…and it has. American history is full of long shot candidates who found their way in against all odds.

The RevolUTION united to support the Ron Paul 2008 campaign. IMO, it should continue to support the Ron Paul 2008 campaign until that campaign is over. After that, I hope, it will continue and turn its attention to capturing some seats in Congress in 2010. 2012 will be early enough to start thinking about another presidential candidate with a newsletter-free (and blog-free) past. There’ll have to be one then; at 72, this is Dr. Paul’s last hurrah — and I’m all for letting him take his best shot at it.

I would love to see some articles in a MSM publication analyzing the movement that surrounds Ron Paul. There is a big awakening going on that is being ignored. Thimgs like the blimp get little to no notice, imagine if the blimp was emblazoned with google Hillary - it would get hours of coverage each day on Fox and CNN, with hourly updates of it’s latest location.

Ron Paul may not be the perfect candidate, but he is the best one we have running by far. It is way too early in the whole primary process to talk of where to go from here or talk about defeat.

Besides that the pillars of power in this country are directly threatened by Ron Paul the other factor that makes it hard for the campaign to gain traction is that a vast majority do not understand where money comes from and how inflation is a hidden tax. Real change is uncomfortable and takes time for people to grasp.

What we need is for Ron Paul supporters to get off the internet for a few hours and do some real work for the campaign getting out the vote and introducing our neighbors to Ron Paul and his ideas. Like many of you I think I am right and Ron Paul is the way to go, but I respect dissenting opinions as long as they are backed up by reasoning and thought and not imagined support based on lack of thought and misinformation.

Turn off your TV and do your own research, use the computer at your local library if you don’t have one, because you will be in the dark if you depend on mainstream media for truthful information. Do it for your children and your country.

I’ve never been interested in politics until now. And I’m still not interested in typical, corporate-lobbyist owned politicians. But the Constitutional rights and liberties that are mine, the way our forefathers fought to protect them, all the inspiring individuals who sacrificed so I could experience this freedom today….
I can get excited about that. And I’m not about to give them up because the gov’t expects us to sit down and be quiet while those rights are stripped from us.

Ron Paul cured my apathy!

any of those four candidates who made it on the Judicial Watch’s list of 10 most corrupt politicians:

Hillary Clinton
Obama
Rudy
Mike Huckabee

Come on!

http://archives.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/07/16/hillary.book.response.02/index.html

I don’t see much hope for it this time around. Paul could control this, do the politically correct thing and perhaps say we talked about that issue months ago and stonewall. In such a fragmented Republican field I wouldn’t give him 0 chance but it was a long one.

I just hope that this issue, which I don’t believe has much to do with the man himself or his stances in congress over 20 years, will overshadow what is right about him.

In my mind what is right is the foreign policy, and individual rights stuff. I’m not a pure Austrian economist. He is right though that we have to deal with the entitlement system. I want people to actually talk about these things and I am tired of both sides being married either to the entitlement system or the military-industrial complex. Let me say that again: sick. I’m tired of being taxed to kill people, I’m tired of being taxed to pay for inefficient and bad government services.

I like that Paul is a total outsider when it comes to the foreign policy.

Will there be another Paul? It will be hard. You see as the wacko point out, they gave him the push to get enough attention be noticed, by the people who aren’t brain dead or brain washed.

I think things are probably over, but I think everyone took notice of the numbers of people who gave him money, and that there just aren’t that many conspiracy folks out there.

Sorry there are a lot of us who want real changes not the imaginary ones the democrats talk about, which to me sound like the same old boring rhetorical changes.

http://southernavenger.ccpblogs.com/2008/01/14/naacp-president-defends-ron-paul-against-recent-smear-attempts/

“So if a Ron Paul paradise were to come about all you have to do in order to have basic rights is to uproot yourself and move away from a place you used to be happy in? All you have to do is hope that you can find a state that won’t follow the path the one you currently live in followed in restricting individual rights and hope you can find work there? All you need to do is come up with the money to afford that? Justin, are you aware of the costs of moving nowadays?”

