Looks like Ron Paul’s presidential campaign is ending now that the GOP has spoken and wants 100-year-war McCain as its leader. To continue beyond this point would be ludicrous, and we all know Paul has run a sensible campaign until this point.
Jesse Benton, Paul campaign’s communication manager, said Friday that the Texas congressman is ending his run for the White House: “We are acknowledging that Ron will not be the nominee and that we are winding down the campaign.”
Paul already hinted the end was near in a video to supporters posted on YouTube on Thursday:
Oh, Paul. Though you will never be the U.S. president–unless it blew up and you were sole survivor and even then you’d have some competition with Michael Jackson’s former pet Ben–you will always be the president of our Internets. The obscure politician with fringe politics used the Web to raise a staggering $30 million dollars. At one point, Ron Paul’s YouTube videos accounted for five of the top 10 candidate videos, with the largest overall viewership of any candidate. So, farewell Mr. Internet. Hail, to the chief.
The fiery Republican with a libertarian streak, Ron Paul, survived a strong challenge to his day job in Congress on Tuesday, besting well-funded (and well-liked) Chris Peden.
Paul, ran for the White House as a libertarian in 1988 but gained more of a following this year as a Republican. Though he has been a long shot candidate throughout his presidential campaign this year, he did not drop-out of the race. He was forced to scale back his national operation to focus on the race for his Congressional seat in Texas when his constituents started getting fed-up with being neglected by rock star Ron Paulmania and the Maniacs.
Republican primary challenger Chris Peden said of Paul: “I do think the presidential race has exposed some of his values and principles that are not in line with his district, and that exposure has done him harm at home.”
But as Linkin Park would say, “In the end, it doesn’t even matter.” Because Paul power still powered through Peden and beat him in Tuesday night’s election. So there you go R3volutionists. You win!
Ron Paul maniacs should brace themselves. Today, could be the day Paul gets booted from Congress.
The 20-year congressman is facing a challenge from Chris Peden, the personable Republican mayor pro tem of Friendswood, who says Paul is out there “to make a point, not a difference.” Peden noted that out of 351 pieces of legislation Paul has sponsored, only six have made it out of committee and none has ever passed.
As Wonkette noted last week that “to many of his constituents in Texas Congressional District 14, Paul is just a blame-America-first attention whore who completely ignores the people who put him in office. There are no Democrats running in the 14th District primary today— so if Ron Paul loses, he will have the honor of being a double loser in the eyes of his beloved constituents.”
Yikes–perhaps Paul’s fear of the backlash his run for presidency wrought is the reason he avoided debating Peden. Here’s a video of Paul, flustered as he rants about why he won’t. His response? Peden should go “debate himself.”
While Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama duke it out for primary election wins in Ohio and Texas, one congressman who dropped out of the Democratic presidential race will be fighting for his seat on Capitol Hill.
Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) now faces a common problem: primary challenges built largely around the notion that his long-shot presidential bid and celebrity status have put him out of touch with voters back home. He will be wetting himself until the reckoning election on March 4, when Ohio holds its primary.
Kucinich admitted his House seat was in trouble when he abandoned his presidential bid in late January according to the Wall Street Journal. He told his hometown paper, “I want to continue to serve in Congress.” Read: This is the only way I can get back to The Hill, please don’t forget about me in the upcoming election.
So nervous is the Democratic House representative that Kucinich agreed to debate his four opponents– a rare concession for a safe incumbent. Check out his urgent appeal message here.
Long shot presidential candidate Ron Paul regularly pulls in large crowds of supporters, but it looks like they don’t rally for him at the polls. Case in point? Paul’s UT Campus rally last Saturday.
According to the Daily Texan, around 4,000 students and supporters stood in front of the UT Tower Saturday to hear him speak. But at the on-campus Early Vote location at the Flawn Academic Center–within eyesight of the enormous orange wave of coeds in “Hook ‘em, Horns” t-shirts–only 54 people voted for the Texas congressman that day.
Here’s a graph from Burnt Orange Report showing the disparity of voters to supporters:
So he only gets around 50 votes per 4,000 people. Yes, it is only 1.25 percent, but last time I checked 1 is more than none. I am sure that is the exact same logic the Paul maniacs follow… Looks like the number of YouTube hits you get is not directly proportional to the number of votes you will carry. Who knew?
…In reality they will likely post your home address and phone numbers on their blogs if you mess with their leader. A teacher and Live Journal user “Makkabee” made the mistake of writing a post on his personal blog about an inspired math lesson he used to help his students learn about line graphs. And poor Makkabee soon incurred the wrath of the Ron Paul Nation.
In the offending post, the teacher wrote about how he “talked about the [presidential] candidates rising or falling, and extending the lines on their graphs, I’d end with “and Ron Paul stayed flat” and add another segment to his straight line near the zero marker.”
