Roll Call: Rand Paul Goes Viral, Thanks to Mike Lee

[jct74]

Rand Paul Goes Viral, Thanks to Mike Lee

By Niels Lesniewski
November 2, 2015

Rand Paul’s late-night budget deal filibuster bid picked up an unexpected boost from fellow Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah.

Lee posted to his Facebook page a clip of the Kentucky presidential hopeful expressing on the Senate floor his opposition to the budget deal, which also suspended the debt limit beyond the 2016 elections.

“The mainstream media did not want to tell the truth about what was in this budget deal. But in the era of social media, you can no longer hide votes for bad policy in the middle of the night,” Lee said in a statement. “The American people will find out.”

...

The segment of Paul raising a point of order that the agreement, which was signed into law Monday, broke the budget rules, was viewed more than 18 million times by Monday afternoon.

...

By comparison, Facebook spokesman Andy Stone said White House videos released through Facebook about the State of the Union reached some 13.5 million viewers.

...

read more:
http://blogs.rollcall.com/wgdb/paul-budget-video-facebook-lee/


Lee's facebook post:
https://www.facebook.com/senatormikelee/videos/vb.178081365556898/1028817943816565/

 

[jct74]

Lee Facebook Post on Budget Deal Reaches 53 Million Americans

Monday, November 2, 2015 - 11:15am

WASHINGTON – A Facebook post by Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) thanking Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) for leading the fight against the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015 has been shared over one million times and has reached over 53 million Americans in just three days – making it one of the most viral social-media posts by a political figure this year.

“The American people are fed up,” Sen. Lee said of the 3:00 AM Friday morning Senate vote that, among other things, raided $150 billion from the Social Security Trust Fund. “The mainstream media did not want to tell the truth about what was in this budget deal. But in the era of social media, you can no longer hide votes for bad policy in the middle of the night. The American people will find out."

The Facebook post in question features a two-minute video of Sen. Paul making a point of order against the budget deal noting that the legislation in question reallocates over $150 billion in payroll taxes from the Social Security Old Age and Survivors Trust Fund into the Social Security Disability Trust Fund. Immediately after the video featured in the post, the Senate voted 64-35 to waive Paul’s point of order.

...

To put the numbers for Sen. Lee’s post in perspective, the most popular video on Barack Obama’s Facebook page has 1.6 million views. The most watched video on Hillary Clinton’s campaign Facebook page has over 900,000 views, and a popular post on Donald Trump’s Facebook page has just over 100,000 likes and 3,400 shares.

http://www.sentinelnews.net/article...eal-reaches-53-million-americans#.VjfIENKrTGg

 

[hells_unicorn]

This may be the point where things finally start to turn around, and I'm hoping that he gets a bump in the polls to keep him in the game for the coming debate and beyond. This definitely has legs if Rand can continue to drive home the points he made during his dissent against the budget deal.

 

[KEEF]

 

[ds21089]

I will never not laugh at that gif.

 

[r3volution 3.0]

boom goes the dynamite

Great work Rand, now just keep it up.

Promoting his fiscal conservatism needs to be priority #1 going forward.

...every speech, article interview, campaign event, etc.

 

[Peace&Freedom]

boom goes the dynamite

Great work Rand, now just keep it up.

Promoting his fiscal conservatism needs to be priority #1 going forward.

...every speech, article interview, campaign event, etc.

Rand has the best fiscal positions, but his stance will not separate him from the others, who can all talk the fiscal conservative talk. Just as importantly, most of the conservative media will not be impressed, since the main fiscal thing they really care about is increasing military spending, to support more military empire abroad.

Rand needs to make a basic noninterventionist fiscal point such as "does it really cost $600+ billion annually to defend the US? Or isn't that just the biggest form of waste, fraud and abuse in the budget? That $600 billion is mostly going to support an unnecessary global network of bases, and failed adventurism. We need to abandon trying to be a global empire, cut the empire spending out and bring the boys home, for the sake of defense, peace, and fiscal sanity." That would be a unique message in the current GOP field.

 

[r3volution 3.0]

Rand has the best fiscal positions, but his stance will not separate him from the others, who can all talk the fiscal conservative talk.

They can say what they want, but Rand can rebut them with their own records, which - needless to say - are not fiscally conservative.

Rand's totally unique on economic policy. No one else has proposed anything remotely close to his $500 billion in spending cuts.

Rand needs to make a basic noninterventionist fiscal point such as "does it really cost $600+ billion annually to defend the US? Or isn't that just the biggest form of waste, fraud and abuse in the budget? That $600 billion is mostly going to support an unnecessary global network of bases, and failed adventurism. We need to abandon trying to be a global empire, bring the boys home, for the sake of peace, and fiscal sanity." That would be a unique message in the current GOP field.

Talking about cutting waste in the military budget is fine (and he's been hitting that hard in recent speeches, talking about the "unholy alliance" between big spenders on the left [welfare] and right [warfare]). But talking about major spending cuts, reducing the size of the military, or radical changes in US foreign policy (such as closing down foreign bases), is suicide in this GOP.

 

[eleganz]

This may be the point where things finally start to turn around, and I'm hoping that he gets a bump in the polls to keep him in the game for the coming debate and beyond. This definitely has legs if Rand can continue to drive home the points he made during his dissent against the budget deal.

