Write-In Vote? Ron Says NO

[Kade]

Kade,

You're right. You shouldn't be mocked. I personally think it's wonderful that you're over here.

To get a really good understanding of what this whole movement is REALLY all about, it would probably be best to read some of the books that Ron Paul recommended. That would give you a clearer picture. You have that list, right?

I do have that list.

Right now, I'm reading:

Ron Paul's The Revolution: A Manifesto
Popper's Open Society and It's Enemies part II
Dimitrakos' A Vision of Liberty
and I just finished Nabokov's Speak, Memory: A Memoir

I sent Ron Paul a reading list.

He didn't get back to me.

 

[Kade]

So you really think Obama takes no money from lobbyists??
Go look at his campaign records, it alone will prove you wrong.

I have that tone because I can never understand why Ron Paul supporters could think that Obama is actually good. He is the same as McCain. He is for amnesty, for policing the world, for the federal reserve.

I see his campaign records. Can you show me where, since he has declared for President, he has taken money from lobbyist?


I would like to see for myself.

 

[Kade]

Ummm... Because you didn't google those few words before making a flat statement that was, at best, "misleading"?

You missed the point...

 

[Aratus]

not that i want to totally set off or encourage our own SteveMartin, yet he did have the idea of
a Patriot Summit amoungst the third parties whereby by rational self interest if not game theory...
we have a way for getting around the traditional idoelogical isolation that is the nomrative norm
for our current-day political discourse! if there is a tacit agreement to have a string of "favorite" sons,
he said... whereupon we treat the electoral college like one vast 1800s era political convention...
we then tacitly cigar chomp and ahead of time agree to consolidate the delegate pools... from
the delegates state by state that are very hard~won from the two mainstream parties... the gist!!!!

 

[acptulsa]

No. You don't get it. Whether the vote is "split" or not is irrelevant. Neither Bob Barr nor Chuck Baldwin has a snowballs chance in hell of actually WINNING! The only think that's important is the combined total of the votes from BOTH candidates! And the vote will be "split" regardless based on the reasons I already gave. Some simply are NOT going to vote for Bob Barr or Chuck Baldwin. And a write in Paul campaign simply isn't viable. Look at it this way. Would you rather have an 7 percent vote for Barr or a clear 10 percent vote for people who picked a pro liberty candidate?

I get it. I hope everyone does. My point is that we can't expect the American public to do the math.

Add them together and see what you get. Well, firstly the public hates doing math. Secondly they want to be spoon fed. Thirdly, we don't pose a weight--a movement headed for critical mass--if we can't even get together on our votes. Say what you want about the unseemliness of the G.O.P. people in "lockstep", it works.

If we're to get people to stop the business as usual and join us, we have to be worth joining, we have to have some numbers and momentum to convince them we aren't just tilting windmills, we have to appear to be effective.

I don't think all of that can survive us splitting our vote. Since it looks like we're going to, I hope you're right and I'm wrong. But I feel committed to trying to unify this herd of cats behind one.

I don't like either the Baptist preacher or the reformed neocon. Neither one. I'll vote for whichever we can actually decide on.

 

[Aratus]

this winter, obama at one point had 10 lobbyists to mccain's 60... as hillary had about 20 or so...

 

[opal]

hi
Another Floridian here. On the ballot or not.. I'm voting for Ron Paul... period.
I have heard in another forum that if I get an absentee ballot, the chances of a write in being counted are much higher. I will be requesting an absentee ballot right after the convention.

 

[pacelli]

You know, it can be an election by election decision. As in, who will the CFL endorse?!! Won't that be cool.

Indeed. This election will either keep people's interest in the CFL or turn people away from it. The whole point of it is to serve as a long-term campaign to oppose unconstitutional legislation and promote constitutionally-minded candidates. I see a serious problem if the CFL doesn't push a presidential candidate for the general election this year.

 

[SnappleLlama]

Indeed. This election will either keep people's interest in the CFL or turn people away from it. The whole point of it is to serve as a long-term campaign to oppose unconstitutional legislation and promote constitutionally-minded candidates. I see a serious problem if the CFL doesn't push a presidential candidate for the general election this year.

