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Victory in the Deep South
Thomas E. Woods, Jr.
Lew Rockwell.com
Tuesday Aug 21, 2007
Last
weekend my wife and I spent part of our Saturday at the West Alabama
Republican Assembly’s straw poll. The result was as lopsided as
all the Internet polls that Ron Paul supporters are accused of
"spamming." Paul received 81 percent of the votes cast.
Most people
were already there by the time we arrived. I could tell things
were looking up by a quick glance around the parking lot. It wasn’t
just the Ron Paul signs and bumper stickers all over the place;
it was the complete lack of any other candidate’s signs or stickers.
I saw not a single bumper sticker for any 2008 candidate other
than Ron Paul.
Inside, the
situation was largely the same. Ron Paul T-shirts, signs, and
buttons everywhere. There were a few Romney signs, but that was
it. Many of the folks I spoke to shared my sense of delighted
disbelief: how had we managed to take over this entire event?
And for the vast bulk of them, this was the first time they had
so much as considered attending an event like a straw poll. Ron
Paul seems to have that effect on people.
(Article continues below)
In case the
media ignored the event, and/or in case there was any way the
Ron Paul contingent’s complete domination might have been ignored
or downplayed, I snapped some photos. Unfortunately, my brand
new camera, whose instructions I hadn’t read, was on an inappropriate
setting that yielded only grainy pictures. But YouTube once again
comes to
the rescue: it looks like a Ron Paul rally, doesn’t it? (The
front rows are empty because by that point we were all milling
around in the back waiting for the results.)
We had lunch
with David Beito of the University of Alabama and the Liberty
and Power blog. Afterward, we had a chance to meet all kinds of
great folks, including (naturally) countless LewRockwell.com readers.
(We're all in this
video; when the cameraman comes around to ask if we're for
Ron Paul, I give the smart-alecky answer, "We're still on the
fence.")
Representatives
from several campaigns spoke or gave presentations on behalf of
their candidates. Duncan Hunter even phoned in and spoke to the
crowd before we arrived. (He got ten votes.) But far and away
the most powerful speaker – and anyone, whatever his preferred
candidate, would have conceded this – was the gentleman who spoke
for Ron Paul, a local Baptist minister named John Killian. Killian
has an undeniable credibility with a Republican audience, having
been involved in the party since the 1970s. And he sure knows
how to rally a crowd: here is his speech (part
1 and part
2).
When it came
time to announce the results, the only real question was Paul’s
margin of victory. No one glancing around the room could have
been in doubt about the outcome, and even the moderator who announced
the results admitted that we all knew who had won. The candidates
were named in alphabetical order – except Paul, whose name and
vote total were given at the very end, since his win was a foregone
conclusion.
This is what
we heard:
Brownback
- 2 (0.75%)
Giuliani - 7 (3%)
Huckabee - 6 (2%)
Hunter - 10 (4%)
McCain - 2 (0.75%)
Romney - 14 (5%)
Tancredo - 0 (0%)
Fred Thompson - 9 (3%)
Paul - 216 (81%)
Within seconds,
the great Chris Brunner
had posted the results to the LewRockwell.com blog (another reason
to read it regularly!).
Steve
Gordon’s recollections of the straw poll are much better and
more thorough than anything I could have written; I particularly
enjoyed his description of all the different kinds of people you
meet at a Ron Paul event – and let’s face it, with 81 percent
of the vote, the Ron Paul folks made this their event.
I’m recording
my own thoughts, on the other hand, for the sake of analyzing
what these results mean. Sure, in the grand scheme of things this
straw poll was a minor event, but it was no less thrilling for
all that. Mark
Thornton said this was the first time he could remember actually
being on the winning side at a political gathering.
And there
is something to be learned even from these smaller events.
Most importantly,
we find once again that among the 2008 candidates Ron Paul has
a unique ability to inspire people. Everyone was invited to this
straw poll. Ron Paul’s supporters did not behave unethically or
exploit some loophole in order to register such an impressive
vote total. They simply showed up. To my knowledge, the Ron Paul
campaign did not issue invitations to supporters to attend the
poll, much less provide funding or logistical support. Instead,
Ron Paul Meetup groups and other forums got the word out.
Why couldn’t
other candidates’ supporters have done the same? Why are the Paul
people so enthusiastic and they so apathetic?
The same
day, Ron Paul received 208 out of 286 votes cast at a straw poll
in New Hampshire. Paul was actually present at that event – but
so were Mike Huckabee and Tom Tancredo. Huckabee got 20 votes.
Tancredo got eight.
So here’s
an event at which you can actually meet your favored candidate,
and yet Huckabee partisans can scrounge up only 20 people? Tancredo’s
campaign motivated a grand total of eight to come see him?
Once and
for all, then: Paul supporters are not spamming online polls,
if it were even possible to do so without being detected. You
can’t spam a straw poll, and in Alabama and New Hampshire we have
just seen margins of victory similar to those that provoke allegations
of spamming when they occur online.
When you
devise events that ask people to make the effort to identify themselves,
as with online polls or local straw polls, as opposed to telephone
polls that consist of calling people (most of whom have never
heard of Ron Paul) in their homes, Ron Paul does extremely well.
That is to say, people who have heard of him disproportionately
want to go out of their way to help him and make their support
known.
And intensity
of support does matter. On primary day, you can bet your bottom
dollar that Paul’s supporters will be out there voting, whatever
the weather. Given the very low percentage of voters who bother
to vote in the primaries, this is no small advantage.
Name recognition
is now the key. In countless cases, people who all of a sudden
find out about Ron Paul turn into devoted partisans, employing
their various talents in creative ways on his behalf.
Spreading
the word is therefore the order of the day. I compiled
a few of the favorite introductory Ron Paul YouTubes on the
basis of suggestions I received from readers of this site. (I
also like this
one, which I find extremely inspiring.)
A major "right-wing"
radio talk show host recently urged people to call Ron Paul’s
headquarters to tell his staff their candidate couldn’t win. Quite
apart from how stupid and juvenile that is, it also shows that
Paul and his message are getting under the bad guys’ skin. When
they condemn him or (in this case) urge him to drop out, what
they are really saying is that they want a business-as-usual campaign
in which Americans are spoken to in slogans and all the major
candidates stick to the script when it comes to war and empire.
"Ron
Paul is a distraction from the field of hacks the party has given
us to choose from. We’re more or less satisfied with the status
quo, and demand a candidate we can be sure won’t change a thing."
That, in
effect, is what these dopes are saying.
Doing good
and infuriating establishment and "right-wing"
(as if there were a difference anymore) hacks at the same time
– this is one of the distinct pleasures of working for and spreading
the word about Ron Paul.
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INFOWARS:
BECAUSE THERE'S A WAR ON FOR YOUR MIND
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