Topic: Presidential Campaign 2008
My Dream For The Ron Paul Campaign As I look ahead to the coming primaries and caucuses, I like to imagine how I think they might play out in 2008.by Walt Thiessen
(libertarian)
Saturday, December 22, 2007
It's fun to dream when the dreams are good dreams overall. Dreams are the way our imaginations help us to formulate what we want to happen in our lives and how we can go about making them happen.
As I dream about the coming primaries, I am influenced by all of the comments I've read and heard online by Ron Paul supporters. There's so much enthusiasm, so much solid belief that their candidate is going to surprise everyone. I'd love to see him succeed. Please note: the following story is fictitious. It is a dream, not a prognostication. It is also not the only way events can play out. Not by a longshot!
The dream starts January 3, 2008 in the living rooms and meeting halls of Iowa, where Republicans gather to anoint Mike Huckabee as their standard bearer. To no one's surpise, he wins the Iowa caucus. What surprises everyone (except for a Republican analyst in Atlanta, a talk radio broadcaster in Des Moines, and a nation of Paulites) is that Ron Paul finishes third, nudging out Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson, and John McCain. Suddenly, the major media are all talking about the Ron Paul surprise. The Congressman himself expresses delight at the result, saying that America's hunger for freedom is turning into a revolution, and his words are carried on all national TV news networks.
The Primary Bomb
The surprise is just beginning. Just five days later, Paul absolutely stuns the political world by winning the New Hampshire primary, nudging out Mitt Romney who was widely expected to take that contest hands down. Analysts keep emphasizing how big an upset this is for the Romney campaign rather than saying anything substantial about Ron Paul's candidacy, but once again Ron Paul's name is on the lips of every newscaster. Critics write off his success as a one-off that won't be so easily repeated in Michigan or South Carolina.
Meanwhile, Paulites around the country are absolutely frenetic with excitement. Take the December 2007 levels of Paulite activity and double it, and you still wouldn't come close to the electrical current running throughout the country on January 9th. Internet searches for Ron Paul break all previous political records. "Google Ron Paul" becomes a household term in a matter of days, and Alexa reports that ronpaul2008.com has suddenly jumped into the top 10 most visited websites in the world, from a previous ranking of around 7,000th on their list. Ron Paul signs start sprouting up everywhere: on bridges, on lampposts, in front yards, and even in full page newspaper ads. Deep-pocketed Larry Lepard-like investors in liberty buy the ads out of their own cash reserves like Lepard did with the USA Today ad in November 2007.
Ron Paul meetup groups around the country and around the world see sudden spikes in their membership. Hundreds of thousands of people who had been either sitting by the sidelines or didn't even know much about the candidate have suddenly decided that Paul's their boy. Reports start filtering in from around the country about packed houses at meetup meetings in every state. Bloggers from around the world start getting into the act, and suddenly all the foreign media are riveted to the story that there may be a revolution brewing in America.
The Federal Election Commission announces that they are going to begin a serious investigation of many of the ways that Paulites are supporting their candidate to discover if campaign finance laws are being flouted, but the news does little more than to stimulate further activity as it becomes evident that the FEC doesn't really know where to start. There's just so much activity to investigate, and they don't have enough staff to do it. So the agency head decides that they'll target the most visible elements of the movement, picking a handful to investigate in depth with their limited resources. The grassroots respond as Paul supporters with law degrees publicly jump into the fray and offer to defend anyone the FEC investigates on a pro bono basis. One such attorney doesn't wait and files for a class action injunction to prevent the FEC from investigating at all. The court refuses to grant the injunction, but the message received by the FEC is clear. A website called legalbomb2008.com is quickly launched to raise legal funds to defend anyone targeted by the FEC, and it raises $1 million in its first day of existence. The FEC quickly realize that if they decide to come after some of the Paulites, the rest will respond to give the FEC the fight of their lives.
Meanwhile, pollsters are all taking a second look at their poll scoring methodologies, having been forced by the results to admit that their standard formulas for deciding who likely voters will be, need to be adjusted. Paulites laugh and in some cases jeer with delight at the news.
