Mitch McConnell hires Jesse Benton to run his 2014 re-election bid

[fr33]

Defeating McConnell in the primary isn't helping him

Are you in Kentucky? What possibility is there of doing this?

 

[parocks]

No, I've never bought into any of the passionate anti Benton hate. I can't believe that this move met with Ron Paul's disappoval. I think it's part of the strategy to help Rand.

The accepted wisdom here is that nothing you can do can stop you from being screwed by the establishment GOP.

That is not necessarily true. It may be true. I'm not arguing against the truthfulness of that.

But from a practical standpoint, there isn't anything productive that can be done if it is believed to be true.

I mean, what exactly is the strategy if everybody is going to screw you over always? Rand Paul can't exactly run for President while
living off the grid.

They may just be choosing to go the method of taking whatever strategy is available.

If A) then do the strategy. If B) no strategy is available. So Jesse is doing the strategy that is available.

The GOP is not unchangeable. I don't know how the national committeemen and women are picked, but in Maine, they're both Ron Paul supporters. If we could just conquer those states, we could get our people on the Republican National Committee, get a majority, and have control. Then we'd get our chair in there, and all should go well.

The msm is never going to support Ron Paul or Rand Paul - that's not changeable, but the attitude and behavior of the GOP certainly is.

Parocks, come on! Tell me what you disagree with in the following:

1- Mr. Mitch McConnell is a horrible and evil individual.
2- Ron Paul supporters all hate Mr. Mitch McConnell.
3- Mr. Mitch McConnell has hired one Jesse Benton, for reasons unknown, but perhaps for various complex and brilliant reasons you have invented for him. And perhaps because he thinks Jesse can bring along the grassroots somehow.
4- Even if you don't think that #3 gives us all the more reason and would make it all the more sweet to defeat this lump of gunk, #3 at least does not change nor modify 1 and 2 in any way. And so, given that,
5- Mr. Mitch McConnell must be destroyed.

Have I gone wrong anywhere? Or are you an board with this project? Come on: climb on the freedom train!

 

[sailingaway]

You keep assuming Ron approves everything. Ron thinks people need to act, and take responsibility for acting, according to their own choices.

 

[fr33]

No, I've never bought into any of the passionate anti Benton hate. I can't believe that this move met with Ron Paul's disappoval. I think it's part of the strategy to help Rand.

The accepted wisdom here is that nothing you can do can stop you from being screwed by the establishment GOP.

That is not necessarily true. It may be true. I'm not arguing against the truthfulness of that.

But from a practical standpoint, there isn't anything productive that can be done if it is believed to be true.

I mean, what exactly is the strategy if everybody is going to screw you over always? Rand Paul can't exactly run for President while
living off the grid.

They may just be choosing to go the method of taking whatever strategy is available.

If A) then do the strategy. If B) no strategy is available. So Jesse is doing the strategy that is available.

The GOP is not unchangeable. I don't know how the national committeemen and women are picked, but in Maine, they're both Ron Paul supporters. If we could just conquer those states, we could get our people on the Republican National Committee, get a majority, and have control. Then we'd get our chair in there, and all should go well.

The msm is never going to support Ron Paul or Rand Paul - that's not changeable, but the attitude and behavior of the GOP certainly is.

You are just describing how we are fighting a loser's battle and why we should assimilate. The only reason I'm here is because of Ron Paul's principles in his voting record and when he speaks. Mitch McConnell is someone that drives me to either want to defeat him or just abstain from the whole process and become apathetic. The liberty movement has no business being tied to him. Rand has gone too far with this if this is his deal. If this is Rand's deal then the people posting here from Kentucky are lying. Is Rand in so much danger that he must kiss the ass of one of the worst enemies of liberty?

 

[phill4paul]

BWAHAHA-HAHAAAAA-ha-ha-haahahahahahahhahhahahahhahhahahah-ha-ha-haahahahahahahhahhahahahhahhahahah-ha-ha-haahahahahahahhahhahahahhahhahahah-ha-ha-haahahahahahahhahhahahahhahhahahah-ha-ha-haahahahahahahhahhahahahhahhahahah-ha-ha-haahahahahahahhahhahahahhahhahahah-ha-ha-haahahahahahahhahhahahahhahhahahah-ha-ha-haahahahahahahhahhahahahhahhahahah-

 

[parocks]

Well, about 1, I really don't know, haven't given it too much thought. I suspect that "horrible and evil individual" would apply to almost any politician to most people here.
We have enough trouble accomplishing one thing at a time, we can't get every single Republican many there think horrible and evil.

