Saturday, January 12, 2008

Paul beat Fred!

Here's the CNN clip of the Ron Paul post-primary party in NH:I'm not going to get into it now, but simply put... last weekend was a phenomenal experience being up in New Hampshire and helping with the campaign. The level of energy and enthusiasm was amazing. Even the locals (reporters, police, security guards, etc.) told me that they had never seen so much excitement and passion for any candidate.

Tim White

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

Tim, can you not count? The man finished FIFTH.

Face it, the Hindenburg crashed and so did the Ron Paul Blimp

BTW, are you going to discuss the text of his newsletters in the 1970's...it appears they are such an embarassment his opponents feel icky about even raising the topic

Anonymous said...

fifth = yup... just having fun (he also came in fifth when I pointed out that he beat Rudy in Iowa).

As for the abhorent letters, he denied having written them but apologized and accepted moral responsibility for them having appeared under his "letterhead." And since I've seen numerous people who follow him say quite clearly that they believe he did not pen the letters because it's nothing like his writing style and nothing like him... I take him at his word and appreciate his repudiation of the letters.

Anonymous said...

Tim show some of your own moral responsibility and bail out on this whack job

The fact some bored techies could e-mail him some money in-between playing Dungeons and Dragons on-line does not make this man a presidential contender

Anonymous said...

1:01 I believe the biggest issue facing America is our debt. And I also feel the only person talking about eliminating the debt in clear language is Ron Paul.

I realize his position on Iraq is unacceptable the majority of GOP primary voters. But I also feel that without unequivocal statements on deficit spending... whoever America elects will not have any sort of mandate to balance the budget. And IMO, we need to balance the budget... to not balance it is irresponsible.

I may have missed it, but I have yet to hear any Rs (or Ds) explain how they will balance the budget.

As a voter, that's what I need to hear.

Anonymous said...

Your credited the guy who wanted $400M in pork barrel projects for his TX district for balamcing the budget?

What flavor Kool Aid are you drinking?

He's got all you pseudo-intellectuals thinking he can return our fiscal, monetary and foreign policy to the 19th Century while in the here and now he's just another panhandling politician

Spare us the self-righteousness, Tim

Anonymous said...

He's wrong about the earmarks.

Regardless, I want a balanced budget. Among the GOP candidates, who has said they'll do it? That's a serious question. I really haven't heard anyone discussing it.

Anonymous said...

If Paul won't turn down money in his own district, than he is not for balancing the budget.

I could tell you I was in favor of you playing third base for the Red Sox. Does that mean I have any ability or intention of accomplishing this feat?

Dr. Paul has as much chance of balancing the budget as I have of getting you on the roster ahead of Mike Lowell

I want practicality and authenticity, not pipe dreams sold to the same people who protest WTO meetings and smash windows at Starbucks

redtown said...

Tim said:
“I may have missed it, but I have yet to hear any Rs (or Ds) explain how they will balance the budget”.

Not true! John McCain has long been a leading voice for fiscal responsibility. Not only has he talked about fiscal discipline, he’s taken political flak for it. McCain voted against Bush’s tax cut bill because it didn’t include corresponding cuts in spending.

How will President McCain cut the deficit? Simple: “Spend no more than we’re taking in.”

John McCain says, “Every dollar irresponsibly spent by Congress is a dollar diverted from pressing national priorities including lowering the tax burden on working Americans,….making good on the nation's financial commitments at home including to senior citizens, and paying down the national debt.

For more on McCain’s positions on cutting spending and taxes, visit:

http://www.johnmccain.com/Informing/Issues/4a3ab6fe-b025-42b1-815b-13c696a61908.htm

McCain also discusses how to make government more transparent, getting social security and other unfunded liabilities under control, fulfilling our obligation to younger generations, and other fiscal and economic issues.

When it comes to fiscal responsibility, John McCain has the best track record and credibility to be President.

Tim White said...

Redtown... fair enough. My question was sincere. At least as far as the MSM goes, all I've heard from McCain is that Iraq is going well and we must address global warming / climate change. I've never heard the MSM talking about his calls for specific spending cuts... i.e. dept of ed, dept of energy, IRS, etc.

My concern is if he doesn't lay out where he wants to reduce spending (and as far as I can tell, that's a requirement for a balanced budget, even without cutting taxes), then when elected... how will he justify his spending cuts?

Maybe his idea is a no-growth budget?