A Ron Paul paradise? You criticize while making the argument to support Ron Paul. This is about the Constitution. Remember the document providing you the rights and freedoms. The document stating ONLY Gold and Silver to be used as legal tender. Why do you think it costs so much to move? Ignore some of it and all is ignored.
We supporters realize this you will soon.

Ron Paul’s idea would prevent such techniques and allow to get rich only by hard working, by beeing bright and educated. If you are lazy you have null

Even as he knocks former “front-runner” Guiliani and former “contender” Thompson to the back of the line in the 3rd primary, he is still blatantly being ignored by the media except for 20 year old smear tactics.

How could the Ron Paul Movement be “over” if it never existed? According to what the news stations and mainstream newspapers would have you believe, he never even existed; but mainly they (and people with an agenda, like you) just want him to go away quietly. You wish.

Your attempts to silence and tarnish Ron Paul only make us grow stronger and more willful. We will prevail.

“You can’t credibly push a guy for President who has allowed stuff like the newsletter scandal to happen. You just can’t.”
This is like saying making a mistake makes you ineligible to be a President.

“But the movement has only just begun, and I think in the years to come it will find more credible voices to push the freedom message.”
Are you implying that Ron Paul is not credible?

I’ve never given a crap about politics, I live in montana and the vast percentage of this population knows that we don’t matter on the federal level.

I will most likely, for the rest of my life, believe that the ideals of Ron Paul are the ideas that america should still be based on.

On the newsletters even if he put his seal on it knowing what was written (don’t believe he did but that’s a belief), well people have the right to write whatever they damn well please and have the right to believe however they do. As long as those beliefs don’t inflict others with harm I don’t care.

I’m almost 30 years old have never cared about any politician alive in my lifetime other then distaste. I’ve said many times since the age of 12 that I would never vote for a president as they were all #$%^, I also stated that I doubted there would ever be a candidate in my lifetime I’d vote for.

I now have to recant that prediction.

I didn’t even know that there was a possibility of a politician like Ron Paul.

The “newsletters” as a smear campaign is the most useless of any I’ve ever heard of.

So to answer the question, I go till the end. Call me “crazy” “loon” “kook” “racist” (I dare you to call me that to my face) or whatever you’d like, your allowed to…….. We were freed by a war “by the people for the people” I consider myself to be fighting a war to keep my freedoms, and all in such an easy thing as believing in Ron Paul’s belief in the Constitution.

(why is it that the only press he seems to get is belittling press unless its press provided by the people)?????

I really wish most of these people would have actually answered the question you posed. I myself am hoping that some of the issue awareness and energy generated can be shifted behind similar Congressional Representative candidates for the November elections and beyond. I think we really need more representation (a wing) in Congress made of people like Ron, and I think people should pay more attention to Congress rather than the Oval office. After all, both are supposed to be one third.

That being said, I do think the “newsletter” crap was way blown out of proportion, just as I believe the idea of Ron’s support was crazies. I’ve been in 3rd Party circles for over fifteen years and honestly, Ron has the most sane and respectable bunch I’ve ever encountered. There’s always one or two, but if you repeat something long enough it becomes the truth. People will squint and look at a crowd of a hundred and see the one guy and say “yep, there he is, that proves it!”
And one thing I can say for the Paul campaign, however flawed, is that they refused to give free press to the tiny, obscure people and organizations involved in the ’scandal’ by NEVER SPEAKING THEIR NAMES! How many people, thanks to the MSM, now know the name Stormfront? This pathetically small and insignificant trailer trash operation received more free press than they could ever hope for from the main stream media, but never from Paul. He was right to dismiss them, they’re nobodies who don’t deserve to be validated. Just ask the ADL what their real numbers are. There’s more people in the Flat Earth Society! No joke, seriously, look it up.
What irks me a little more is how quickly everyone forgot that Ron attended the Travis Smiley Black Issues debate on PBS while the ‘top tier’ all snubbed it with transparent excuses that amount to a load of bull.

And…whoever wrote this is not paying attention:
“Paul’s “states’ rights” focus is anathema to any reasonable conception of individual liberty anyway.”

So medical marijuana, same sex marriage and right to die legislation are all right wing causes that are intruding on individual liberty? All this is being enacted by State Legislatures and is actively under fire by the Federal Government. Nice try Trotsky, but I’ve had enough Central Planning.

