Methinks there are *critical* issues here. Ones that will determine whether the liberty-movement wins in 2014 and 2016, in fact. Meaning that, in my not-so-humble-opinion, there is nothing more important to the liberty-movement than how we respond to Shelly Dankert. First of all, let us put forth some facts about her. Political facts. Alliance facts. Power facts.
#1. Political facts. She lives in Nebraska, which is a heavily-repub-leaning state... but also (along with Maine) one of only two caucus-states in the nation, which means that Obama could win an ecVote from Nebraska back in 2008. She lives in a repub-leaning portion of the state, but almost certainly knows people in the Obama-leaning portion. Although she lives in a rural town by the standards of folks in the UK or Hong Kong, the population of 25k people makes it the ninth largest city in Nebraska. She is only about 100 miles from Omaha, headquarters of Warren Buffett, one of Obama's chief wealthy cronies in the war on laissez-faire capitalism... and the class-warfare of rich against poor -- with the poor supposed to side with Obama. Shelly is poor, as she states on her donate-so-I-can-buy-food-link on her website, but cannot stand Obama, because she hates totalitarian socialism. Also of geographic note, Shelly is within a few hours of the state capitol of Nebraska, and thus (theoretically) has access to folks like Buescher, one of the folks on the platform-cmte in Tampa this year. She is also under a hundred miles from the western border of Iowa, which as you may recall, is the part of the state of Iowa where pauliticians were BEATEN TO A PULP, figuratively speaking (contrast with Louisiana). Romney won the big town near Shelly, which is Sioux City Iowa, and otherwise most of the Iowa counties near here were pure Santorum territory. Ron Paul lost the popvote in Iowa by less than 3000 primary-voters. Similarly, a few months earlier, Ron Paul lost the Ames straw-poll popvote by less than 200 straw-poll-voters (to Michele Bachmann rather than Rick Santorum). Much much later, after staying persistent, Ron Paul outlasted both Bachmann and Santorum, which meant he was able to win 90% of the Iowa delegates to the natcon. That happy outcome WILL NOT happen again, unless we convince more straw-poll-voters and more primary-voters in the state of Iowa that the liberty-candidate is the better choice than the theological one. How do we convince them?
#2. Alliance facts. In terms of political policies, Shelly is a tea party member, which doesn't say all that much nowadays -- because the "tea party" moniker is so broadly construed now, that even Paul Ryan can claim to be teax-parteax and many believe him. Not only is Shelly a member, though -- she is an activist, putting out several hundred videos, teaching herself to use a computer, wading around on liberal-leaning forums to try and convert the masses, organizing conservatives. Which sort of politics does she advocate? Economically, she is a paulitician, who believes that Ron Paul is the best tea-party guy of the Mitt/Newt/Sant/RonPaul quartet. She know Mitt & Newt are big-spending types. She's not sure if Santorum is tea party or not, economically -- which seems silly given his senate record of being a big-spending pork-barrel type -- but this uncertainty on Shelly's part can be somewhat forgiven, because she is also aligned with Sarah Palin, who is a particular sub-flavor of the broader tea party movement which involves combining liberty and the constitution (basically ron paul style) with a stronger brand of religious emphasis (more like Santorum style... or Chuck Baldwin slash Virgil Goode style), plus a dash of neocon (McCain style plus especially Santorum style -- seeing islamic militants as a HUGE existential threat rather than just as a particularly rare form of violent criminal). Now, this whole picture is complicated somewhat by her own personal situation, vis a vis the religious world of Reconstructionist Christianity and Literal Biblicalism that is somewhat represented by Sarah Palin and in different way by Rick Santorum -- for the person named Shelly is openly gay (her own term), which means that a true biblical literalist would wish to see her stoned, per the leviticus portions of the old testament. I'm not going to speculate on how Shelly resolves the contradiction, that she is personally gay but that she supports Sarah Palin, and to a lesser extent Rick Santorum... beyond saying that most likely her priority-list is not organized with LBGT issues as numero uno... and that, living in a heavily repub heavily religious part of Nebraska, she already could care less what other people think (her blog says she acquired that skill back in 2010). She is a cigarette smoker, another thing which makes her more of a republican-leaning person... and in particular, makes her an objectivist-leaning person, following in the footsteps of Ayn Rand. Besides her hero Sarah Palin, who is a liberty-leaning strongly-religious tea-party candidate (by constrast Santorum is a libertarian-hating uber-religious semi-tea-party candidate), Shelly also appreciates objectivist activists like Gellar of NYC, and objectivist gone-Galt-stockbroker Barnhardt, among others perhaps... I've not done a complete study of her life, just a bit of depth-first internet-digging. What my digging tells me, on first glance, is that Shelly is 90% allied with exactly the sort of political stances that us pauliticians hold, and probably 96% allied with the sort of political stances that gary-johson-ites hold (since Gary is willing to continue foreign aid that he believes is in our national interests and would also support keeping certain overseas bases open that Ron Paul would likely close... plus as a bonus Gary is openly accepting of LBGT whereas for religious reasons Ron Paul was not). In other words, this lady ought to be our totally blatantly obvious political ally, at least in 2016, if not in 2012. How do we get people like her, tea party folks, Sarah Palin fans, to join us in supporting liberty-candidates over the establishment moderates?
