Originally Posted by ErikBlack
People don't like Ron Paul's message. It scares them. His message does not have universal appeal. The difference between mainstream politics and libertarian politics is like the difference between a summer blockbuster movie that wins an Oscar and the low-budget indie film that wins at Sundance. It doesn't matter how many people you show the indie film to, most of them will think it sucks. In our society the crap rises to the top and the quality sinks like a stone. Trying to sell Ron Paul to the American public is like trying to sell a set of encyclopedias to a 3rd grader when McCain is selling video games. America doesn't deserve Ron Paul.
I don't believe this.
It's convenient to blame the American people, but there's no reason to believe its their fault. I admit that some people won't wake up, even if Ron Paul had a megaphone blasting in their ears.. so, there is some truth to what you're saying. But I still think you're using a scapegoat to cover up a few things, like: 1) Ron Paul's weaknesses as a candidate, 2) Our weaknesses as a movement, and 3) The dogged resistance of the status quo, most notably reflected in (lack of and unfair) media coverage.
1) Ron Paul has got some weaknesses, especially when playing to the "conservative" red meat-eating base.
While the other candidates are falling over themselves to sound tough, Paul sounds like he cares. He sounds weak. Some people want a strong President who will kick ass and take names, not some old, nice guy. Okay, well McCain is pretty old, too, but he talks tough. Why do we want a strong President? I'm not sure, but it has something to do with terrorism and the fear that has been instilled in us, mostly by the media (see #3).
Paul has got some "kooky" ideas, ideas that take longer than 30 seconds to explain. Paul comes out of left field, he finds it difficult to pick up where the commercials and pundits leave off. He is telling us a completely different story than we get from the media, so his message will take a long time to "settle in" to the point where we can really hear him.
2) We've got some weaknesses, too. We're energetic, but inexperienced. We've done an amazing job, but we're not ready to fully compete with the big boys yet. Most of our organization was done by Trevor and by the Meetup groups, right? Well, Trevor is not some politically savvy guy. He's just a guy. Our Meetup groups only came into existence last freaking year. These other Republican party groups have been around for decades.
3) Your explanation of things leaves out the media. If the media coverage was fair, who knows what would have happened? It's impossible to say. I know for a fact that we would have had a huge boost, how huge, no one knows.
And there's media coverage of Ron Paul, which was extremely unfair as we all know, there is media coverage of -everything-. The media coverage of -everything- is unfair. When Paul says, "We can't afford Iraq anymore" and people are confused and think he doesn't support the troops... where do they get that from? It's because they have never heard about the budget on TV, they have no idea about basically anything that isn't on TV.. If the TV has been telling them about the state of our budget and our debt, they would be more inclined to listen to Ron Paul. In fact, they would be -able- to listen to Ron Paul.
People need to be prepared to hear certain things, or they just can't process them. It's not their fault. We are all here, on this site, because we've woken up to what's going on. We were prepared to listen to Paul, by something that happened to us earlier in life... maybe we read a certain book, were explained things in a way that made sense by a parent or teacher.... we were pre-conditioned, in a way, to be -able- to listen to Dr. Paul and understand what he said.
Other people aren't so lucky.
It's our duty to be that parent or teacher or mentor, to give people the books or videos they need to be able to wake up and hear Dr. Paul.
If we don't believe in people, we are doomed to failure. The people of this country are our only hope to change things.
We don't have a -choice- but to believe in them. Or give up. Those are the options. And I'm not giving up. I'm going to try to keep reaching people.
The American people DESERVE a government that listens, a government that serves them instead of the other way around. They DESERVE Ron Paul. And they're going to get him, or someone like him, eventually. You have to believe that or there's no point in going on. If you don't believe people deserve the best, then you're one of them, a statist, and you might as well start trying to run people's lives for them. They don't know any better, right? They're not capable, so we need to intervene for their own sake.