Apparently the kids loved it, but Paul supporters did not. So they defended the outcast GOP candidate with all the might their love for him and the Internet can muster. According to a post Makkabee wrote the next day, his real name, phone number and address were on Ron Paul Forums all over cyberspace. Paul-heads are so good, they should be hired by the CIA to locate Al-Qaida cells.
Yikes. Let’s just hope they stick to virtual harassment. Although, Makkabee claims they “reported on his planned movements.” Hmmm. Did I ever mention that I was kidding whenever I talked smack about Paul on this blog? Please, don’t take my lunch money.
Read Makkabee’s egregiously offensive post after the jump.
According to an article by the Independent Institute, Ron Paul would have fit right in with the founding fathers.The writer draws parallels between Paul’s “policy prescriptions of more limited government at home and military restraint abroad” and the mindset of the drafters of the Constitution.
Apparently Paul’s foreign policy ideas “put him far closer to the spectrum of opinion at the founding than any other candidate in the 2008 race.”Here are some of the highlights from the article that showcase why George Washington would have wanted to buy Paul a Sam Adams back in the day:
“The Washington Post, in an op-ed dedicated entirely to undermining Paul’s candidacy, argued that Paul is an “isolationist” who would withdraw from Iraq immediately, wouldn’t defend South Korea if it were attacked by the North, and has attempted to understand why Osama bin Laden attacks the United States. Yet the nation’s founders were not isolationists, and neither is Paul. Like the founders, he wants to avoid unneeded and unconscionable military attacks on other countries that pervert the republic at home.”
Ever wonder why your favorite fringe presidential candidates are being ignored by your nightly news election coverage? According to the executive director of the World Humanitarian Peace and Ecology Movement, Joseph Raglione, blame Big Oil corporations.
Raglione said, the only presidential candidates who refused to co-operate with Cap and Trade, are Mike Gravel and Ron Paul. They both believe in taxing the polluters directly. Mysteriously, both have been cut out of the corporate controlled media spotlight. Dun dun duunnnnnnnnn!
Senators Mike Gravel and Ron Paul are not listed as having accepted money from the Oil corporations, but if you follow the oil money at the Oil Change International website, you can see a fun little graphic detailing how all the other presidential candidates accepted money.
So that’s why Grandpa Gravel and Popular Paul are being ignored. The well-paid media is not reporting on these two presidential candidates because they won’t play ball with the oil tycoons. Ah, well, maybe a sense of decency and an intact moral compass is more valuable than being president of United States.
Reality has hit Ron Paul hard. The Texas congressman basically admitted he’d never get the GOP nod. I mean unless a house fell on John McCain and Mike Huckabee ran away with the Lollipop Gild. Paul posted a letter on his website at 10:14 p.m. yesterday saying, now that Mitt Romney had dropped from the race he’d be scaling back his campaign.
Apparently, Paul was banking on a brokered convention to propel him to the White House:
Let me tell you my thoughts. With Romney gone, the chances of a brokered convention are nearly zero. But that does not affect my determination to fight on, in every caucus and primary remaining, and at the convention for our ideas, with just as many delegates as I can get. But with so many primaries and caucuses now over, we do not now need so big a national campaign staff, and so I am making it leaner and tighter. “
Never fear though, Paul won’t abandon the GOP and try for a third-party bid because he is “committed to fighting for our ideas within the Republican party.” Perhaps this change of heart has less to do with Paul actually having his hopes for the Republican bid for president dashed and more to do with him realizing he can losing his House seat if he doesn’t start campaigning to his constituency in Texas for the congressional primary:
I have constituents in my home district that I must serve. I cannot and will not let them down. And I have another battle I must face here as well. If I were to lose the primary for my congressional seat, all our opponents would react with glee, and pretend it was a rejection of our ideas. I cannot and will not let that happen.
Looks like Paul’s ruby red slippers are on the fritz so he is retreating to Texas (what is with all the Republican nominee rejects squatting in Texas?) to make sure he has a place on the Hill after all this hoopla. Give ‘em hell on the inside is what I always say. And what does Paul say? “The neocons, the warmongers, the socialists, the advocates of inflation will be hearing much from you and me.”
Oh, Dr. Paul. You had me at neocons. Now what to do with all of your supporters? We’ll just let them keep believing their $30 million didn’t go to waste.
Ron Paul is not doing so well in the polls going into Super-Fantastic-Amazing Tuesday. He’s failed to register in the double digits in any of the states holding elections tomorrow despite his phenomenal, head scratching cult following.
According to USAElectionPolls.com , 18-29 year olds in many states are supporting Ron Paul in the 15-20 percent range. But Paul mania is not catching on with the older voters. He registers around 2-3 percent among them.
It’s okay, Paul. Age ain’t nothing but a number. Besides Paul has been a staunch supporter of fiscal responsibility and it is stated by independent monitoring organizations that Paul is the only conservative whose plan would really cut the budget and with the crumbling economy, “Ron Paul’s message has never been more truthful.”
He can still spread his message. At least until the convention comes, then he’s out of the race officially and will fade into obscurity once more. Ross Perot, anyone?
