I see the Congressman Dr. Ron Paul candidacy as a golden opportunity for all sorts of reasons.
Other less mainstream candidates, i.e. non corporate candidates not supported by corporate media, have come close to stealing the show before, such as Ross Perot, but were ultimately squashed by special interest controlled political process with little ability to tap the genuine and rather vast grass roots support, i.e. the will of the people who don't have their head completely up someone's ass.
Today we have the same grass roots support exponentially growing for Dr. Paul with one key difference. This time around the grass roots efforts not only have a rock solid candidate, in terms of qualifications and consistency of message and practicing what he preaches, but this grass roots effort has access to a far more pervasive and established "grass roots" medium, the internet.
This cannot be over emphasized.
The strength of Dr. Paul's popularity has been evidenced in multiple televised debate polls in particular. These are far more significant than many other polls that Dr. Paul is not leading because these polls are in direct response to people who were viewing and listening to these candidates points, whereas many others, if they even list Dr. Paul, cannot be as assuring that those voting are even aware of his existance, especially not in any neutral sense.
After these televised debates cable news could do little more than declare that Dr. Paul's poll numbers were being manipulated due to, in multiple cases, his winning.
quote:
I think people would feel too weird having him as president right after Bush.
I disagree, I think the public is dying for a candidate just like him because he
is so different than Bush.
I think the issues holding people back from fully embracing him is not his drastically different direction but because of concern over people's own confusion, fear, ignorance of, primarily, the "war on terrorism" and, at close second, the same states of mind on the issue of politics in general.
As for his posistion on the "war on terrorism" the only people I see in disagreement with him are those parroting the idea that people are wanting us dead because they are bat-shit insane, a rediculous and over-simplified assertion pushed by Bush himself and "conservative talk" radio and tv, even many "liberals" such as Hillary.
His defense of course is that no, that is not the reason, the reason is that we invade, occupy, and or simply bomb and kill them
a lot, and it pisses them off, go figure. But then he gets treated like he is a martian, by selective crowds mind you.
Of course, not even his posistion is this simple, but without going over the entire history of these issues, it will have to suffice.
If people don't want Dr. Ron Paul as President, than they probably aren't too concerned about living under the U.S. Constitution, ya know, that Bush defined "goddamned piece of paper" that makes America what it is (or was), distinguishing it from all other countries before and since it.
So far as I have seen, Dr. Paul cannot be touched in terms of both impecible records on voting consistency, and both the fight against corruption and the lack of his own.
Obama, the only Democrat candidate I'm even curious about after Kucinich shot himself in the foot on the gun issue for me, shares with Dr. Paul an open stance against corruption. Unlike Dr. Paul, to my knowledge, Obama actually faces charges of corruption of his own.
http://www.politicalgateway.com/main/columns/read.html?col=688 But plain and simple, no one really shares Dr. Ron Paul's posistion.
He advocates real change by addressing the causes of the problems.
I don't hear anyone else calling for the abolition of the I.R.S. or the Federal Reserve. Two of the greatest sources of corruption as well as the abuse of the people through the usurpation and manipulation of our money, metaphorically referable to as our "lifeblood".
Nor do I hear many others calling for the ending of our involvement in such organizations as the WTO, NAFTA, GAT as well the the coming American Union. Entities that directly affect our sovereignty, as well as our money once again.
I think Dr. Paul's candidacy can be expressed as the opportunity to get "Back to Basics". Something that we desperately need.