About 2, well, you're not going to find agreement with everybody here.

Basically, I'd want to see what Rand says, I'm really not with the people here who were attacking Rand and Benton after WE LOST but we didn't want to hear it. Yes, Romney could've been eaten by sharks or some other black swan event that would've made Romney just cease to exist. In real life though, the sun will rise in the East, unless the sun ceased to exist. But we somehow never say that the sun could just vanish, we take it for granted that the current condiditions will hold. But Ron Paul supporters did not want to hear that we lost, if current condiditions held, and current conditions are always assumed to hold. So, in short, we lost. "we will no have enough delegates to win" were the magic words from the email.

Parocks, come on! Tell me what you disagree with in the following:

1- Mr. Mitch McConnell is a horrible and evil individual.
2- Ron Paul supporters all hate Mr. Mitch McConnell.
3- Mr. Mitch McConnell has hired one Jesse Benton, for reasons unknown, but perhaps for various complex and brilliant reasons you have invented for him. And perhaps because he thinks Jesse can bring along the grassroots somehow.
4- Even if you don't think that #3 gives us all the more reason and would make it all the more sweet to defeat this lump of gunk, #3 at least does not change nor modify 1 and 2 in any way. And so, given that,
5- Mr. Mitch McConnell must be destroyed.

Have I gone wrong anywhere? Or are you an board with this project? Come on: climb on the freedom train!

 

[orenbus]

We would want to defeat McConnell in the primary.

I'm for that

 

[phill4paul]

I'm for that

And here I said I was opposed to ever giving another chit for a campaign. Heh. Someone needs to set up a chip in.

 

[Feeding the Abscess]

No, I've never bought into any of the passionate anti Benton hate. I can't believe that this move met with Ron Paul's disappoval. I think it's part of the strategy to help Rand.

The accepted wisdom here is that nothing you can do can stop you from being screwed by the establishment GOP.

That is not necessarily true. It may be true. I'm not arguing against the truthfulness of that.

But from a practical standpoint, there isn't anything productive that can be done if it is believed to be true.

I mean, what exactly is the strategy if everybody is going to screw you over always? Rand Paul can't exactly run for President while
living off the grid.

They may just be choosing to go the method of taking whatever strategy is available.

If A) then do the strategy. If B) no strategy is available. So Jesse is doing the strategy that is available.

The GOP is not unchangeable. I don't know how the national committeemen and women are picked, but in Maine, they're both Ron Paul supporters. If we could just conquer those states, we could get our people on the Republican National Committee, get a majority, and have control. Then we'd get our chair in there, and all should go well.

The msm is never going to support Ron Paul or Rand Paul - that's not changeable, but the attitude and behavior of the GOP certainly is.

You trash conspiracy theorists, then weave a beautiful conspiracy that has Ron Paul acting like a complete buffoon, incapable of handling anything properly when it comes to campaigns and messaging, in order to secretly infiltrate the GOP elite and trick everyone into freedom.

Yeah okay.

 

[orenbus]

And here I said I was opposed to ever giving another chit for a campaign. Heh. Someone needs to set up a chip in.

I think the first step is we need to identify a candidate to run against him.

 

[phill4paul]

I think the first step is we need to identify a candidate to run against him.

Who can we run. What are the qualifications. Can we get GunnyBradley to move and challenge? I dunno. Either Benton is an idiot or he's brilliant. If he is brilliant than he is counting on us to destroy McConnell.

 

[fj45lvr]

You don't have to be a politician to be a paid whore it seems....

 

[parocks]

You are just describing how we are fighting a loser's battle and why we should assimilate. The only reason I'm here is because of Ron Paul's principles in his voting record and when he speaks. Mitch McConnell is someone that drives me to either want to defeat him or just abstain from the whole process and become apathetic. The liberty movement has no business being tied to him. Rand has gone too far with this if this is his deal. If this is Rand's deal then the people posting here from Kentucky are lying. Is Rand in so much danger that he must kiss the ass of one of the worst enemies of liberty?

