POLITICO: Ron Paul aides ponder ‘frustrating’ race

[moonshine5757]

Most of this comes down to Ron not pandering to the religious groups. A bunch of you freaked out at me when I suggested it, and said Ron is too good to do such things. Well, politics isn't about being the better man, it's about doing what it takes to win, and this campaign didn't do it. there are a ton of reasons we kept losing, the media is a huge part in it, but it's not the only thing. Pander to the religious folk, and you could've taken Rick Santorum's support away immediately.

 

[idiom]

Young People turn out to vote in New Zealand. Dunno what's wrong with American youth.

How about holding the Rally's during Caucus Day?

 

[coffeewithchess]

YEP but I kept saying it ain't so, it ain't so...stay positive. As for C4L, they had 3 years and 4 million to build a national infrastructure in every single state. But that didn't happen.

Yea, I posted a thread last night, with actual REAL advice on how to help ensure a brokered convention, and a mod/admin moved the thread to "Hot Topics"...which I don't even know where that thread is and I looked for it.
Read this: http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?365491-Want-a-BROKERED-convention and then tell me that it belongs in "Hot Topics" that few will find, or in the main thread where more people will read it, and possibly understand that it's our only chance now.

 

[tttppp]

I understand the media ignores/bashes RP, perhaps you missed my two videos above, and see:


I understand the MEDIA is the big problem...creating ignorant misinformed voters that think they know what they're voting for. RP's problem is they spent millions on attack ads on Perry, Gingrich, and Santorum...and failed to release a GREAT ad addressing foreign policy in a MEANINGFUL way.
RP failed to get a speech coach/address foreign policy in the DEBATES, in a way the audience he needed to win, could understand...before it was too late.

Saying, "he's still generated tons of support" is pretty terrible considering how much money the campaign raised/spent, compared to Santorum and other candidates.

The campaign failed to effectively address the newsletters issue in a MEANINGFUL way...and that is what tanked him in Iowa, if not that...then what?
2 weeks of the kitchen sink with every single show bringing them up repeatedly, CNN doing the edit job on the interview, and the campaign acted like they weren't prepared for it in any way...only to have a PAC release an ad trying to address the issue, after Iowa.

You're right on most of those points. I've been very critical of his debate performances as well.

One thing I haven't mentioned before which is a mistake he has made is, he focuses so much on how bad this country is getting and how much worse the country will get if something doesn't change. Instead of taking a pessimistic point of view, he should take an optimistic point of view and tell people how much better things will get if he is president. He could very easily make an ad listing the prices of things if we went to a monetary policy before the fed. People would get excited if you showed them how to get 10 cent/gallon gas. Obama ran successfully on his optimistic point of view. Ron Paul could easily do this without having to bullshit everyone like Obama did. This would have been a better use of money than attack ads.

His response to the newsletters was bad.

That said, with the support he has gotten, it should have shown up in the elections.

 

[tttppp]

No. The people I deal with are ignorant Fox News/talk radio viewers. Do not bother them with facts, when they have their opinions.

Which is kind of my point. How is Ron Paul going to change their mind with facts if you can't? It can happen, but its no guarantee.

 

[WD-NY]

Most of this comes down to Ron not pandering to the religious groups. A bunch of you freaked out at me when I suggested it, and said Ron is too good to do such things. Well, politics isn't about being the better man, it's about doing what it takes to win, and this campaign didn't do it. there are a ton of reasons we kept losing, the media is a huge part in it, but it's not the only thing. Pander to the religious folk, and you could've taken Rick Santorum's support away immediately.

TRUE.

I still don't get this whole "Ron's to humble to wear his religion on his sleeve.." umm... what!? Look at the press with Santorum! They actually seem to respect him MORE because of how shamelessly he pandered to evangelicals before all the recent caucuses. They're honestly asking him questions like "hey Rick, now that you've secured the religious vote, do you plan to tone down the "language" a bit??"

I'm sorry, but I think it's seriously messed up that Ron (and his 2 minister brothers) weren't f'in willing to DO WHAT NEEDED TO BE DONE TO WIN after we sent him $30 F**IN MILLION.

No one was asking him to change his positions... just to pander a little bit to win some of their support. Jesus!

 

[coffeewithchess]

Which is kind of my point. How is Ron Paul going to change their mind with facts if you can't? It can happen, but its no guarantee.

$30 million dollars, and the campaign can't put together a few ads destroying the MSM? Showing/exposing them for the lies they tell?

I understand the people are brainwashed, but you have to go to those people with the truth...we are battling YEARS of lies/propaganda, and the campaign does us no good by avoiding the shows, and at least getting SOME truth out.
If this is about the "message" why would you turn down the biggest "news" show there is, simply because you can't/don't prepare for the idiot questions? RP must learn to ignore stupid questions, and I think the last few debates he improved greatly, and even in some of the interviews he has been doing...but this was needed months ago (see last year), not now.