I don't think they're going to. Since Ron Paul is heading the CFL (at least in spirit, if nothing else), he's not going to tell us to do anything. He hasn't endorsed anyone, and I'm not sure that he will. He wants US to decide for ourselves who we're going to vote for.

Then again, this election year has been nothing but surprises, so we'll see what happens!

 

[pacelli]

I don't believe Obama is influenced by them at all. That project is a Republican party and lobbyist endeavor.

Obama is influenced by Zbigniew Brzezinski:

Barack Obama, combating the perception that he is too young and inexperienced to handle a dangerous world, got a boost yesterday from a paragon of foreign policy eminence, Zbigniew Brzezinski. The former national security adviser announced on Bloomberg Television's "Political Capital With Al Hunt" that he is supporting the junior senator from Illinois for president.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/24/AR2007082402127.html

Major foreign policy events during his term of office included the normalization of relations with the People's Republic of China (and the severing of ties with the Republic of China), the signing of the second Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT II), the brokering of the Camp David Accords, the transition of Iran to an anti-Western Islamic state, encouraging reform in Eastern Europe, emphasizing human rights in U.S. foreign policy, the arming of the mujaheddin in Afghanistan[2] to fight against the Soviet-friendly Afghan government and later to counter the Soviet invasion, and the signing of the Torrijos-Carter Treaties relinquishing U.S. control of the Panama Canal after 1999.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zbigniew_Brzezinski

 

[Aratus]

ron paul is into an esoteric democracy of the soul...

 

[IRO-bot]

All News and both parties.

War is Peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.

There i fixed your quote. It was a little incorrect.

 

[newbitech]

The last part I do get. However, to say that Obama is a liberty-minded man of the people with no contact with lobbyists and no contact with the CFR (even though his wife is a member) is pushing the argument a bit past credulity.

And, no, I have no faith in his ability or willingness to do significantly better than the G.O.P. Look at how many times he's pushed back his troop withdrawal date. I'm not flaming you because I'm mad at you. I'm sick of the soft soap. Been listening to it for forty-five years and haven't detected a truthful statement yet. We can and must do better than play the ball in their ping pong game--

What, mad at us? Go over there!

What, mad at us now? Go back over there! We'll be here when you get mad at them again!

How many decades must we endure this mularky before we wise up? Why are we hollering about revolution? Because the powers that be suck. We won't fix that by playing the misdirection game they dreamed up for us. Nor will we fix it by focusing on our divisions rather than the strength we can have when unified.

It's about power, people. Do we want the people to have it?

I know you don't agree with my logic in this one and you possibly hate me for it, but I like what you said about the ping pong game. I think we both agree that the ball is going to the Dems this year. Right now it does look like a landslide for Obama, but you know as well as I what the GOP is capable of.

That being said, what kinds of things do YOU think need to happen or not happen between now and 2010 to make that ping pong ball come back to the Repubs who will hopefully have a slate of Ron Paul Repubs courtesy of the CFL waiting to make serious inroads on congress and the senate?

Since I do respect your opinion despite our differences, I would also like you to answer this question, Do You think that CFL ought to endorse candidates from all parties or should CFL stick to the agenda of Ron Paul's Revolution campaign and encourage people to run on the repub ticket?

 

[acptulsa]

Since I do respect your opinion despite our differences, I would also like you to answer this question, Do You think that CFL ought to endorse candidates from all parties or should CFL stick to the agenda of Ron Paul's Revolution campaign and encourage people to run on the repub ticket?

Well, I was independent my whole voting life until this year. So, what works for me won't work for the majority. That said, I don't personally give a damn about party labels or affiliations. An honest politician is hard enough to find without that.

I think we need to grow that ping pong net up to the ceiling, catch the voters on the bounce, and say, "Are you o.k.? Have you had enough yet?" Metaphorically speaking. How exactly to do that in practice? Finish what we started this year!

And I think an important part of this is to consolidate and post really, really good numbers for one freedom-loving candidate for POTUS. Maybe I'm wrong. But I don't think it could hurt.

I think splitting our vote and losing this opportunity to prove that we can be effective would be a far, far, far bigger tragedy than having either the somewhat theistic CP score a win or giving a neocon who claims to be reformed a chance to prove us to be suckers... We may not like that we're having to choose from the "lesser of evils" like everyone else, but our most evil choice is still less evil than the lesser of their evils! Right?