Activism in Michigan, South Carolina, Nevada, and Florida suddenly shoots through the roof in anticipation of those upcoming primaries that are next on the calendar, but the media all focuses on February 5th, "Super Duper Tuesday" when 42% of all available Republican delegates are chosen in 22 states. Rudy Giuliani is still considered the odds-on favorite that day, but now the pollsters are putting their newly-tuned polls in the field as quickly as possible to discover what we can expect will happen. Paul ends up doing surprisingly well in Michigan and wins Nevada outright, but his weaker performances in Florida and South Carolina give fuel to his opponents on the news networks.
Super Duper Tuesday
The day before Super Duper Tuesday, USA Today puts out poll results that show Ron Paul is running in first or second place in 12 out of 22 Super Duper Tuesday primary states. Other pollsters offer different readings on the race, and commentators are absolutely beside themselves as they try to explain and document the sudden Paul surge. Fox News alternates between reporting the new polling results and running Sean Hannity commentaries saying how bad a Paul nomination would be for the Republican Party as he leads the fight to broadcast every single report he can find about white pride extremists and other undesirables who have sent money into the Paul campaign or supported the campaign with their websites. The major media pick up the stories which dominate the news right up until February 5th. The question everyone asks is: can Paul survive his own supporters?
Super Duper Tuesday arrives. Activity is off the charts. Demonstrations, rallies, and marches have spontaneously formed in all major cities of the Super Duper Tuesday states. Some didn't do their due diligence and arrange parade permits, and the news channels carry repeated reports of police arresting Paulites who queue up with their wrists extended, daring the police to arrest them while other Paulites gleefully make noise and posture for the TV cameras. One Paulite is recorded on camera shouting, "Wherever I'm standing is a free speech zone!" He is later reported by newscasters to be the 2004 Libertarian Party presidential candidate Michael Badnarik.
Speculation runs rampant in newscasts and newspapers as record numbers of Republicans stream to the polls. Some prognosticators point out that high turnout is probably good for the Paul campaign, but others scoff saying that this is actually a reaction to the Paul ascendancy as loyal Republicans rally to save their party from the upstart and his minions.
Controversy In The Results
Finally, the polls close and the results start rolling in. By the end of the night, Ron Paul has won five of the 20 states, finishing second or third in all of the rest. Cries of "fraud" are raised by Paulites across the country, many of whom end up on national TV claiming that the electronic voting systems were rigged. What follows is a week's worth of stories and investigations about how Republican officials are claiming that the results are legitimate and that none of the results could have been tampered with. Some of the Paulite grassroots attorneys are seen emerging again, filing lawsuits to ask the courts to overturn the results of those primaries. The courts end up refusing to do that in all states except Massachusetts, where a judge issues an injunction preventing the Secretary of the Commonwealth from certifying the primary results until a full investigation can be carried out.
Meanwhile, the calendar keeps on moving. The Virginia, Maryland, and DC primaries come up a week later. Paul takes the Virginia and DC primaries and finishes second in Maryland.
At this point Rudy Giuliani maintains a narrow lead in the delegate count. Huckabee is second, and Paul is running third. Mitt Romney considers dropping out of the race, having been embarrassed by his results in the states he was supposed to win easily. However, he has enough delegates committed to him that he decides to persevere. The campaigns of the other candidates are effectively over. One by one they have all withdrawn from the race after Super Duper Tuesday. It's now considered a three-man race, with almost no pundits giving Romney any chance of surviving.
CBS's 60 Minutes airs a widely viewed program that reveals recently discovered weaknesses in electronic voting systems and features a hacker who demonstrates on national TV how he successfully broke into a computerized voting test program and changed the voting results recorded in that computer. The computer in question was never actually used in a primary, but word quickly spreads that the now famous hacker actually broke into and changed the computers that recorded the California and Arizona primary results. This story remains an urban legend for years to come.
Diebold and ES&S threaten to file suit against CBS for revealing trade secrets. Their respective owners, brothers Bob and Todd Orosevich become household names as the country comes to realize that 80% of electronic voting is controlled by a single family. CNN reports on ties between the Orosevich family and the Bush family, which gets wide airplay around the world.