Alternatively, he could take Sen Tom Coburn's approach. Coburn said his committee in the previous congress concluded that 1 in 6 discretionary dollars go to waste, mismanagment, fraud or simply never achieve the intent of the program. And heck, if you could avoid growth for a year and eliminate the wasteful discretionary spending (1/3 of the overall budget, I think)... that'd be something akin to an 8-10% spending cut from an assumed inflation rate.

That would be a win. Can McCain do it? Would he be willing to do it? Nothing against McCain, but it was Coburn who had the nerve to take Ted Stevens' "bridge to nowhere" to the floor of the Senate and publicly blast Stevens for it. And without Coburn's leadership, would McCain have opposed Stevens publicly?

Don't get me wrong... generally speaking I like McCain (though I think his compromise on border security demonstrated terrible judgement), but will he take on DC? I thought GWB would, but he didn't.

Regardless... my gut feeling is that the GOP will have a brokered convention... in that case, our votes may mean a whole lot less as our support may get traded away in Minneapolis.

Anonymous said...

7:50 reports on the web are saying the NAACP President (Austin, TX) Nelson Linder

http://www.naacpaustin.org/organization/

said Ron Paul is not a racist. On the contrary, Mr. Linder is quoted saying

I've read Ron Paul's whole philosophy, I also understand what he's saying from a political standpoint and why people are attacking him," said Linder.

"If you scare the folks that have the money, they're going to attack you and they're going to take it out of context," he added.

"What he's saying is really really threatening the powers that be and that's what they fear," concluded the NAACP President


To be totally upfront though... I can't confirm this on any websites that I consider particularly reputable. So we'll have to see if other news sources pick up this story over the next few days... lending the story more credibility.

Anonymous said...

Maybe he liked the "Don't Taze me, Bro" banner the Ron-mulans were waving around Manchester.

The Delta House had lots of energy and enthusiasm. It also was better channeled towards their goals than the energy of the Paul camoaign, who evidently did a poor job of shoe leather campaigning

Anonymous said...

IMO, the official campaign had some fundamental failures in their GOTV effort... unforgivable stuff for which most candidates would probably sack staff.

Anonymous said...

The iron law is that anyone who runs an incompetent campaign , will be an incompetent officeholder

Sadly, the reverse cannot be presumed as there are many skilled politicians who were train wrecks holding office

Anonymous said...

On primary night in Sutton, New Hampshire, they used no voting machines. Everything was done by hand. Vote totals were read aloud and written down by hand onto the form sent to the state officials, and in that process a mistake was made. Ron Paul's 31 votes were missed, with his line on the form left blank entirely.

The mistake was corrected the next day in an updated fax, when a polite voter asked why his vote for Ron Paul did not register in the official tally, but that was too late to prevent problems for poor Jennifer Call, Sutton's town clerk. She became the target of a nationwide intimidation effort, as deranged Ron Paul supporters across the country accused her of numerous crimes including treason and fraud.

Calling her at work and at home, calling her primarily from out of state, harassing her, accusing her, threatening her, and using false identities at times, the Ron Paul Revolution turned this woman's life into a nightmare. Says the Concord Monitor:

She went home and locked her doors. She called her mother in North Carolina. She cried. The calls kept coming. She unhooked her answering machine and requested an unlisted number.

"I was drained emotionally and physically," Call said. "That's when I really started to freak out. Thursday it hit me, that most of these people are not rational. That's when I became scared."

Anonymous said...

8:54 First, Ron Paul said the recount should be avoided. Second, I agree with him.

In the past week I've had several RP supporters indicate that there was some sort of voter fraud... and I tried to explain to them several scenarios in which that 31 became 0... without any fraud. Personally, I would skip it. Nonetheless, they're right to challenge is legitimate... though as you described... the calls are clearly going too far.

Anyway... it all reminds me of a local election. A former Council member has told me a story in which he won his campaign... but recalls a human error that occured in the count.

Basically, at the particular school... probably CHS or Highland (a precinct with several voting machines)... all machine totals were, for example, 200 votes for one person and 100 votes for the other person.

However, one machine was the inverse. And the thing is this... statistically, that's close to impossible. So he assumed that the numbers were inverted when read from the machines... and ultimately the wrong total was documented in the records. Didn't make a difference to him because the difference wouldn't have changed the election results.

Point is that human error occurs everywhere... even in elections. But it's rare when there's anything intentional.

I have no doubt that the 31 uncounted votes was nothing more than an oversight.

Anonymous said...

The point is Tim, you've chosen to align yourself with a bunch of loons who made the Delta House look like the Council on Foreign Relations