 

[spacehabitats]

Personally, I'll write-in Dr. Paul.

Like I said before:

What is a wasted vote? I have been voting in elections for almost 40 years. I have often voted for the loser in the race. I have rarely voted for the winner. But the only times I have ever “wasted” my vote were when I voted for the candidate who eventually won. Usually I had convinced myself that I was helping to defeat an even worse candidate, but I see now the fallacy in that strategy. In the end I helped to perpetuate the myth that the policies of the status quo were popular. I helped to deceive myself and my fellow Americans that we still lived in a republic based on our right to vote. I could never understand why good, honest men were constantly being weeded out of politics while corrupt, stupid, and greedy politicians flourished. By the time of the actual election, the Republican or Democratic candidate invariably had one or more fatal flaws which rendered them unacceptable. And yet I continued to participate in the sham elections and watched in helpless frustration as my country disintegrated around me.

My fellow Americans, I beg of you, please have the courage and wisdom to waste your vote. Only when we risk that can we ever restore our republic. We will ALWAYS be given a choice between two evils. It is a rare and precious opportunity to be able to vote FOR a true patriot. Ron Paul is the only presidential candidate I have ever had the opportunity to vote for who is truly worthy of that high office. Hopefully, now that the patriots of America have awakened again we will continue to have such opportunities in the future. But I have vowed never again to knowingly waste my vote on the lesser of two evils.

 

[Kade]

Obama is influenced by Zbigniew Brzezinski:



http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/24/AR2007082402127.html



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zbigniew_Brzezinski

Dropping Brzezinski's name doesn't have the desired effect you might wish. I am not entirely convinced of his status as "super evil". So much is taken for advantage on these forums... so much. Time to stop the conspiracy train.

 

[acptulsa]

Thank you for repeating yourself, space. Worth repeating.

"But I have vowed never again to knowingly waste my vote on the lesser of two evils."

Truth. On the other hand, we are being tempted to destroy our strength by splitting our vote. I say even if we look at both Baldwin and Barr and pick the wrong one to rally around we'll still be voting for a candidate superior to either of the two party candidates! Furthermore, the odds that we'll win are low enough that posting twenty percent and losing could be the best thing. "Look, we damn near got B*** up to a third, and if you'd have joined us we would have won and wouldn't have these problems!" The grass is always greener--and we need to take advantage of that fact.

But in order for people to remember we're viable in 2012 we need to post a good number this year. And, no, the typical American can't be expected to remember, "Let's see, Barr and Baldwin--same thing only different--add their numbers together to see what kind of strength the movement has--hmmm..."

We need to knock them over. Right upside the head.

 

[pacelli]

Dropping Brzezinski's name doesn't have the desired effect you might wish. I am not entirely convinced of his status as "super evil". So much is taken for advantage on these forums... so much. Time to stop the conspiracy train.

Nowhere did I state my desired effect, nor did I term Brzezinski "super evil". It is clear that you wish to continue assumptions, therefore, I have better things to do with my time. Vote Obama if you wish, your vote counts as much as mine.

 

[Kade]

Nowhere did I state my desired effect, nor did I term Brzezinski "super evil". It is clear that you wish to continue assumptions, therefore, I have better things to do with my time. Vote Obama if you wish, your vote counts as much as mine.

But my organization counts a good 45,000x more.

Regardless, it's obvious you wouldn't have dropped his name if you didn't mean for it to say something.

Why didn't you just drop Obama's name, and then blame him for being a Tom Cruise supporter?

 

[PaulineDisciple]

If Ron Paul isn't on a ticket, you're better off staying at home and reading or re-reading Ron Paul's The Revolution: A Manifesto. I will probably just vote for Chuck Baldwin just to see how he does compared to Ron Paul's 1988 Liberterian bid.

I don't know how I can emphasize this more, we need to think long term, educate yourself and others, run for office, support like minded candidates... repeat ad infinitum.

For my part, I am homeschooling my children to be the next leaders of our country, staying involved in my local political organizations and I am considering running for some office. I suggest that everyone do something similar if you want to do batter next time around.