Paul will not win the republican nomination, of course we know that. BUT I think it is important for Paul to campaign and push for votes through Feb 5th - here’s why:
His message is continuing to gain recognition; it cannot be denied that many people still do not know who RP is, and that lack of name recognition certainly doesn’t help his campaign/message.
Paul has, arguably, the most money to spend. He will, more than likely, continue to out raise the “other guys”, allowing him to have a presence in every state in Super Tuesday. As covered by CNN last night, and as several bloggers have pointed out, McCain, Guiliani, Huckabee, and even Romney don’t have the money to advertise and run a real campaign in every primary for Feb 5th.
This gives Paul a chance to out spend everyone else and gain more national exposure. (Sidebar: anyone else find it interesting that the cut spending, Dr. No candidate is the one spending more than anyone else in his party?)
Thats where we go from here… Continuing to spread the common sense small L philosophy until Feb 5th. If Paul would endorse a young, popular in his district congressman as his predecessor, it would make life much easier for the Paulites.

Dr. Paul’s views are mainstream and not fringe in the Republican Party and I doubt that any Republican, even Reagan, had such a consistent record against large government interest in the lives of ordinary people.

As far as this issue or race is concerned, that was a coordinated attack on a man who has excellent character. Someone took advantage of Dr. Paul then and the media is taking advantage of Dr. Paul now. Does that mean he should not be President? No. It just means that there is still a lot of racism in this world and that we continue to have a media that interprets the truth instead of reports it.

Dr. Paul’s movement does not go anywhere. He has inspired a lot of mainstream conservatives and the nation in general. Your emphasis on he cannot run for President based on those letters is simply wrong and in my opinion, narrow-minded. However, I bet the media will continue to drudge this up like a parasite even though it is old news. You should focus on the man himself and his ideas.

The real story is that Paul has consistently came in at 6%-10% and is going to hang around, to the establishment’s chagrin. Remember, that Paul was supposed to be a non-factor at “2%” and drop out after Iowa. Paul have beaten Rudy & Thompson in all three states so far. If it wasn’t for free liberal media coverage, he would be beating Huckabee as well. McCain and Huckabee are going broke. Paul’s support is consistent and it will only go up as more people hear the message.

I’m not going to make any predictions, but there’s a good possibility of Paul winning NV and finishing strong in SC. He could also win in ME too. That gives him staying power and more donations, while the big donors are wary of donating because there’s no clear front-runner yet. All of Paul’s donations are from grassroots who haven’t maxed out yet, and Paul is eligible for matching funds.

This is the real reason why this newsletter story is still around.

I hear this morning on the news that the country is in the start of a recession. Now why do you suppose that is? Is that going to bother you? We have bad government and it needs to change. How long has hillary been in washington? How long has obama been washington? Have either of them been able to do anything to curb the state of affairs this country is in? We hear a lot of promises. Question is who is will really change it? There is no economist I have listened to on cspan who disagrees with Ron Paul. How come? Because he knows what he is doing that’s why. If people want real change, the only way to do that is to get away from the type of people who make the outlook look good but don’t deliver. Some ideas sound crazy but maybe a radical change is just what we need. Nothing else is working. Bush over seas begging for oil. How come? No one wants to deal with him and now that the country is in really bad shape the washington talking heads are just a bit too little too late.

People need to start thinking. If it sounds comforting maybe it would be. Maybe it wouldn’t be either. Until you actually try something its nothing more than an experiment. But while washington is experimenting with you, your life, your money, and your states rights, your the one who is going to have to live with it. Maybe down the road you won’t have a place to live and bread will be $7 a loaf. This nafta highway would be real trouble. It would erase the borders as you know them. This in turn also erases your constitution. The very thing that gives you your protection from a bad government.

I still think Ron Paul is the way. I think him being a strict constitutionalist will keep the government in check and we won’t see them able to spend money like they have been doing which is making your bread $7 a loaf.

Think people. Think about what is going to happen to you. We are in a fight for our lives and very close to losing it. We need Ron Paul. No matter what color you happen to be.

