Kurt Bills has asked for our help

[Bastiat's The Law]

http://today.yougov.com/news/2012/09/21/minnesota/

In this new poll, Klobuchar is at 49% and Bills at 34%. If you recall, when the first polls came out, Klobuchar was above 60% and now she is down to under 50%.

Also, if you analyze the polling numbers, there were 100 more Democrats polled than Republicans, this skews the numbers a bit.

Out of Klobuchar's 415 votes, out of 847 total votes, 45 of those votes are from Republicans. If you take those away from Klobuchar, she drops from 49% to 43%. And if you add those 45 to Bills' 287 votes, he jumps up to 39%. This is well within the margin of error.

Bills can win this, history shows that the Senate races are close and the poll numbers show that if Bills gets ALL the Republicans on board, then he can win.

- ML

I'll make this really easy. Bills can win if we fund him. Bills can't win if he gets zero financial backing.

 

[Bastiat's The Law]

If you want to get the Minnesota grassroots and more, you might try to get Stebbins on the campaign. It would be a huge signal, if she was supporting the campaign.

Great advice there!

 

[Bastiat's The Law]

Yeah, it's painfully obvious at this point. While I still want the shareholders' majority for party control, we can't purge every last one of them. It's the corrupt few in control in certain areas that gotta go but the old guard rank and file are usually team players absent those corrupt few that galvanize them to sit on the sidelines in crucial races via their internal email hit jobs which spew hatred and dissension.

I guess the bottom line is that this race is indeed a referendum on us and we need to rally for Bills as much as we can while also putting in strong efforts for our winnable candidates in Congressional seats. Even though I'm not envisioning the level of support Rand got, I still think we can make a hard push down the home stretch. Tho, Bills needs some pros on the campaign to give us the edge.

Great post! +Rep

 

[Bastiat's The Law]

It looks like even Mack is going to lose in FL but there is still a chance Mack will win. Heck, I've even seen polls showing that Flake may lose in AZ. Even the guy in IN may lose. I sure hope Cruz in TX isn't the only decent Republican US Senator elected. It looks like the GOP may not win the US Senate. I've already given up on it but if things don't get better, if the next few weeks, most pro-liberty folks might also give up on it.

Really, I don't care if it is Ron Paul's top US Senate propriety, there aren't any amazing US Senate prospects as Bills is going to lose. The best to hope for are the 2 great US Reps running that are doing well (Kerry and Massie) to win. Outside of that, there are some great ballot questions (CO, MA) and some excellent state Senate folks like Wallace in ME and Reagan and Sanborn in NH.

I don't have a good feeling about this election. Look at ME for example, there are 5 ballot questions and 4 of them are about increasing spending... CA has a ballot question calling for increasing personal income taxes from 10%+ to 13%+ and another calling for increasing corporate income taxes.

Romney is dragging everyone down and it is really annoying.

Yup, Romney is the turd sandwich someone forgot under the sofa and you can't rub that stink off. Maybe this will be a learning opportunity for the establishment...ah maybe not. What it will do is throw the GOP into disarray and we have to be there to take the reins locally.

 

[Bastiat's The Law]

But it is US being dragged down, and I completely get our not amping for Romney, but we need to rally for our guys and turn the tide. Think how it will look if GOP 'normal' loses but liberty candidates win?

In any event, I'd like Kurt to win, and I fought for Ron and didn't think it 'likely', there.

That would be a great teachable moment if our liberty candidates win while the establishment takes it on the chin.

 

[Bastiat's The Law]

I still can't figure out the logic of this argument about endorsements. It seems like nothing more than being self-righteous than anything to do with being genuinely concerned about progressing this movement forward.

If I were running, I'd endorse Romney without a hitch, because I know it has zero influence on the course of actions I, myself, would take when in office. It says very little of my principles and who I am as a human being. How some of you can think that even matters, upon reflecting on some of our candidates and their genuine intentions.. really just boils down to naivety and unrealistic expectations in the face of some very dire consequences ahead that you aren't really taking into consideration. If it opens the door for a much larger constituency to take me seriously, that otherwise might not (or tactfully use that against me), it sure seems like an obvious tactical decision.

But, I have to accept the fact that some of you lack tact.

Some of you would prefer the idea of brave men standing in the forest being "intellectually pure" to that other group of brave men who understand the obvious importance of maintaining a positive perception among the blind, apathetic people who they need to even begin making a difference.

"All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." Your refusal to help those good men might just put you in the same damn conundrum. You, most assuredly disagree now, but when this CAN can't be kicked down the road any longer and the consequences are at your front door.. I wonder what you might say then about where it got us.

Honestly, I think the idea of not supporting a candidate because of a meaningless endorsement is the opposite of intellectually pure. Our objective is to spread an idea and the barriers to that idea are about as thick as your false-sense of pureness.

