The Internet driving Ron Paul’s presidential success

Ron Paul’s Prescience
New York Sun Editorial
November 12, 2007

Congressman Ron Paul: It just looks like we may well come to a ’79, ’80. Do you anticipate there’s a possibility that we’ll face a crisis of the dollar such as we had in ’79 and 1980?”

Chairman Bernanke: “The Federal Reserve is committed to mainly low and stable inflation, and I’m very confident we’ll be able to do that.”

Mr. Paul: “You’re not answering whether you anticipate a problem.”

Mr. Bernanke: “I’m not anticipating a problem like ’79, ’80. No.”

* * *

That exchange, between Congressman Ron Paul and the chairman of the Federal Reserve board, Ben Bernanke, took place on July 18 in a hearing of the Joint Economic Committee. It can be viewed on the YouTube.com – and has been by tens of thousands. The London fix on gold that day put the value of a dollar a bit less than a 666th of an ounce of gold, according to the Kitco charts. Four months after Mr. Bernanke said he was not anticipating a crisis like that of 1980, when the dollar collapsed to 1/850th of an ounce of gold, the dollar has reached just such a crisis, with the greenback trading Friday at less than 1/837th of an ounce. So much for Mr. Bernanke’s anticipatory powers.

Now it will be said that the crises of 1980 and 2007 are not the same. In 1980, the inflation rate calculated from the Consumer Price Index averaged more than 13%, according to a chart at inflationdata.com; the average this year has been but 3.23%. But the dollar crisis comes at a most inconvenient time for the Fed because it comes amid a credit crisis as well. So far, Mr. Paul is looking a lot more prescient in respect of monetary policy than Mr. Bernanke. The Wall Street Journal, in an editorial last week, reached back 30 years to one of its famous editorials from 1978 to warn of a crisis over the dollar. It reckoned another such crisis wasn’t inevitable, but that at least we’re getting “a reminder of what such a thing looks like, and it isn’t pretty.”

Our own view is that Mr. Paul’s prescience on the dollar is one of the reasons he’s showing what the pundits are calling surprising strength on the hustings. The New York Times attributes it to the way the Internet is impacting the campaign. But we’re of the view that it relates to the substance. We have a lot of differences with Mr. Paul, but on monetary matters, we’ve been covering him since his days, in the early 1980s, as a member of the United States Gold Commission, when he coauthored, with New York’s own Lewis Lehrman, a minority report favoring a return to a version of the gold standard. What can be said about Mr. Paul is that he’s not only ahead of Mr. Bernanke but also of his fellow Republicans, and he will eat into their standing until they address the question of the soundness of our currency.

The level of fundraising Paul is getting on the internet cannot be achieved by any politician that is not delivering a libertarian message. The internet is full of libertarians, and there are only going to be more in the future. I don’t know if they outnumber all other all other political persuasions on the internet, but they certainly outweigh them all in the fervency of their beliefs and therefore willingness to fund candidates that advocate the freedom philosophy. So, any politicians out there that want to raise a lot of money on the internet: go libertarian.

The Internet is a main factor for Dr. Paul’s success. Mainstream media would have beaten his supporters down with their nay saying. But Dr Paul’s supporters have reinforced their belief in Dr Paul and his message thought the Internet. They have ignored the nay sayers and coalesced an opposition that is forcing mainstream media to take Dr Paul and the message seriously. In the end, Dr Paul will prevail!

I’m a liberal myself, and the way I justify supporting him involves the following:

1. He’d leave gay rights/abortion rights up to the state. So at the very least you could live somewhere that suits your views. Likely half the country.

2. He seems to be actually… sincere. I mean, all the “realistic” choices out there right now are just Business-As-Usual politicians. They’re going to get into the oval office and have to repay the people who financed their way to power. Then they’ll attempt to take on some petty distract-o-issue and battle it out with congress, who will pass “A Nonbinding Resolution about the Possibility of Maybe saying Something”.
On the other hand, while Ron Paul probably couldn’t implement half of the changes he wants, and if he does implement even a small number of them, this country will get real interesting, real fast. Any other candidate is just SetSail4Fail and more of the same boring shit we get now.

