Yar: I am not a staffer, but… Give it 11 days. The big push right now is on the Iowa Straw poll. Furthermore, the internet is being used to get boots on the ground through meetup.com. You ARE in a meetup group, right? Check this out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkjUimC1owY

It’s time for the campaign to shift both money and effort into realtime mail/TV exposure over the primarily free internet focus. I’ve examined the internet interest and campaign benefit created by the internet for RP, and it has now PEAKED. Ron Paul internet news is more and more jaded and circular in argument. It is time for the campaign to move into the next phase!!!

More significantly, Thompson is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a hard-line neo-con think tank. It’s doubtful that there’s an intervention in the wind that he wouldn’t like.

He’s George Bush with a deeper voice. Even the conservative positions that he does spout are the result of a flip-flop somewhere in his career.

Isnt it your job as a libertarian to try to change the media and political dialogue to include and even center around some of these foundational realities? Or is the American public and most of the American politicians just too dumbed down and sophmoric for that?

Also, no one can approach RP over foreign policy issues, seeing as how his is by far the most intelligent and sustainable. If you mean the global entities that expect more American subsidizing of foreign ventures will balk at RP being elected, why would you care? A real libertarian would never use the people’s income for these ventures. It seems that no one on Earth can imagine a United States without the entitlement largesse motherland thing.

If nothing else a Ron Paul Presidency would guarantee four years of gridlock unlike anything we’ve ever seen. And I’ve long believed that, when I comes to the operation of the Federal Government, gridlock is liberty’s best friend.

And, except for the pesky matters of foreign policy and international trade, a Ron Paul Presidency would be quite nice.

It would still be a hell of a lot better than electing Rudy or Hillary, wouldn’t it? At least we’d be having the discussion.

And think of the sort of Supreme Court justice a guy like Ron Paul would appoint. They’d make Alito and Roberts look like big-government social conservatives… Or, rather, MORE like big-government social conservatives…

Say it with me: Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown :-)

That’s what I’d like to think will happen, but Paul seems to be building his entire campaign around one issue — opposition to the Iraq War.

It might be a smart strategy electorally, but it belies the fact that when it comes to issues like those you mention, there’s virtually nobody in Congress, Republican or Democrat, who agrees with him.

If the goal is really to change the political system, electing a President who couldn’t get any of his programs through Congress isn’t the way to do it.

That necessarily means that the whole basis of political dialog will have shifted into previously undiscussed areas of monetary policy/Fed Reserve, empire building, the legitimacy of the current welfare state, and other fringe things.

I dont see this happening other than the usual “debate moments” and other soundbites. I see America as “embracing the stupid” pretty much for the forseeable future.

Then why did he also say that he would have supported something like the Defense of Marriage Act ?

As I noted myself last week, Ron Paul essentially holds to a Federalist line when it comes to gay marriage and, while that may be Constitutionally correct, from an individual rights viewpoint, it’s not necessarily the correct position to take.

How do you explain his statements made at Google when asked specifically about gay marriages (about 12 minutes and 30 seconds into it):

I support all voluntary associations, and people can call it whatever they want.

That’s about the most succinct statement on individual rights as you’re going to hear from any politican.

Ron Paul’s federalist point of view seems to simply be “don’t let the central govt fuck it up for everybody.” He pretty much states this on his abortion view. While you’re correct that federalism isn’t necessarily pro-liberty, it’s at least pointed in the right direction.

I’m not convinced that Federalism is always pro-liberty.

As I noted myself last week, Ron Paul essentially holds to a Federalist line when it comes to gay marriage and, while that may be Constitutionally correct, from an individual rights viewpoint, it’s not necessarily the correct position to take.