 

[coffeewithchess]

TRUE.

I still don't get this whole "Ron's to humble to wear his religion on his sleeve.." umm... what!? Look at the press with Santorum! They actually seem to respect him MORE because of how shamelessly he pandered to evangelicals before all the recent caucuses. They're honestly asking him questions like "hey Rick, now that you've secured the religious vote, do you plan to tone down the "language" a bit??"

I'm sorry, but I think it's seriously messed up that Ron (and his 2 minister brothers) weren't f'in willing to DO WHAT NEEDED TO BE DONE TO WIN after we sent him $30 F**IN MILLION.

No one was asking him to change his positions... just to pander a little bit to win some of their support. Jesus!

He did pander some, the problem was the campaign failed to attack Santorum in IOWA, and allowed him free positive press, and the campaign failed to address the only issue(s) the media could attack RP on...

 

[parocks]

Ok, but what's their fucking excuse?

And why doesn't/didn't the campaign do anything to address whatever it was that was keeping them from showing up?

This is the age of inexpensive web apps + game theory at scale. I'm quite certain that tools could've been built that would've improved our gotv rates. And no, phone from home is not it.

Walking around money. gotv money. street money. money on the ground that gets people to the polls.

It's a failure of GOTV. We need to beef up the GOTV. I'm not sure that a web widget would help that much, but it certainly couldn't hurt.

What shocks me is that we can go into a state, know that there's 50K students at a school, a number that could win the election for Ron Paul, all by themselves, and no special effort is made to get those people to the polls.

It's as if the official campaign has never done GOTV before.

 

[parocks]

Well many here realized this long ago. Young people DO NOT vote.

Sounds like the campaign isn't going to stop targeting young people though. It's a shame that we could have won all of those states that the campaign secretly expected to win. Could have been the frontrunner for the nomination by now.

"In theory, Paul’s turnout operation is more professionalized than Gingrich’s or Santorum’s. Experienced field staffers have been hired and headquarters set up in every caucus state.
In Nevada, all 24,000 targeted supporters got “multiple touches” from the campaign — including mailers, emails and personal phone calls from volunteers."

(Ok, who were those 24,000? How did the Campaign get those 24,000 names? Did they call every old person from the Republican Registered Voter list, or
some type of Republican Super Voter list? And that's what we got? The campaign does not start with lists that have our people on them. They
might add our names from whereever to the list, but the list they start with is some sort of registered voter list.)

"The biggest problem for Paul is that most of his supporters are young people.
In the Michigan primary, for instance, exit polling showed that Paul pulled 37 percent of 18- to 29-year-old voters
but this demographic made up only 10 percent of the electorate."

("most of his supporters are young people"
does not mean that Ron Paul is "targeting" young people. GOTV means getting people to the polls. You "target" the people who like you and you get
the people who like you to the polls.)

"This has always been a political reality that young people don’t vote,” Benton said.
“But we need to really, really make the case to young people. … Young people need to start to take the reins.”"

(No, you need to do more GOTV, although mentioning where and when the caucuses are, and the requirements for voting, all that stuff, is important.
The thoughts are wrong. "make the case". No. You have provide rides to the polls, for one thing. A lot of Ron Paul supporters aren't voting,
and you're still thinking that magic words will solve this problem. A beefy, Democrat-style GOTV, with walking around money, or spending money
on the process beyond phone calls seems necessary.)

 

[Vet_from_cali]

With all the

Secret votes
Missing vans with ballots
Closed caucuses because of a slightly windy day
The powers that be saying "we will not let him win" or "if ron paul wins iowa...we just...take it out...take it out and look at the second"

Thats just a taste of it, there is so much fraud at every single state, you got newt having dead people vote for him, you have a guy on fox saying that the santorum and romney guys "came to an agreement on who won"

ALL of that and you guys STILL HAVE TO ASK?

I am a logical level headed guy, RP is being fucking CHEATED.

LOL

I know EXACTLY how you feel

 

[parocks]

This...

We didn't do enough in Iowa. We didn't kill Santorum when we had the chance. We held on to the "Not Romney" strategy for too long. We didn't target enough old people. We didn't do enough to combat the Foreign Policy IMAGE. We didn't do enough to combat the "He'll end Soc. Sec IMAGE.

This is why Ron will lose, however, this is assuming Ron was in this to win.

I think Ron knew from the start they'd never let him finish 1st, he's been building a movement this entire time.

Now the movement has to take back the party by taking back the local, state, and national positions. <- This is the 1st step towards liberty...

We haven't done enough to get the people who like us to the polls. Need more walking around money, less tv.

Scrap phone from home. Too many old people on that list, and old people JUST DON"T LIKE RON PAUL.

