only a little different than the other candidates. What we need to try is REAL original messages TO WAKE UP PEOPLE ! The substance of his ads is perfect... it's the '"form" that must change)

They are to ordinary... not orginal enough... not "Ron Paul' enough...

The campaign must think of a way of reproducing -in the mainstream media- what made most of us love Ron Paul's message.

That's it !


p.s.
Please people, I know this is a sad day for some of us, but we MUST keep faith and keep on spreading the message !

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[Electric Church]

Before Bloomberg got into the race, I'd have loved to see Ron Paul somewhere on the Unity Ticket. The much touted Paul/Kucinich ticket would have fit in perfectly with the Unity Theme.

Now Unity is pushing for a Bloomberg candidacy... So thats out the window.

Honestly, I'm with Dr. Paul all the way to the end no matter where he goes. He has the right message, its just getting the rest of the country to see it.

We'll just have to see where he decides to take us.

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[Todd]

I disagree on needing him in congress. Continuing to fight and running as a Libertarian is the best run. If he can keep pulling 10% in every state and possibly pull some democrats over as a libertarian candidate, he could bring legitimacy to the libertarian party and possibly push for a real third party in 2012. A third party pulling 10% in the general election and then maintaining organization for four years to push for 2012 with help get the message out and possibly pull more votes then. Goldwater was the messenger and Reagan was the beneficiary. In this case, Paul may have to be the messenger. If we want real change to occur, I don't think it can happen within the republican party this time, it needs to be from a third party that can pull the disenfranchised from the major parties.

You have a pretty good take on the future. However, I am still in this until Ron says it's over. Then we can start looking at that.

 

[Electric Church]

The only thing you can do is to shake Ron Paul's HAND and tell him face to face to fix his campaign....

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[Electric Church]

Regardless of whether RP is going to run republican, 3rd party or not run at all, we DO need to start pushing our people to Congress. It's critical.

Right now both house and senate have almost equal parity. Dems are a majority by just a couple of seats. Imagine how important those seats are. And we sure as hell can capture them, even if we believe that our support is 10%.

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[Electric Church]

Ron Paul has zero chance of winning as a 3rd party candidate. He's not doing so hot in the Republican primaries either but if he runs third party we might damage the movement long term.

I realize the typical GOP hates us but we're still doing a lot better than the 0.5% RP got in 1988.

Either we can run 3rd party and piss away the last vestiges of conservative support forever or we can start recruiting Mark Sanford for 2012.

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[Electric Church]

Tao is right, folks. Don't stop the campaign just yet, though. We can keep using the campaign to get the message out, even if winning appears out of reach this time.

We've done far better than anyone thought we could a few months ago. Ok, so we didn't pull off a miracle victory on our first try, but we now have a real political movement that didn't exist a short while ago.

Now, we need to start focusing on the long-term health of the movement. We need to define ourselves and our goals beyond this one election. We need to organize for the long haul. We need leadership, especially from Dr. Paul himself, to help us transition to the next phase.

This is not negativism, it is a realistic eye towards a potentially bright future.

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[Caulfield]

I disagree on needing him in congress. Continuing to fight and running as a Libertarian is the best run. If he can keep pulling 10% in every state and possibly pull some democrats over as a libertarian candidate, he could bring legitimacy to the libertarian party and possibly push for a real third party in 2012. A third party pulling 10% in the general election and then maintaining organization for four years to push for 2012 with help get the message out and possibly pull more votes then. Goldwater was the messenger and Reagan was the beneficiary. In this case, Paul may have to be the messenger. If we want real change to occur, I don't think it can happen within the republican party this time, it needs to be from a third party that can pull the disenfranchised from the major parties..

Here here. This is Paul's last shot at the presidency, and will undoubtedly be his last term in the Congress. Paul's legacy that he can leave will be for setting up the liberty revolution for the coming years, even if he can't win it all in 2008.

 

[Electric Church]

The movement ain't over... what we need now is to replace Congress. There's 80,000 of us on meetup now. We have more voting power to change Congress...

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[Electric Church]

Let's get ready for a third party run!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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[CJP]

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Thanks, EC.

 

[Electric Church]

Paulites supposedly will crawl over broken glass, through blizzards, etc. to vote for Paul. But as soon as there some disappointing election results in two states, some are ready to throw in the towel.

Is the job harder? -- Yes. Does the campaign need to make changes? Yes. But I'm certainly not ready to quit and I hope you aren't either.

Whatever happens, this campaign is the foundation for the next stage in the fight to take back our government. The stronger the foundation, the greater the chances of long-tern success.

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[Electric Church]

The threshold for general election debates is 15%. We won't get there with 4% national support. We need to start national TV advertising if we want those numbers to go up.

We need to get mad because we've been ripped off in NH

 

[Electric Church]

Regardless of a win, that mentality would be beneficial. We need to put ourselves in a position where we can stand together without one centralized figure acting as a tornado. Attracting major attention but disappearing within moments. Spreading our message and political might would be the obvious, and crucial, endeavor we should all seek. Putting those with relentless loyalty in power could bring about the changes we desire. It would be a flanking procedure on our enemies and obstacles alike.

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[Electric Church]

I agree and disagree with the original poster.

I agree we need to get out there and start getting libertarian/constitutionalists in congress.

I disagree that the campaign is over already. It ain't over til it's over.

3/50 is not enough to start giving up.

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[Electric Church]

Agreed - we need to plan for the future. There are enough of us who are passionate enough, that we can make a difference - even if it takes a few years for the sheeple to wake up.

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[Electric Church]

I've always believed that this was the best hope.

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[mconder]

Someone needs to start a national organization and database of RP supporters to keep us all together as a voting block when this thing ends.