By the time we get to March, the Republican Party is in chaos. For the first time in decades, their candidate for president has not yet been anointed. Ron Paul wins his home state of Texas while finishing second to Giuliani in Ohio. Huckabee's campaign is fading a bit, but he's still got a large portion of the delegates under his belt. It is now clear even before the Pennsylvania primary arrives that the convention is going to be deadlocked. Giuliani will be a few votes away from winning, but no one can win on the first ballot. It's going to be a dogfight in Minneapolis the first weekend of September. Pundits are predicting a cakewalk for Hillary Clinton who has easily won the Democratic nomination by this point. She is widely expected to win over a fractured Republican Party in November. Talk of the first female president in history dominates the headlines. Many commentators predict that this is the end of the long-standing alliance between the religious right and other factions of the Republican rank-and-file.
The Revolution Continues To Grow
Paul-like candidates for Congress begin to emerge to challenge in both the Republican and Democratic primaries at the congressional level. The latest rage is for candidates to announce that they are running to provide support for Ron Paul and his proposals in Congress once he is elected President. A number of senate candidates with similar leanings are added to the fray. In a few states where incumbents have already sewed up their nominations, candidates from the Libertarian and Constitution parties emerge saying they'll be Paulist representatives in Congress. Talk runs rampant of Paul running as a third party candidate if he isn't nominated, but the candidate himself continues to deny any truth to the rumors.
Speaking of third parties, in May the Libertarians surprise everyone, including many of their own members by voting at their convention to nominate Ron Paul for president on the Libertarian ticket, ignoring the fact that Dr. Paul continues to refuse to run as an independent or third party candidate. This action is taken in response to the Constitution Party who also nominated Dr. Paul to head their ticket the month before. Critics of the move in both parties charge that it could undermine their current and future ballot access status, since most states don't permit the candidate to appear on more than one line of the ballot. Debate among third party supporters is now raging as to which of the two parties is the "true" supporter of the Constitution, while peacemakers attempt to argue that the two parties should be working together for a common cause rather than fighting among themselves. Eventually, cooler heads prevail and a cross-party committee is organized to coordinate efforts for Dr. Paul, should he lose the Republican nomination. Once again, Dr. Paul refuses to commit to run on any ticket other than the Republican ticket.
Another group of Paulites concludes that neither of the two third parties can ultimately be effective as an alternative platform for Ron Paul to run on, and they organize an independent campaign to get Dr. Paul on the ballot in as many states as possible. They form the Ron Paul Revolution party and beginning passing around petitions to get him on state ballots and hastily call a national convention to nominate him. Thus, as we approach the Republican convention in September, Dr. Paul has been nominated by three parties, but the Republican nomination he desires is still outside his grasp.
The Political World Turns Upside Down
One week before the Republican convention, the Giuliani and Huckabee campaigns make a stunning announcement. Mike Huckabee has decided that it's more important to hold the Republican Party together and reunite it for the run in November than it is for Huckabee to continue to try to win the nomination outright. Recognizing that Giuliani is still the favorite to win in a brokered convention because of his large delegate lead, he and Giuliani cut a deal to make Huckabee his Vice-Presidential nominee. He throws his support behind Giuliani, thus assuring a second ballot win for the Giuliani campaign.
Paulites around the country are angered and outraged by the betrayal. Rallies and demonstrations spring up in cities and towns across the nation in protest. An army of his supporters descend on Minneapolis to stage ongoing protests at the Republican convention.
Meanwhile, on the Democratic side, a growing block of voters that normally vote Democratic are becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the Clinton juggernaut, particularly among the anti-war faction. They call for Paul to run as an independent and for the country to unite against the two major parties in backing his candidacy. The move is controversial within the voting bloc, and some refuse to participate, fearing they would lose leverage in a likely Clinton administration. But as the days wear on, it becomes increasingly clear that this block, too, is fractured.