No magic TV commerical is going to make old people want R(evol)ution. The old people who get Ron Paul will be there. We make a point of saying "those 3 over there, they're status quo, I'm very different." Do old people, old Registered Republicans, really dislike status quo? NO. They LIKE Status Quo. The people who usually go to caucuses are the ones who have been voting for the candidates we HATE. But you think that a handful of magic social security tv spots will make old people say "oh, I guess I like R(evol)ution now. Not the candidates who are just like the candidates who I've been voting for all my life, at least for the last 24 years.

 

[parocks]

Fighting big Gov ain't easy. 50% of families are receiving a gov check. Safe to say all the old voters don't want their social security and medicare taken away.

Old people don't want change. Change means the checks might get interrupted. Just keep the checks coming. Ron Paul means change. The others don't. Ron Paul recognizes that we have serious problems and wants to correct them. The other ones don't. The young want the problems solved. The old don't. They don't care if there are more or less jobs - because they're done with jobs. They want the standard Republican program, they're standard Republicans.

 

[parocks]

OK, Plan E: we put Ron and Carol into cryo-sleep and thaw them out in 20 years after the old farts have died off and the country has gone to hell! j/k

-t

the old farts will be replaced by a new set of old farts. Young = fix the future / Old = steady as she goes

 

[parocks]

Has anyone considered this possibility?!

All these people go to Ron Paul rallies by the thousands to hear what he says. Perhaps they do NOT like what he says and decide not to vote for him as a result?

I mean it is possible, I guess.

a reasonable analysis

 

[parocks]

He won the Iowa caucus and built momentum. I and most other realists knew it was over when we took 3rd in Iowa. The campaign killed itself afterwards when it didn't put enough effort into South Carolina. Maine was the last hope and instead of planting Ron up there and having him go to every caucus they just kind of thought it was in the bag and then it ended up being really close and the Maine GOP screwed us over. Oh well, it was never about winning for me in 2008 and it wasn't this year either. Ron is doing a great job of spreading the message and building a base for the liberty movement.

Ron Paul spent 2 days there doing rallies before the caucuses. He spent one day there during the caucuses, the first time Romney went to a caucus to speak, Ron Paul won everywhere he went that day.

He did not feel the need to go back for the Washington County Caucus on 2/11.

 

[parocks]

TRUE.

I still don't get this whole "Ron's to humble to wear his religion on his sleeve.." umm... what!? Look at the press with Santorum! They actually seem to respect him MORE because of how shamelessly he pandered to evangelicals before all the recent caucuses. They're honestly asking him questions like "hey Rick, now that you've secured the religious vote, do you plan to tone down the "language" a bit??"

I'm sorry, but I think it's seriously messed up that Ron (and his 2 minister brothers) weren't f'in willing to DO WHAT NEEDED TO BE DONE TO WIN after we sent him $30 F**IN MILLION.

No one was asking him to change his positions... just to pander a little bit to win some of their support. Jesus!

Ron Paul's position on Gay Marriage is not to the liking of Evangelicals. Santorum has the preferred position there. Leaving aside Foreign Policy / Israel.

 

[MisterTickle]

We lost Maine, Washington, North Dakota, Alaska and Virginia when we lost Iowa on January 3rd. No Social Security ads or National Defense ads + failure to push back hard against racism charges opened up an opportunity for Santorum in Iowa. From then on the dominoes started falling.

I agree SO MUCH.

 

[IDefendThePlatform]

the old farts will be replaced by a new set of old farts. Young = fix the future / Old = steady as she goes

This is what scares me. Arent a lot of these older 65+ voters the same people who voted for Barry Goldwater 48 years ago as 18-30 year olds? What's our hopes for keeping this generation of youth on board with the freedom movement?

Certainly the Internet is favorable for us. Hopefully that makes the difference. The information age should favor the truth (aka freedom).

 

[IDefendThePlatform]

Old people don't want change. Change means the checks might get interrupted. Just keep the checks coming. Ron Paul means change. The others don't. Ron Paul recognizes that we have serious problems and wants to correct them. The other ones don't. The young want the problems solved. The old don't. They don't care if there are more or less jobs - because they're done with jobs. They want the standard Republican program, they're standard Republicans.

I agree with this but I put most of the blame for old people being scared of Ron on the media. If he had been treated even remotely fairly and had his balanced budget talked about rather than a bunch of "kooky" "crazy" "scary" comments from oreilly and friends then I really think we would be walking away with the nomination right now. Ron was freaking winning Iowa even in spite of all the marginalization from the media. Then they felt threatened by his success and went after him relentlessly with the newsletter crap and very thin else they could possibly throw at him. Sadly it was enough to knock him into 3rd. But even after that he was polling decent in south Carolina until the media pounced all over his golden rule response at the south Carolina debate.

Hopefully the Internet will continue to gain market share over tv and we'll be able to actually start shrinking government sooner rather than later.