Ron Paul in 2008?
It's been a while since I've had a chance to post anything on my blog; my brother got married recently, and we've been really busy at the office working on the latest release of our software, so I haven't had a lot of free time in the last few weeks. That hasn't changed yet, unfortunately.
Remember the posting I wrote not too long ago, about the Republican U.S. presidential candidate, Ron Paul? I was wondering if I might be able to get behind his campaign for the 2008 US presidential election.
Well, it turns out, I'm pretty sure I can. I don't like everything the man says, but I still like so much of it that I routinely find myself cheering him on. He's modest, intelligent, and practical--and he seems to exude integrity, even though his voice is a little too squeaky sometimes. Also, he's got underdog appeal in spades.
If you regularly read reddit or digg or any of the other social networking news sites, you know that Ron Paul is huge phenomenon in the online world. He's raised an astonishing 5 million dollars from Internet campaign contributors, with plenty more still coming in, and in online polls it's no exaggeration to say that he routinely destroys his competition.
(In several recent TV debates, Fox "news anchors" like Sean Hannity have repeatedly dismissed post-debate polling results that show Paul winning by a landslide. They claim that Paul's "Internet groupies" are banding together and skewing the results by speed dialing the polling numbers and calling in over and over.)
For the first time in history, the online world may have grown large enough to have a significant impact on politics in the real world. In other words, this could be a watershed--this could be the year when a politician finally seizes upon the huge, underutilized power of the Internet as a tool for winning elections. And maybe that politician will be Ron Paul.
Here's one of the television ads he's been spending his newfound campaign wealth on.
I hope he does well; American could (and probably will) do much, much worse than Ron Paul as president.
October 30th, 2007 - 19:08
Ron Paul sounds like a porn name. Maybe that’s why he’s so puplar online?
October 31st, 2007 - 11:40
“popular” even oops!
November 21st, 2007 - 21:12
This guy seems the most coherent and on topic republican ever. I hope he manages to displace 1 of the 2 top candidates. BTW, where’s your Gwynne Dyer stuff?
December 18th, 2007 - 23:20
Watched an interview on a CNN program tonight with Ron Paul. I like him. He seems very honest and down to earth. The question is, will he keep his word on most of his policies if he became president, or would power corrupt as it has a tendancy to do?