Ugh, with all we have to deal with - all this fraud and corruption, it is these people that anger me the most. I would trade you any day for a Neoconservative or Liberal that has even a twinkle of hope waking from their slumber. At least through them and their liberty awakening, we actually have a chance at a free world.

But I forget.. you were always intellectually pure.

Beautifully written! + Rep

 

[Bastiat's The Law]

dusman, there are endorsements and then there are endorsements while the guy you previously endorsed, OUR guy, was still in the race pushing for wins of various sorts. For me, I don't support the others as I do Ron Paul, and I don't expect the same standards, but Ron IS the gold standard, to me. I wouldn't have bothered getting involved for go along to get along politicians, to begin with.

You have to be careful not to put Ron Paul on a pedestal, not only isn't accurate, he wouldn't want that treatment either. Ron has made his doosie of endorsements in his time, like when he endorsed Don Young. Did I care? No. Did it make me donate to Don Young's campaign? No. That piece of history is swept under the rug around here though, but old timers remember. Now we have this endorsement disqualifying game being played here, and if this charade was in place back when Ron was making his endorsements he would've been wrote off by legions as well.

In summation sailing:

1. The campaign was essentially over in January for the politically astute among us. Paul needed to win Iowa to have any chance.

2. Ron Paul isn't perfection personified.

3. Our liberty candidates are human for better or worse, everyone has their faults. The Puritans and Anarchists here are far too eager to hang them in effigy.

 

[Ivash]

Count me in!

I have no connection or inside information on his campaign, but I would suggest that when revenue is short, spending needs to be addressed. Shoestring campaigns need to leverage volunteers and free media as much as possible.

Bill's biggest contributor is smaller than his opponent's twentieth, or something ridiculous like that. A lot of people think he simply can't win and thus aren't willing to spend a dime on him.

Edit: I am really off today. If there are any other grammatical mistakes here, then I apologies.

 

[TCE]

I'll make this really easy. Bills can win if we fund him. Bills can't win if he gets zero financial backing.

But this is incorrect. If Bills would get $2 million, and he won't get anywhere close to that, he would still lose. It is now a matter of how many points he'll lose by. We can continue to dream about knocking off Klobuchar and sticking it to the establishment, but all this race is right now is a sinkhole where dollars will go in and be lost forever. We nominated a candidate, he had no shot at winning, it has become clear he has no shot, it is time to let it go. Throwing more money at a lost cause isn't going to help us in the long run.

 

[pbarnum]

We all love Ron Paul, but even he has done things most people would question to raise funds. You've all seen the flurry over the "racist" newsletters. I fully believe he didn't write any of that, and is probably guilty of neglect of a publication with his name on it. But those did raise money from people that we otherwise despise. Politics IS ugly. We can change that, but only from the inside, as Ron has worked for so many years. I've been volunteering with the Bills campaign for months, and I can tell you he is the real deal. If we want more Liberty elected we have to let the campaigns make blunders and the candidates occasionally take bad advice, without turning our back on them. This is a new time in politics and negotiating our way through it will be difficult. The half hearted support of Romney Kurt declared just days before the convention doesn't change the work he will do for the cause of freedom in the Senate. I urge you to support him in all the ways you can between now and election day so that there will other voices rallying for peace and an end to the status quo cronyism in DC.

 

[AJ Antimony]

I'll make this really easy. Bills can win if we fund him. Bills can't win if he gets zero financial backing.

"We" can't fund every candidate, especially every US Senate candidate, especially after primary season.

Bills HAS to unite the party and raise money in MN.

 

[supermario21]

If Bills were smart he could have made some outreach to have an event with Paul or even Jesse Ventura. Not living in Minnesota I'm not familiar with how realistic that could have been, but to be honest I don't see him having a chance. Especially with the likely election day crowd voting a straight ticket. That's what happens when you can't get your message out. In Connecticut, on the other hand, Linda McMahon can win because she has money to get her message out. It's why I'd like to see him try and reach out to as many people as possible. You can't win in Minnesota by having this website as your main base.

 

[chudrockz]

I'm in for the MB and will be promoting it tonight after work via Facebook!

 

[Michael Landon]

For those are against helping Bills because he endorsed Romney, remember that Ron Paul endorsed Michelle Bachmann in both 2008 and 2010 and asked that we donate money to help her get reelected. I could never support Bachmann, and I would have been blasted if I said that I wouldn't support Paul because of his Bachmann endorsement.

- ML

 

[Bastiat's The Law]

For those are against helping Bills because he endorsed Romney, remember that Ron Paul endorsed Michelle Bachmann in both 2008 and 2010 and asked that we donate money to help her get reelected. I could never support Bachmann, and I would have been blasted if I said that I wouldn't support Paul because of his Bachmann endorsement.

- ML

Oh how quick we are to forget.

