There’s some room for fudging in that the chart only reflects stories in which the candidate is “the lead newsmaker.” The question is, why should Paul get more coverage than he’s getting? Because he could be the nominee? He has no chance. Because it seems unfair that he’s not getting more coverage? You’d have to come up with a reasonable standard for fairness here and figure out what a fair result would look like. I agree that far too much attention has been paid during this cycle to non-serious candidates. I’ve been saying that for a while. There seems to be a general feeling that it’s a crappy GOP field and the thing to do is lead with the outrageous personalities, which is making the entire thing exponentially more ridiculous.
Taking Obama out of the chart - it’s easy for the president to get on the news - the chart shows that Paul was the lead newsmaker in about 25 percent as many stories as Romney. Does that really seem unfair? Most of the stories about Gingrich were about how his campaign was self-destructing, so it’s not like the additional coverage has been an advantage. Some of the coverage of Pawlenty was about how he was being left behind, and he’s out of the race now anyway. Huntsman was more interesting to the press than the voters, so he’s received a slightly disproportionate amount of attention. Even if you take it at face value I’m not sure this proves Paul is being ignored. It sounds like the amount of coverage is still out of proportion to his chances at winning.
At what point does it become self fulfilling prophesy that someone is discarded as having no chance, therefore he has no chance? He has never been treated by the media as a serious candidate, so no one thinks of him as one.
And you can’t say “well he’s too nutty to be taken seriously” because certainly the same thing would apply to Palin and Bachman.
Edit: Maybe his nutty rep goes back before it became popular to be completely nuts, so that’s the difference.
Yeah, I raised that issue earlier. That’s a legitimate concern and I’d certainly prefer they discussed Paul’s results at the straw poll and put them in context instead of ignoring them.
Again, that’s just false. The supposed “Ron Paul Revolution” got a lot of coverage in 2008 considering he never had a shot at the nomination in the first place. He continues to have a base of enthusiastic supporters who raise money for him and his son is now a senator. The truth is that a lot of his views are far out of step with the GOP base, not to mention the rest of the public. Dennis Kucinch didn’t get a whole lot of media attention either, but the press wasn’t the reason he failed to get the nomination.
According to the RealClearPolitics, which averages the results of scientific polls conducted by Rasmussen Reports, Fox News, CNN/Opinion Research, USA Today/Gallup, and McClatchy Marist, Ron Paul is legitimately less than a percentage point behind Michele Bachmann. Link.
Is this more NWO junk? If so please turn off Alex Jones.
It really wouldn’t matter if he did make it to be the candidate I don’t think the Electoral College would vote him to the White House if he could even win the votes.
They can.
No, they never have, because the uproar would be mind-boggling and the electors are selected for their loyalty to the candidate.
We’ve had the occasional “faithless elector” but it’s never been more than a publicity stunt.
New Gallup Poll
I couldn’t help but notice the “Results are based on telephone interviews conducted as part of Gallup Daily tracking survey Aug. 17-18, 2011, with a random sample of 1,026 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia.” part, and wonder how all those Ron Paul supporters managed to infiltrate their way into a phone based poll.
It’s all way too early to tell, but I still think each of these four candidates have an equal shot. “Fair and Balanced” news coverage, or not.
Just an FYI, every other country managed to get rid of slavery without a civil war. (Also, Lincoln even voted against amending the constitution to get rid of slavery.) On slavery itself: “My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.” - Abraham Lincoln
This is not to say Abraham Lincoln was pro slavery, but surely he would tolerate slavery at the stake of keeping the south from legally seceding. The emancipation proclamation only set free the slaves “held in bondage in the states at war with the Union.” So the slaves in the states in the union were not to be set free…
But why would Ron Paul not vote for such a thing? Maybe because secession was legal, and the emancipation proclamation was unconstitutional.
This would be another example of a tone-deaf statement. Seriously, how does Paul expect any minority voter to have any confidence in him when he’s opposed to pillars of civil rights legislation and takes it even further with positions like these?
I’m not sure how this answers my question, and it seems to be based on a misunderstanding of the idea of civil rights. Civil rights legislation doesn’t give rights to groups. It protects the rights of individuals. The laws exist because historically, nonwhite individuals were denied the rights that are afforded to all individuals in this society. Those rights were denied because all nonwhites were considered inferior. Niceties like the brown paper bag test aside, discrimination against nonwhites as a group applied to every individual within the group.