As much as I would love for some bump in support to happen as a result of the viral Facebook video but I'm keeping my expectations low on this one and I would advise others do the same.

We should all know by now that activity on social media doesn't always (and actually rarely) translates to real life.

 

[JK/SEA]

As much as I would love for some bump in support to happen as a result of the viral Facebook video but I'm keeping my expectations low on this one and I would advise others do the same.

We should all know by now that activity on social media doesn't always (and actually rarely) translates to real life.

yeah, well lets try and keep the positive vibe going mmmkay?...because, well, i said so.

i realize thats a tall order for some of you in here, especially with trump with his shiny hair and perky lips.

 

[Jeremy]

Is the video the most viewed video of any libertarian politician in history?

 

[nayjevin]

Is the video the most viewed video of any libertarian politician in history?

It hasn't stopped yet, it might be already. 20 million is a huuuuge number, huge. That's up there with Bieber videos.

 

[ds21089]

As much as I would love for some bump in support to happen as a result of the viral Facebook video but I'm keeping my expectations low on this one and I would advise others do the same.

We should all know by now that activity on social media doesn't always (and actually rarely) translates to real life.

While I agree with you, I think the main reason for that is because older people usually aren't the people who see the social media activity. Judging by a lot of the comments I've seen on facebook, a lot of people seeing this are older people. Also this is a much greater reach than usual. I'm hoping he mentions this in interviews and the next debate. "We're spending so much money that we've stooped to stealing money from Social Security. I took the floor trying to prevent this from happening. People are outraged. In fact, Senator Mike Lee posted a video of me explaining what's happening, which reached over 50 million people and everyone was commenting on how mad they are about this" If Rand doesn't use this to try to gain momentum I'm seriously gonna question some of his strategies.

 

[Crashland]

While I agree with you, I think the main reason for that is because older people usually aren't the people who see the social media activity. Judging by a lot of the comments I've seen on facebook, a lot of people seeing this are older people. Also this is a much greater reach than usual. I'm hoping he mentions this in interviews and the next debate. "We're spending so much money that we've stooped to stealing money from Social Security. I took the floor trying to prevent this from happening. People are outraged. In fact, Senator Mike Lee posted a video of me explaining what's happening, which reached over 50 million people and everyone was commenting on how mad they are about this" If Rand doesn't use this to try to gain momentum I'm seriously gonna question some of his strategies.

The Facebook user base is a lot older now than it used to be. In the last few years Facebook has actually seen a decline in the youngest demographic, and the strongest growth has been in the 55+ crowd. Not as much the case with other social media, but there is plenty of room to reach quite a lot of 50+ voters on Facebook now.

 

[PCKY]

It hasn't stopped yet, it might be already. 20 million is a huuuuge number, huge. That's up there with Bieber videos.

Where is it in relation to Gangum Style?

 

[PCKY]

The Facebook user base is a lot older now than it used to be. In the last few years Facebook has actually seen a decline in the youngest demographic, and the strongest growth has been in the 55+ crowd. Not as much the case with other social media, but there is plenty of room to reach quite a lot of 50+ voters on Facebook now.

Agreed and since Mike Lee is neither fundraising nor running for President they are more likely to read it.

 

[William R]

bump

 

[jct74]

Rand Paul’s viral video surprise

By David Weigel
November 2 at 7:14 PM

Last week's "filibuster" of the deal to raise the debt limit was widely seen as a bust for Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.). With great fanfare, one day before the CNBC presidential debate, Paul said that he would take the floor and make life difficult for the deal's backers "until we talk about proposals." In the end, he talked for less than two hours -- and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) arrived to talk even more.

Then, to the Paul campaign's surprise, one video of his speech transformed into a hit. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), a member of Paul's 2010 Tea Party class, shared the longest stretch of the Paul speech on Facebook. "I was proud to vote with Senator Paul on his point of order that would have protected Social Security, and I ask you to help me shine a light on what Washington has tried to hide from you in the darkness of night," Lee wrote. "If everyone who sees this message shares it, it will reach millions of Americans."

Paul's campaign had not uploaded much of the speech to its YouTube account; none of the clips that made it up got more than 3,500 views. But over two days, the Lee video got more than 19 million impressions. (By contrast, the most popular YouTube video posted by Cruz has nearly 600,000 YouTube views.)

...

read more:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/11/02/rand-pauls-viral-video-surprise/

 

[moraha]

As much as I would love for some bump in support to happen as a result of the viral Facebook video but I'm keeping my expectations low on this one and I would advise others do the same.

We should all know by now that activity on social media doesn't always (and actually rarely) translates to real life.

I honestly feel the same. So far, I haven't heard about the Mike Lee page at all anywhere else besides on this and the Reddit forum. Not saying it isn't anywhere else, but I don't hear any buzz about this.

 

[Mad Raven]

I honestly feel the same. So far, I haven't heard about the Mike Lee page at all anywhere else besides on this and the Reddit forum. Not saying it isn't anywhere else, but I don't hear any buzz about this.

It's amazing sometimes how people live in completely different worlds. I spoke to a hardcore Bernie supporter the other day who had never even heard of Rand Paul.