The reality couldn’t be more clear. Our economy is already crashing at a rapid rate. We are getting duped into wanting the 4th Reich and it seems as though the only man who is a true American is being shunned as a kook or a nut.

It takes a lot of guts for Ron Paul supporters to stand up and say NO to a possibly-soon-to-be fascist nation.

This revolution is just beginning.

Also, let me point out something. For the majority: JUST BECAUSE YOU HAVE NEVER WITNESSED A REVOLUTION, HOLOCAUST, MASS KILLING, ETC DOESN’T MEAN YOU WILL NOT SEE IT HAPPENING IN YOUR LIFE TIME.

Jim,

At least there might be somewhere to go. Where is there to go now? No where!! People came here with nothing from Europe in the past on disease filled boats and you are unwilling to move to a neighboring state. Also freedom makes people prosperous. States that are more free will be more prosperous. People will start to migrate to more prosperous states. In order to stop the migration states will become more free. The problem we have right now is that there is no place in the world that is even moderately free. Thus, no place for people to migrate. I hope I get to see real freedom in my lifetime. Hopefully when the government expands and liberty contracts even further, under the presidency of whoever wins, more people will wake up. Until then I will be fighting to shrink the size of my local government. I would suggest that all Ron Paul supporters do the same.

We can throw the baby out with the bath water and say Ron Paul is unacceptable and that’s fine. Just don’t tell me the other candidates are any better. In fact they are far worse. Let’s give them the same kind of scrutiny RonPaulHaterBots are giving to Ron Paul.

Ron Paul is still the best choice of both parties.

I’m not even necessarily talking about hardcore, scrap-the-whole-government-now-and-let-the-market-sort-it libertarianism, because that’s obviously a political non-starter. The “movement” (a word I use with hesitation) would be best-served by using Paul’s candidacy to help build an alternative political dialogue in the mainstream consciousness. A dialogue that encourages people to question the idea that government is always the agency best-equipped to solve their problems. A dialogue that alerts people to the personal & economic freedoms they used to have vs. the less-free world (West & East alike), and one that illustrates how that gap is closing. The public is sleepwalking on all those counts. A high-profile, third party run by Paul potentially provides a platform to start waking them up.

Unless we can help our fellow citizens break through that conceptual barrier, classic libertarianism will remain dead (and it is dead, folks). We’ve reached the point where the problem is less one of politics than of activism and awareness.

You lack faith in yourself. A clear consequence of living under the thumb of the Federal Government for so long. With greater state’s rights your voice would carry all the more weight, not drowned out by the 300 million or so other Americans. If there is a political aspect you wish to change then get-up and change it. You will find that without an authoritarian Federal Government this will be much easier. Don’t forget that all the while we are protected by the Constitution. This means no segregation, anti-gay laws and so forth. If we actually followed the letter of the law, as has been rarely done in our history, we would be quite protected from the will of tyrants certainly more so than now where the tyrant lives possibly a thousand miles away.

Peter

I still think that is the wrong question. the real question of whether “the movement” succeeds, is whether we see other, more mainstream candidates, modify or embrace “freedom movement” positions and issues in an attempt to entice a portion of the Paul following. As commenter John Galt points out, there is a definite ~5-8% in the GOP primary that is committed to these ideas.

Tell me that there is not any leading candidate of either party that would not love to have half of that vote in their tally? I am surprised we have not seen more pandering to Paul’s ideas. Maybe we are seeing it to some degree. Surprisingly consistent 2nd amendment defense in the Dem debate last night.

“IS THE RUDI G MOVEMENT OVER?

Rudi and Thompson are finished and going backward while Ron Paul who has the solutions that Americans are looking for keeps growing.

Ron Paul and my whole family have his total support….

His educating the American people about fiat money, fractional reserve banking, inflation, and the warfare/welfare state with a supreme executive has served to show the American people the danger to our constitutional republic.

When Rudy is in the poor house Ron Paul will still be raking in donations from “We The People”.

I know this time on MLK’s birthday I will give more than the last two times. Maybe this will shut up the hacks and shills.

Thank you for your courage Ron Paul!