 

[Michael Landon]

I just received the following e-mail from Bills:

I am humbled today to receive the backing of FreedomWorks PAC.

You can read the full release here.

National organizations are now taking an interest in the Minnesota Senate race.

All it took was Klobuchar polling under 50%, which is a testament to your hard work.

We have been making slow and steady progress the Wellstone way – and you can help.

Your contribution of $100, $50, $25, or even $10 will make a statement.

This is our country, we are taking it back.

From the release:

“FreedomWorks PAC believes Kurt Bills is the clear choice for voters who support free markets, fiscal responsibility, and constitutionally-limited government.”

Government is not the answer to all our problems. I know my opponent doesn’t quite understand that concept, but millions of Americans get it:

We need government out of the way so we can get this economy growing again.

We need government out of the way of our personal rights and freedoms.

But most importantly, we need to end the crony capitalism of Washington D.C. that has led to 7 of the 10 richest counties in the nation to be the ones surrounding D.C. I would rather those counties be in Minnesota.

It’s America vs. Washington D.C. – you can help us with the fight:

Please consider contributing $100, $50, $25, or $10 today.


Kurt Bills

www.kurtbills.com

- ML

 

[Bastiat's The Law]

With Romney tanking we might see more groups and Super PACs looking to help Senate candidates across the country. We need to give Bills that initial boost and then outside money I think would poor in. We gotta be the catalyst though!

 

[Badger Paul]

What happened to Bills is important for future liberty candidates and others to understand that foreign policy is the essential heart of Ron Paul's message and is not something which can be compromised away.

We cannot reduce the size of government without reducing the size of miltary-industrial complex, without reducing the size of the national security state.

There are many Republicans, sadly, who believe the opposite. Who do believe the sole role of government is the military, or believe in military Keynesism or who want the U.S. to be an empire or led by the nose by a foreign country.

However, this part of RP's message cannot be compromised no matter what they believe. Now it can be said in many different, more politically correct ways or packaged differently. That's politics. But it cannot be compromised. We not here just because we want to eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts. I can find a million Republicans who want to do that other than Ron Paul. But what Ron Paul offered was a different way to fund government other than through borrowing and cheap credit that brought the economy down. A different way which may well mean the U.S. is no long the predominate superpower in the world (still one with thousands of nuclear weapons) but one whose means and ideas actually meet because for our economy's sake and the sake of our ideals, we cannot afford to be what we currently are.

Unfortunately this is what Rep. Bills tried to do. He tried to compromise. This has nothing to do with endorsements. It has everything to do with things he said to different people, especially to the establishment, after he won the nomination that he really wasn't a Ron Paul supporter and we have to support Israel and be on the world stage and we all agree on economics blah, blah, blah. He said these things even though without Paul's campaign he never would have won the nomination.


So he found himself whipsawed because he alienated the very people who helped him without getting much in return for it. So now he's turning back to us, begging for help.

Having said all this, I firmly believe we should help.

The reason being is that is does us no good to see Bills be routed. Like it or not he is identified with the Paul movement, and if he goes down it will be a sign to the reptiles who make up much of the GOP establishment in Minnesota that the Liberty Movement is simply a flash in the pan and can go back to business as usual.

Bills doesn't have to win for us to win. If he can come close and make a respectable race (which is possible if he has money) it will show a sustainability on our part which will be attractive for other politicians to follow, far more so than anything that someone like Michele Bachmann or Tim Pawlenty have to offer.

There is an ideal campaign for Bills to run but he can't do it unless he has the resources and the support, without which no one would trust us again. Like it or not, we have to step up or step out, it's that simple.

But beyond politics we have to find ways to change people's minds on foreign policy, otherwise more politicians like Bills will make the same mistakes.

 

[chudrockz]

For those are against helping Bills because he endorsed Romney, remember that Ron Paul endorsed Michelle Bachmann in both 2008 and 2010 and asked that we donate money to help her get reelected. I could never support Bachmann, and I would have been blasted if I said that I wouldn't support Paul because of his Bachmann endorsement.

- ML

I'm not against helping Kurt Bills, in fact I'll be doing so tonight and participating in the Money Bomb. However I will admit that his endorsement of Romney took alot of the wind out of my sails. As I said in another thread, he's already got the "I'm voting for Bills because Klobuchar is an evil Democrat!" vote all sowed up. And the national party seems to have forgotten/ be in the process of screwing him. So all that endorsement did was dishearten his base of support. I don't get that.

 

[sailingaway]

Oh how quick we are to forget.

Oh, please. She was a freshman, going to all his economics lunches and fighting against bailouts with him and against the Fed. That was before she voted to extend the Patriot Act, for FISA etc. I thought she was better myself, at that time.

But I don't blame candidates for 'supporting the nominee' AFTER convention, as much. I don't love it, but some of our delegates had to pledge to as well, to get their slots.