One black guy is not “some minorities,” and I don’t think “minorities” is the correct term for people who belong to a minority group. Anyway that “minority” is D.L. Hughley. He’s a comedian and his short-lived CNN show was a comedy program. I assume he was sincere in that interview but I don’t think he or Paul know what they’re talking about. Seriously now: why are black, Hispanic, or other minority voters - or women, for that matter - going to vote for a guy who says secession was legal and the Emancipation Proclamation was illegal, and who is generally opposed to civil rights laws? Even if D.L. Hughley was a respected scholar, one guy wouldn’t magically make the question go away. He’s not speaking for anyone else.
I’ll probably sound racist for saying this, but there are so many glaring abuses to private property (not slavery) and individual choice. Do I not have a right to choose with whom I do business? Ron Paul may be against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 but he is also against the Jim Crow laws and for the voting rights act of 1965 (which led to the end of much discrimination due to representatives now having to cater to the minorities.) If you look at the statistics the amount of minorities in technical and managerial positions increased between the 40s and 60s by the same amount after… so it must not have done too much.
Now why would a minority vote for him? Maybe because they believe in personal freedom and private property.
This is more of a problem: Paul is against discrimination, but he’s also against doing anything about it. It’ll all work out in the end somehow.
I suspect you are attempting to cherrypick one statistic to invalidate the entire civil rights movement, which is ludicrous. Civil rights legislation was not targeted at increasing minority representation in “technical and managerial positions.” It ensured black people were able to vote. Registration among eligible black voters in the South went from 250,000 in 1940 to 3.5 million in 1970. Schools and universities were desegregated. You know, little stuff like that. Why are you arguing (on Paul’s behalf) against this stuff?
And maybe they would be concerned that he’d gut the laws that allow them to exercise their personal freedom. The kind of stuff you are posting will not allay those concerns.
If Ron Paul is in favor of personal freedom, why does he keep introducing the We the People Act, which would give to states pretty much plenary power to violate peoples’ freedoms in the area of religion and privacy? (This is something that modern American libertarianism seems to have trouble with from time to time, but “states’ rights” derogate from personal freedom rather than enhancing it. They aren’t complements. A state banning gay sex and atheism is not advancing the cause of freedom from government intrusion. But you seem to understand that, since you acknowledge that “groups of people don’t have rights.” Too bad Ron Paul doesn’t.)
He obviously agreed with the Voting rights act of 1965 (which i said in my previous post), and he would vote for voting rights for minorities, so I don’t see what that has to do with this. As for segregation he is against government telling private property owners what to do with their own property (or whom they sell their wares to). As for public schools, I believe he is against segregation in public schools(however I’m sure he just as well would like them all to be private schools).
I don’t understand. This act makes it so the Federal courts can’t adjudicate "any claim or relying on judicial decisions involving: (1) state or local laws, regulations, or policies concerning the free exercise or establishment of religion; (2) the right of privacy, including issues of sexual practices, orientation, or reproduction; or (3) the right to marry without regard to sex or sexual orientation where based upon equal protection of the laws. " Aside from the fact that Judicial review is unconstitutional, “Originally, the First Amendment applied only to the federal government. A number of the states effectively had established churches when the First Amendment was ratified, with some remaining into the early nineteenth century.” First Amendment to the United States Constitution - Wikipedia
This does not force you to be a certain religion, and you are still granted your right to freedom of religion (as it is protected by the Constitution), but allows the establishment of a state church.
This act basically allows each state to decide on the marriage issue and keeps the federal government out of sexual privacy cases (which gives us things like the repealing of don’t ask don’t tell). Since the state is closer to the people than the federal, how is this going against libertarianism. (Of course, Ron Paul really would rather government have absolutely no say in marriage, seeing how marriage is a purely religious arrangement, and the federal government saying who can and can’t marry is a destruction of freedom or religion.)
Just because the states are given their power does not mean they can go against the federal constitution. This means you can’t ban religion. States government is much closer to the people than federal government. Ron Paul isn’t exactly a pure libertarian, he is more of a constitutionalist.