I'm talking about what Jesse Benton should do. What strategies are available to Jesse Benton. Jesse Benton is not grassroots, grassroots doesn't have the tools at its disposal. You seem to think that Jesse Benton should act like a grassroots person, like the average Ron Paul Supporter here on RPF. And he's not that and he shouldn't be that. Collectively, I would not give "Ron Paul Supporters" a campaign job at any Benton type level. That doesn't mean there aren't many good ones here, but the collective wisdom here is wrong.

I was all about "wreck the convention" until that Thursday, when I heard in the Doug Wead interview that the Ron Paul campaign decided not to attack Romney in Michigan because Romney would've attacked Ron Paul hard and the decision was made to protect Rons name and Rands future and not run the ads against Romney.
Do we think Doug Wead was lying about that? If true, it was over then. And it show ed a complete lack of willingness to fight a risky fight. So at that point it became clear that he really didn't want any type of distruption or negativity that could blowback on Ron or Rand.

So, that then was a pretty prime opportunity to do a lot of damage exactly where and exactly why. So, the opportunity to do damage was right there and we didn't take it.

This get Mitch thing doesn't seem to have any clear upside, of course I'd be watching Rand to see what he would like to have happen.

HOWEVER.
This is an idea I have. You said you liked one of my ideas, so, here's this one, a bit farfetched and it really isn't exactly a Ron Paul idea specifically.

Do a thing with a website, get rock stars to run for a whole bunch of offices. It could be a "thing" that people from across the country could get behind.
Would increase turnout tremendously with 18-29 at least.

The standard RP response might be "are these rock stars in Liberty Bands?". And that would be the wrong way to think.

You start with a message, a core set of beliefs, and you see what rock stars you can get to sign on with that core message.
Maybe you have contests. Online voting. But there are hundreds of house seats up for grabs every 2 years. It's possible to fill them all but
not certain by any means.

We together could formulate this set of principles, so we should be all happy with our candidates. And since these people are political novices they're not
likely to have any hidden allegiances, they'll owe the seat to us, and they'll listen to instruction. And if they don't, oh well, we will have achieved an awful lot
in getting them in there.

Rockstars, perhaps especially local rockstars, are very well suited for this. Rockstars are good in front of people, charismatic, lead singers talk to crowds and
interact with audiences, know how work audiences, like being in the spotlight, they have big email lists, lots of facebook friends, big numbers of people are used to giving them money, they sing other people's words without blinking, they listen to instruction from their labels, they have a producer produce their records.

We would be the label, the producer, the songwriter. They're just the talent performing the speech, and they're trained at it.

There could be a Democrat version and a Republican version. The Democrat version is "must have less war" and the Republican version is "must have less government"
I know that we want our candidates to be 100% on both, but I suggest that we could consider a message that is more likely to win. These will be our people, they'll
vote right. But we don't necessarily have to make each candidate be 100% pure in message. That's heresy to some, I know, but, again, winning.

It really is doable, actually. Not that it will happen, not that if it's tried, it'll succeed, but I don't see anything that clearly prevents it from being successful.

I've had a version of this kicking around for a while. I've already talked, about a year ago, to one band that I though would be a good challenger to Olympia Snowe in
Maine, and they told me the next time I saw them that they thought about the idea. They'd be good for Maine against Susan Collins. That's something that could go forward with or without a national organization, website, what have you.

 

[Article V]

Jesse Benton broke the Cardinal Rule of Campaign Management!

Nearly 700 posts since this thread began and one thing is clear...

Jesse Benton broke the first and most cardinal rule of campaign management:

NEVER SWITCH POLITICAL PARTIES OR NO ONE WILL EVER BE ABLE TO TRUST YOU FULLY AGAIN!​

​

I didn't make that rule up. It was shared to me via James Carville; and it's clearly true regarding Benton's decision to represent McConnell. True, Mitch McConnell is technically in the same political party as Ron Paul... but modern politics have evolved so that third parties are now factional wings within the big two political parties. Jesse Benton's switch from the Tea Party Republican wing to the Establishment Republican wing has put him in the precarious position where the tea party grassroots will never fully trust him again while the establishment Republicans will only have him for as long as he's useful (because they won't ever fully trust him either because of his history).

What this proves is Jesse Benton either:

• never was a true believer in the tea party Republican liberty movement of Ron Paul... or
• never fully understood the tea party liberty grassroots enough to realize the blowback that would be result if he swapped sides to represent the establishment Republican wing in future elections.

