Liberty in America
columnist: rtbohan

Topic: Ron Paul
The Ron Paul Campaign: Where to From Here

---

There's good news and bad news for Ron Paul in South Carolina

---

by rtbohan
(libertarian)
Tuesday, January 22, 2008

First, the good news: Ron Paul beat Rudy Giuliana by a two to one margin.  Second, the bad news:He did it with 3.7% of the vote and finished behind four other candidates.

The fun has gone out of beating Rudy Giuliani.  If Ron Paul beats him again, he gets permanent possession.  The fact that  the Paul vote stays consistently  in the 5-6% range leads to the question of why Ron Paul is running.  The State newspaper asked that  as a rhetorical question and answered "He wants to win the Republican nomination for President". That is certainly true enough  and fair enough.  But it is not the complete answer, nor does it explain the success of Paul's fund raising or the enthsiasm of his supporters.

Ron Paul is running for President because he wants the Republican nonination.  He also wants to win the presidential election.    While his performance this election year has exceeded expectations, He is unlikely to achieve either of these goals. 

He also wants --needs--to do two other things.  The first is to re-educate the voters on the "blessings of liberty" which the constituriion was intended to secure.  And he wants--needs--to re-make the Republican Party.

Neither of his first two goals are likely to be achieved in this election cycle.  Neither are the latter two goals, but the campaign is making a start  on achieving them.  The question is how far the work will progress this year.

As far as educating the voters goal, the result has been rather mixed.  The very fact that he is attracting a noticeable number of voters to the polls to vote for him is important.  In South Carolina he received his best vote from the counties in which he actually was able to speak to the voters.  A problem, jumped on by some of the newspapers, is that some of his campaign events were by invitation only.  This may indicate that in some cases he is preaching only to those who already agree with him, rather than presenting his priniciples and his platform to  a braoder audience.  This is compounded by the newspaper coverage of his events and by the advertising the Paul campaign did.  The larger newspapers (and television stations) in the state largely ignored the events.  Some of the samller papers did cover them, but they usually carried no more than a senternce of what he said.  They did spend more time talking about the blimp and the out of state supporters who came to see him.  The Paul ads were professional and attractive, but they simply threw out the words "freedom",  "Constitution", and "Ron Paul" and ended with a picture of the candidate.  The campaign is about freedom, and the constitution, but Ron Paul is not running for President on his good looks.  An ad with Ron Paul setting out at least one way in which he would be a different king of President in a thirty second sound bite would be more true to the nature of his campaign and more educational for the voters.

Ron Paul, the campaign and the campaign team have been good.  For the rest of the primaries they should be better.  The ads could be improved, the campaign should do more to attract undecideds and even opponents to the events.  This might reach more people and get more coverage from at least some of the press.

The Ron Paul campaign for the Republican nomination in 2008 will end, probably unsuccessfully, at the Republican convention.  He has said that he will not continue the campaign as the candidate of a third party or as an independent.  He has not said, and he will not say, that he will abandon his principles or stop fighting for those principles.  Nor should his supporters.  It is time, under the circumstances to plan to keep the educational effort during the next four years at least.  The enthusiam roused by the campaign this year is terrific.  During the next four years that enthusiasm must be converted into numbers.  We can count on Dr. Paul to do his part.  Are the rest of us willing to do ours?

Did you like this article?
If you did, Thumb It!
30 thumbs so far

©2008 rtbohan, all rights reserved. You must have written permission from the author in order to republish this work.
Published: Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Last modified: Thursday, January 1, 2009

The views expressed in this article are those of rtbohan only and do not represent the views of Nolan Chart, LLC or its affiliates. rtbohan is solely responsible for the contents of this article and is not an employee or otherwise affiliated with Nolan Chart, LLC in his/her role as a columnist.

Report violation by rtbohan of Nolan Chart LLC's terms of use policy.