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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: calgal who wrote (24033)	11/7/2007 5:20:11 PM
From: calgal	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

The 'Don't Tase Me, Bro' Candidate Ron Paul, crank-in-chief. by Dean Barnett 11/07/2007 12:00:00 AM Increase Font Size \| Printer-Friendly \| Email a Friend \| Respond to this article RON PAUL TOOK IN $4.2 million in honor of Guy Fawkes Day Monday. While this is a wonderful haul for the congressman, it's not quite accurate to say he raised it or even that his campaign raised it. Paul supporters organized the event on their own with minimal coordination with the campaign. Naturally, the champions of "people power" have rushed forward to praise this event and point out how it can be replicated. Markos Moulitsas, perhaps the leading authority on how to make it look like you've personally created an internet phenomenon even when you had nothing to do with it, has already rushed out an essay summing up the Paul phenomenon. Moulitsas's analysis comes replete with mind-numbing platitudes and easy-to-repeat formulas for other candidates to apply, presumably once they've retained an internet guru like Moulitsas to show them the way. There's a ton of good lessons there for future campaigns to learn. Paul's internet team--out of necessity, no doubt--have been brilliantly efficient and effective in evangelizing their candidate on social networks throughout the web. The cost is likely negligible--a couple of staffers--while the payoff speaks for itself. Too bad the other campaigns didn't think of hiring internet teams that would be brilliant in evangelizing their candidate on the social networks. In truth, the other campaigns also hired internet gurus who promised their employers/candidates that they too held the secret to harnessing the internet's vast power. But Paul's fundraising success has nothing to do with web savvy savants running his campaign or even the technical abilities of his followers. Paul is a fringe candidate who broke through into being a cult figure. To use a metaphor that seems oddly appropriate, Dr. Paul has gone viral. Although marketers everywhere probably wish they could plan such things, they can't. I would bet even Paul himself is slightly bewildered by his popularity, and perhaps wonders why people who think Dick Cheney personally imploded WTC Tower 7 have flocked to his banner. CRAZY PEOPLE LOVE to have a cause. Usually politics doesn't offer a candidate worthy of their ardor. The 2008 campaign looked like it would be more of the same in that regard. The Democratic candidates all basically stand for the same boring platform. At their debates, the only thing they really contest is who despises George W. Bush more. At one point, John Edwards looked like he would flirt with the lunatic fringe of American politics. When asked about the "suspicious" collapse of Tower 7, the ever-polite Edwards vowed to look into it. But even the nakedly craven Edwards decided "Trutherism" wasn't a promising avenue to go down. He hasn't mentioned Tower 7 since that obscure YouTube moment. So why have America's lunatics taken such a shine to the formerly obscure Ron Paul? There's a simple explanation: Although Paul spends most of his time talking about the Constitution and such cherished old time policies as the gold standard, he's as close to an anarchist as we're likely to see in presidential politics. weeklystandard.com