#3. Power facts. Finally, let us speak of the most subtle issue. It is pretty obvious that if we don't win some primary-popvote-beauty-contests, we don't really deserve to win the presidency, even if the delegate-rules are rigged to make that a mathematical possibility. (I'm not saying that it was cheating for Ron Paul to win most of the delegates in Iowa -- we followed the rules as written -- I'm saying that the people who *wrote* the rules, back in the day, were corrupt establishment types who never dreamed that anybody but *them* would get to use the rules in their favor.) If we want to win the popvote-beauty-contests, then we need to have strong activists, helping us convert the masses over to the cause of liberty-n-justice for all. Certainly that means that Ron Paul should keep giving speeches at colleges. Certainly that means that ronpaulforums should continue to educate those that find it. But what about people that are NOT voluntarily attending rallies to hear from Ron? What about people that are NOT already browsing paulitician website forums? Converting and educating and de-sheeple-izing folks that have never actually even *heard* what Ron Paul's actual political positions were, because they get their news from teevee and/or from websites owned lock stock and barrel by the mainstream media, is a terribly difficult job. We need as much help as we can get. Who better to pick as our obvious natural allies than the members of the tea-party, the real original tea party that believes in lower taxes via smaller government and less spending, that believe politicians should tell the truth and keep their promises and represent-not-screw-over their electorate... such as, for example, tea party activists like Shelly. Pragmatically speaking, we ought to be bending over backwards to bring her over to our side, as one of our key assets.
But that is not the subtle issue. The crucial subtle issue here is one of POWER, and how we use it. The crucial subtle issue here is one of how each one of us, members of ronpaulforums, regular visitors over at dailypaul, people that comment on dougwead, folks that *still* attend their liberty-meetup-groups even though the election is over, and liberty-movement people that are joining their GOP county committee now, today, because they are looking forward to 2014 and 2016 with visions of victory dancing in their heads... those people are the liberty-folks. Which means *we* are the liberty-folks, right? Here we are, discussing some person, who in our estimation is not quite a liberty-movement member yet, with utter disdain. We call her names. We laugh *at* her, never with her. We insult her intellect, her personality, her body, her love life, her dreams, her heroes, and her sanity. We spew hatred at her. I am utterly ashamed of us. We have learned nothing from Ron Paul, if this is what we really are. Here, on this forum, we are a majority of sorts, living in the libertarian-leaning echo chamber... just EXACTLY like the neocons and their fox news and their talk radio... just EXACTLY like the libtards and their msnbc and their dailybeast/nytimes. Look at the words we use: neocons, occutards, palinbots. This is the language of hate, of stereotyping, of civil war, of genocide, of the guillotine -- the history of the liberty-movement is nowhere near as bloodstained as the history of the socialists and their cousins the communists, nowhere near as bloodstained as the crusades and the inquisition, nowhere near as bloodstained as corporatists and their cousins the fascists, and certainly nowhere near as bloodstained as tinpot despots and organized criminals such as the mafia and the terrorists. But we are not spotless. Our cousins the sans-culottes killed millions. Our founders made a deal with the slave-powers, the establishment forces of their day, sullying our Constitution with evil. We, the modern pauliticians, are also not perfect.
We must strive to be better citizens. We must strive to be better humans. We must strive to embody the r3V0Jution, which is not supposed to be about gaining power, but about spreading love. Love, dammit. Reading through the comments on this thread, I'm not seeing the spread of love. I'm not seeing people trying to educate Shelly on where she might want to rethink her stances. I'm not seeing people thank her for what she does, with a couple rare exceptions. I'm not seeing people trying to actively figure out how to convince her that in 2014 and 2016 we will be her friends, rather than her hated enemies. I want her to come here someday, and read what we say, and think to herself -- wow, back in 2012, thinking Ron Paul was no good, thinking pauliticians were the enemy, what a mistake! I've read through a goodly portion of her blog. She's a pretty damn smart lady. I've read through this thread. She's not going to be thinking such thoughts as I outlined above, if she ever happens to read it.