The Gold Standard is a tough sell, in my mind. It would be hard to pass through congress, take a long time to revert to, and probably screw things up for a short while, but in the end would certainly lead to a better place at the end of that rough road.

As a tech guy, what’s the chance that the Back Room people will just rig the election? I used to think that people who ask things like this are tin hat people. Now days, I’m curious… what’s the chance they’ll rig the election?

Depends which election, but it gets more likely the smaller the election is (so it’s more likely that they’d rig the primaries than a general election), since it’s cheaper. Money is, after all, at the heart of it. If Dr. Paul got the nomination, the cheapest solution would go from rigging to assassination, which has happened to presidents who made powerful enemies in the past.

Of course, I’m absolutely positive Ron would pick a VP who was fully on board with him with all issues, but it would be hard to find someone with Dr. Paul’s moral strength. Still, people are worrying about the primaries being exclusively electronic on machines that have a documented susceptibility to tampering (actually programmed in to allow votes for certain specific candidates to be randomly dropped at pre-set ratios).

I’m not saying I’M worrying about that at this time; I’m just saying some people are. There are other ways to rig primaries, too.

To Rhys:

Election fraud and election rigging will be high on the agenda of Ron Paul Meetup groups as the dates approach. It’ll take a monumental effort to keep them honest. All volunteers must make use of their time with their own exit polling data. Ron Paul voters are the most likely voters to co-operate with this heavy campaign issue.

Ron Paul can no longer be labeled a “long shot” candidate. He has clearly has surpassed John McCain and is now a “top tier” candidate. I have created a website to support this statement.

Please visit http://www.thecaseforronpaul.com and judge for yourself.

“any politicians out there that want to raise a lot of money on the internet: go libertarian.” -Devon

Bad advice, if you will pardon me. What we don’t need is more politicians shedding their skins to appeal to people by deception. I would rather you said: “any libertarians out there that want to raise a lot of money for politics: go to the internet.”

The Majority of pundits have the Ron Paul internet success story all backwards. It is not ‘a game’ or ‘spambots’, but is a true grassroots movement. Behind every username, myspace page and email address there is a REAL person, with REAL opinions, and (Most important for the Ron Paul campaign) REAL money to donate.

Furthermore, the internet is no longer the exclusive domain of ‘techies’ and ‘nerds’, it is likely your grandmother, the shopper you pass in the grocery stor and even my 82-year-old WWII veteran father uses the internet. It has become the 21st century equivalent of the old ‘Town Square’, where people meet to socialize, share information, argue and solve problems. The neo-luddites in the media can’t seem to get their head around this, and that’s why they are confounded by a bottom-up, grassroots organization like the Ron Paul Revolution. It’s not about a ‘campaign Manager’ implementing an ‘internet strategy’ as some other campaigns are tying to do to ‘copy’ Ron Paul’s succcess.

This surge of support is truly from grassroots individuals becoming involved in the process. And that REALLY ticks off the party leaders in BOTH parties, because there is no way they will ever be able to control co-opt or manage the Ron Paul for president campaign.

http://www.teaparty07.com – Ron Paul for President, let’s make it happen.

well said xtrabiggg (gee, never thought I’d say that sentance).

Electronic voting machines seem wrong on so many levels. I’d be wary of people that say they are needed, or even required.

Ron Paul has my vote. I found out about him through the internet, and keep up with him through the internet. Does that make his candidacy or my vote any less real?

I am starting to see Ron Paul bumper stickers and yard signs around town. I haven’t seen any for other candidates (except some anti-Hillary bumper stickers). I’ve joined a local meet-up group recently and plan to meet fellow Ron Paulians in person soon.