Regardless of which of these two possibilities is true (the latter, in my opinion, may be worse than the former), their implications hammer home the reality that Jesse Benton was NOT the man to be campaign managing Ron Paul's Presidential bid. Sadly, Ron's family loyalty may have misguided his judgement (and ours) until we discovered this all too late.

 

[Carlybee]

Rock stars as candidates? Tea Party Liberty Republicans? Beam me up Scotty..the aliens have landed.

 

[Feeding the Abscess]

We didn't like McConnell long before Benton was going there. I agree I wouldn't target his campaigns on purpose.

I'd say we stay true to at least the watered down Rand approach of running against bailouts and the politicians who supported them.

If the official movement can't even hold such a milquetoast line as that, or worse, decides to encircle the TARP supporting establishment we ran against... we're done, and there's absolutely no point in doing anything moving forward under the movement banner.

 

[CaptLouAlbano]

I think the first step is we need to identify a candidate to run against him.

Have any of you here ran a campaign for elected office before? Probably your first place to start would be to find someone with experience in state legislature, congressional, or state wide campaigns.

 

[pacelli]

I saw the headline and thought it was an onion article. The fact that it is NOT a joke is even funnier.

Benton needs to keep working, but that doesn't mean any of us are going to start following his orders. I'll tell ya what, if I start getting mail from Mitch McConnell now, I'm going to blow a gasket. The Romney mail has been more than enough spam.

Maybe this will be the campaign where Benton stops chewing gum while he's on camera.

 

[angelatc]

McConnell is the type of politician who will bend whichever way the wind is blowing. If liberals we suddenly gaining ground in the party he would do that way, if it was social-cons he'd be talking about abortion and prayer in schools non stop. As I see it, he sees which way the wind is blowing nationally and particularly in his home state and wants to do whatever he can to reach out to that wing.

Time will tell. I think he's in the pocket of the military industrial complex, and will sell Rand Paul down the river in a New York second when the time comes. I stand by my opinion that this isn't about reaching out to a new base - this is about political preparation in the form of self preservation. McConnell may well start pandering to the small government conservatives, but I predict his voting record will never pass the litmus test.

 

[angelatc]

HOWEVER.
This is an idea I have. You said you liked one of my ideas, so, here's this one, a bit farfetched and it really isn't exactly a Ron Paul idea specifically.

Do a thing with a website, get rock stars to run for a whole bunch of offices. It could be a "thing" that people from across the country could get behind.
Would increase turnout tremendously with 18-29 at least.

The standard RP response might be "are these rock stars in Liberty Bands?". And that would be the wrong way to think.

You start with a message, a core set of beliefs, and you see what rock stars you can get to sign on with that core message.
Maybe you have contests. Online voting. But there are hundreds of house seats up for grabs every 2 years. It's possible to fill them all but
not certain by any means.

We together could formulate this set of principles, so we should be all happy with our candidates. And since these people are political novices they're not
likely to have any hidden allegiances, they'll owe the seat to us, and they'll listen to instruction. And if they don't, oh well, we will have achieved an awful lot
in getting them in there.

Rockstars, perhaps especially local rockstars, are very well suited for this. Rockstars are good in front of people, charismatic, lead singers talk to crowds and
interact with audiences, know how work audiences, like being in the spotlight, they have big email lists, lots of facebook friends, big numbers of people are used to giving them money, they sing other people's words without blinking, they listen to instruction from their labels, they have a producer produce their records.

We would be the label, the producer, the songwriter. They're just the talent performing the speech, and they're trained at it.

There could be a Democrat version and a Republican version. The Democrat version is "must have less war" and the Republican version is "must have less government"
I know that we want our candidates to be 100% on both, but I suggest that we could consider a message that is more likely to win. These will be our people, they'll
vote right. But we don't necessarily have to make each candidate be 100% pure in message. That's heresy to some, I know, but, again, winning.

It really is doable, actually. Not that it will happen, not that if it's tried, it'll succeed, but I don't see anything that clearly prevents it from being successful.

I've had a version of this kicking around for a while. I've already talked, about a year ago, to one band that I though would be a good challenger to Olympia Snowe in
Maine, and they told me the next time I saw them that they thought about the idea. They'd be good for Maine against Susan Collins. That's something that could go forward with or without a national organization, website, what have you.

Really? You relentlessly did everything you could to make sure everybody knew you thought the idea of a simple music festival simply to honor Ron Paul was a stupid idea. Then you come up with......this?

Speechless.