The three third parties announce in mid-September that they have hammered out an agreement whereby Dr. Paul, who after the Giuliani/Huckabee announcement sees the writing on the wall, decides that it was time to step out as an independent. Using a hodge-podge of ballot access already attained by the Constitution and Libertarian Parties, with additional access obtained by the new Ron Paul Revolution party (which didn't have time anyway under existing election law to get on the ballots in all 50 states), the Paul campaign launches as an independent third party candidacy. The Republican and Democratic parties’ attorneys file lawsuits, saying that the candidates’ votes can’t be counted from three different parties. After much legal wrangling, the U.S. Supreme Court rules that the Paul campaign using the three third party arrangement is Constitutional and should not be blocked.
I'll stop the story of my dream here and let you fill in your own ending. Instead of telling you my ending, I'll just say this. In my dream, for the first time in 48 years, the televised presidential debates actually mean something.
As for the ending of the story, I'll leave that to you.
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[T]he news channels carry repeated reports of police arresting Paulites who queue up with their wrists extended, daring the police to arrest them while other Paulites gleefully make noise and posture for the TV cameras. One Paulite is recorded on camera shouting, "Wherever I'm standing is a free speech zone!" He is later reported by newscasters to be the 2004 Libertarian Party presidential candidate Michael Badnarik.
Interesting scenerio, but may be a bit backwards with regards to IA and NH. Iowa has a historically very low primary turnout, around 6 - 8 percent, and New Hampshire is around 60. So, I'd expect polling numbers in NH to be more indicitive of the "real" result than in IA, where Paul supporters can easily just show up and pull off an upset there. It would only take about 30,000 - 50,000 total Paul votes to take IA. Remember, the Republican process in IA is basically a state-wide straw poll... and we've seen Dr. Paul's absolute domination of those.
THAT is what would propel the sudden spike in coverage, and lead to possibly a second-place showing in NH. It is an exact repeat of John Kerry's run - he was polling around 6% in IA two weeks prior, and came out the winner. Then he steamrollered straight to the nomination.
Also, the FEC is unlikely to be investigating anybody for the forseeable future, as there are four vacancies on the board, thus they can't get a quorum to do any business. And all the nominees are being stonewalled in a fight between the White House and Congress, and that isn't changing in the forseeable future.
That's not a dream, that's a nightmare. Well it starts out like a dream but then slowly turns sour. If you're going to dream then do it right. Ron Paul wins by a landslide! Media puppets apologize for alowing themselves to be controlled and they file a class action suit against their bosses for harassment and threats and such. And we get our flippin' country back along with our genuine freedoms. Seriously, though I've been on the ground and I've seen the overwhelming support for Congressman Paul, and I predict a major surprise come voting time. The media will continue to play the puppet role and will have the affect of keeping this racefor the nomination close, but our man will prevail. Of course I don't rule out some foul play come nomination time.
Posted By: Walt Thiessen
Date: 2007-12-22 13:24:28
I see your point Scott, but I have to ask you...if that's a nightmare, can you describe to me a scenario where the empire doesn't strike back? That's the part I can't get past in my head. Show me a way for Ron Paul to win the Republican nomination without blowback from the Republican leadership, and I'll be able to improve the ending.
As far as I can see, there are no scenarios in which the Republican leadership doesn't fight back with a substantial degree of success. It's not like the neo-cons are going to give up their seats of power in the Republican Party and go away if Dr. Paul starts winning.