In a nutshell, what I'm trying to say is this. There are hundreds or thousands of Shelly Dankert folks out there, strong committed activist grassroots folks, who are 75% or 85% or 95% agreed with the policy-stances of Ron Paul and/or Gary Johnson, but for one reason or another, did not support them in 2012. Therefore, it behooves of to bring them over to our side. The best way to do that is with respect, and with love, not with anger and sarcasm. BUT THAT IS NOT THE MAIN POINT, because we could bring her over to our side simply by *pretending* to respect her, and by *hiding* our disdain for her, without too much trouble, right? Kinda like the "tribute" video that us pauliticians got, after the broken bones and the snubs and the cheating and all the rest, which just added insult to our injury, and ended up backfiring on the romineey, remember that fiasco of an election? We must maintain the high moral ground, not because we want to win people over with authentic love, but because someday we will *be* the ones in power. We are the future. Unless we are very careful to stick to our morals, to keep working on love, we are going to find out that, having achieved that position of power, we will look around us... we will look in the mirror in other words... and we will see the establishment, the mean-spirited win-at-any-cost lie-if-you-have-to go along to get along go-team-rah-rah establishment... staring back at us. Perish the thought.
I suggest that we treat Shelly as a testcase, to prove whether we have the organizational skills, the persuasive skills, and the loving-kindness skills to bring her over to our side. If we fail now, that probably means we'll also fail in 2014, and then in 2016... but more importantly, if we fail now because we stop remembering that love is the goal of the liberty-movement, even if we *win* every election in 2014 and 2016, we will have accomplished nothing, because we will have become the thing we despise: bitter power-grubbing control freaks. Re-read the ending of Animal Farm, and take the warning to heart. Do not glory over Shelly in misguided schadenfreude -- her misfortune is our own, for one thing, and for another, stooping to that moral level will come back to haunt us -- not in the next life should we be so lucky as to arrive in one, not in some distant future utopian civilization where we have a liberty-president and dual-liberty-supermajorities in congress and plenty of liberty-governors and liberty-state-legislatures to go around, but in just *two* months when then RNCmte re-convenes in January (at the outside 18 months when the 2014 midterm primaries start up). Ron Paul won the moral victory in Tampa this year, but Darth Ginsberg struck him down in anger, via the rules committee, and the newly-rammed-through-rule-twelve, the One Rule To Wring Them All. The question is whether Ginsberg will have the final laugh, or whether his attack on Ron Paul will make the liberty-movement into something more powerful than Ginsberg can possibly imagine.
www.fox19.com/story/19479204/reality-check-dnc-runs-over-delegates-with-scripted-platform-vote
But if you've been following the movie references here, you better remember that we are in the early half of the first movie. We still have to get through the part where the establishment strikes back, before we can restore peace to the galaxy. They will not be striking back in 2016, but in 2013, and at the latest, 2014. The rules that they rammed through via cheating in Tampa will be utilized to destroy the real tea party (including Shelly and her hero Sarah Palin), as well as the pauliticians. We are to be used as the scapegoats. Paul Ryan, Newt Gingrich, and a bunch of talking heads in the media are going to be trying to pin the blame for Mitt's losing this election on our shoulders. Because we were too foolish to vote for the lesser of two evils. Because we were too foolish to rally around the nominee back in April. Because we were too foolish to compromise with the liberal-leaning lies-with-every-word romineey, holding our noses to get rid of Obama... since we can hardly tell the difference between them. Last but by no means least, pauliticians will be painted as hateful disruptive childish conspiracy nuts, which helps to bring the argument full circle: we must use rule#12 to destroy the pauliticians (oh and also the tea party and sarah palin and rick santorum and anybody not presumtuously-pre-approved by the elite twin-party DC insiders that run this country but we won't mention that little factoid just yet oh no we will keep that on the hush hush for now certainly), and when they complain that rule#12 is a conspiracy, and when they say that the unspecified "friends" that Ginsberg is quoted as being behind rule#12 are out to destroy all that is good-n-true in the world, nobody will believe them. Insert evil laugh. We need to convince Shelly of the truth. We need to show her some love, dammit, the love of patriots for other patriots, even if they disagree on particulars. If we don't do this, now, while there is still time to keep the 58 million everyday repubs that voted for Mitt from turning against us, we are dead.
We must all hang together, or most assuredly, we will all hang separately. Unless they decide not to bother with a public hanging, and just send a killer robot drone to wipe out everything at our geoIP locations. I wish I were joking, but I really don't think I am. Whether or not Shelly is reading this, the NSA is archiving it, and unless we change course, when the currency is wiped out and martial law is declared and the terrified mob installs their shiny new totalitarian dictator, we liberty-folk are in trouble. Besides convincing Shelly in particular, we need to be spreading the teleprompter-video far and wide, now, about how Tampa was rigged, and the Romney-Ryan interviews that show they *knew* their minions were up to shenanigans yet said nothing... and about how 4 years of Obama the liar and the socialist-leaning-corporatist is actually better than 8 years of Mitt the liar and the centrist-leaning-corporatist (to be followed in 2020 by president-for-life Gillibrand). Should we scream the truth? Should we insult those who don't immediately fall in line behind us? Should we foster anger and hate? Or instead, should we follow the paulitician way, speak the truth softly but firmly, insult nobody, respect everybody, and push the message with love?