I think if Ron Paul just keeps continuing the way he is going, he will do fine. Romney has lied to improve his credentials, concerning his father's role in the civil rights marches. Huckabee will alienate moderate republicans, and threaten to hand the Democrats the election. Guiliani is bound to do something stupid. It has to happen ! Edwards will do surprisingly well on the Democratic side. The union movement in the Democratic party is desperate to have a president who shares their perspective, even if the candidate has an expensive haircut. If the labor movement does not get a candidate, it will disappear into irrelevance. This is the core support for Edwards. If Clinton and Obama divide the remaining democrat vote between them, Edwards will win. Especially in a depressing economic outlook. Edwards with his hard line on business, and his practical left wing market economics thinking will increase his appeal to the voters. Inflation and the subprime mess will figure more prominently. The Black vote in the Democratic Party will also be more likely to vote for Edwards than for Obama. Obama will appeal to moderates. And Hillary Clinton will appeal to the fashionable element in the Democratic Party. But ultimately Edwards will get the votes. This will result in a run-off between Ron Paul and Edwards, who are seen as the candidates with the widest appeal from both parties. Both will talk about rebuilding (an indebted) America. Both will clash repeatedly on economic issues, but largely agree on Foreign Policy. This will be a disaster for Wall Street, the Media, Corporate America, China, Foreign Investors. Therefore the Media (as directed by it's owners, and advertising customers) must do whatever is necessary from preventing this from occurring !!! Therefore the Media is downplaying Ron Paul and John Edwards !!!
The winner of the debate between these two candidates will be the winner of the election. But, let's not worry about that until it happens. Unlike previous elections, hopefully this time, the people will have two worthy candidates.
all right i agree that this is the way it will go down, largely, however i'm considering a different path to independant run, and i know, i'm trying to destroy dr. pauls campaign, but hear me out,
ron paul gets second place in iowa, passed only by huckabee, romney is enraged and pours in his own money as a last resort into new hampshire, doing more harm than good to his chances, because he can't be buying ad time this late, this leads to a backlash in the republican primary, leading to a paul victory in new hampshire, mcain a close second, crippling romneys run for good, i'll follow your thoughts on the other early primarys, but this is followed by a ron paul victory on super tuesday getting large portions of california, and wins new york and texas as well as a number of other states getting about 40% of delegates, the next closest being mcain, also surprising with 25% of delegates, leading into the convention paulites are celebrating en masse with record numbers of calls about disturbances of the peace, but at the convention mcain gets 55% of the votes, having brokered the convention in private, the outrage leads to massive numbers of hospitalizations accross america.
dr. paul announces that he will not accept an independant run, despite winning the libratarian, constitution, and even green parties nomination (they are widely believed to be attempting to gain popularity) a relative unknown by the name of trevor lyman creates a website called draftbomb08.com to raise money to draft ron paul to an independant run after a one week period this site has raised 35 million, as much as ron paul raised in all of his primary run, dr. paul finaly decides to launch a third party run, hillary clintons campaign is ecstatic initialy having seen a three way run poll and while hillary did not get the majority, she didn't need one because neither dr. paul nor mcain won a majority either, and as a result she personaly lead an effort to allow dr. paul into the debates, expecting ron paul to win the cell phone poll, because of his large youth contingent supporting him, however the next landline poll after the debate had dr. paul at 55% popularity, she attempted to block him from the next debates, but failed, dr. no became president no on election day, and osama bin laden was given up by his followers in the first 100 days, dr. paul put him on trial in the u.s. and he was given the death sentence, osama shared a cell with a large man named sugarbear, he decided not to appeal the death sentence, however, at the last moment dr. paul commuted his sentence to life in prison, outraging the american public, untill a guard released a cell phone video of bin ladens reaction on you tube
"And then there is a range of vexing campaign finance questions that hang in limbo: Can a firm that operates a blimp accept unlimited contributions to fly it over New Hampshire with Ron Paul's name on the side?"
"'Work on those questions will grind to a halt,' said FEC Chairman Robert Lenhard, whose recess appointment will expire on New Year's Eve."
See Ron Paul speak at the New Hampshire Liberty Forum, right before the primary, along with many other pro-liberty speakers! www.freestateproject.org/libertyforum
Posted By: Rob Alexander
Date: 2007-12-23 06:27:29
If none of the candidates gets at least 51% of the delegate votes in the first round at the national convention, the delegates no longer are bound to vote for any particular candidate in subsequent rounds. Since they are then free to vote their conscience, I see the delegates voting Ron Paul the Republican nomination.
Posted By: John Armstrong
Date: 2007-12-23 12:48:27
And what a well written, riveting story by the way. That would be awesome. And I think it could happen. With the internet posed to become THE media source for the future, the libertarian party could be on the verge of becoming a serious threat in American politics.
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