Posted on 09/06/2008 8:49:47 PM PDT by gondramB
Not to mention Keyes and McKinney.
I'd love to see a six-way debate.
I’m still holdin’ out for a Kucinich/McKinney ticket. :-P
If he runs the media will have a field day, they will pump him up and talk about how McCain will lose votes. They will trumpet him as a conservative and a reformer, the Media would LOVE him to run so they can use him to help Obama.
Any 9/11 truthers on Free Republic can go to hell.
Just looking at the names on the ping list, I don’t think they are Truthers. Anti-truthers, perhaps.
Your dogs are precious.
That lady singer sure looks fat to me! LOL!
Thanks, I wasn’t sure myself, but 9/11 truthers can STILL go to hell! So it applies.
No argument about that!!
It’s reasonable to think that, as it is unquestionably true that the media vastly prefers Obama to McCain. However, there are other factors at work. They honestly do not like Ron Paul at all. If their preference for Obama was the only thing that mattered to them, why didn’t they try to pump up Ron Paul when he was in the race in order to weaken McCain? Ron Paul’s 16% showing in PA after the race was pretty much over would certainly have led to a multitude of stories along the lines of “Ron Paul’s showing in PA points to buyer’s remorse”. Those stories simply were not written. Ron Paul’s success (such as it was) was an interesting story and it was almost completely ignored.
To the media, Obama is the favored candidate, McCain is an acceptable candidate, Ron Paul is an unacceptable candidate.
The MSM does not want Ron Paul in debates talking about things like “why we should abolish the Federal Reserve.”
If these rumors of a Ron Paul Libertarian/Constitutionalist run do prove to be true, I do agree that, to the extent that the media covers him, he will be painted as a Conservative.
Depending on what issues Ron Paul wants to emphasize, he can take votes from either Obama or McCain.
I’d recommend that Ron Paul focus on - 1) take all overseas troops home now and 2) end the war on drugs, because I think those positions would appeal more to Obama supporters than McCain supporters.
Without any real 3rd party competition, McCain/Palin wins anywhere from 55-45 to 60-40.
With Ron Paul in the race, all bets are off. If Ron Paul focuses on things like “abolish the federal income tax entirely and slash federal spending”, McCain could have some real problems.
After McCain wrapped up the nomination, it really would have been in his best interest to be a bit nicer to Ron Paul (being fair in the treatment of delegates or letting Ron Paul speak at the convention).
McCain’s going out of his way to antagonize Ron Paul may have made Ron Paul dislike McCain enough to go 3rd party.
Don’t forget that Ron Paul got 20% in the strongest, most populated Republican areas of South Central PA (Harrisburg, Lancaster, York).
If Ron Paul runs, McCain shouldn’t consider Pennsylvania an essential part of his electoral strategy.
I think you answered your own question. They knew they couldn’t push Paul over the finish line in the primaries but they could help McCain, and did.
Now if Paul runs they will make a HUGE deal of it and hope he plays spoiler in a few key states.
How could he “always” endorse the GOP nominee when he ran as the Libertarian nominee in 88? Of course, he’ll run in November; he’s not a Republican.
He could always move to Austin, hire Alex Jones as a campaign manager and form the Truther Party.
Dunno about that. Ron Paul’s most interesting stories were in 2007. The 2 one day internet fundraising records were barely covered. The biggest rally by a Republican candidate of that cycle to that point (5,000 or so in Philly) was barely covered.
Honestly, the MSM really, really does not like Ron Paul.
The MSM really, really does not want Ron Paul on TV talking about abolishing the Federal Reserve.
If they wanted to damage McCain without truly helping Ron Paul, they would have done so after McCain wrapped up the nomination.
If they wanted to help Ron Paul, they could have done so in 2007.
When Ron Paul had more cash on hand than McCain in 2007, they could have mentioned that. Instead, they simply repeated over and over that he was crazy and couldn’t win.
Yes, it is true that the media prefers Obama to McCain. I would argue that it is even more true that the media does not want people thinking that it’s a normal, acceptable, reasonable political belief to desire to shut down the Federal Reserve Bank, to shut down the IRS, to get rid of the income tax, to really and truly shrink the size of the Federal Government.
There are those who think that Obama is the worst democrat in history because he promises to bring us marxist socialism extremely quickly. Most here (maybe everyone here) understand that Obama is definitely trying to bring us more socialism more quickly.
However, there are some here that think that the difference between Obama and McCain is that McCain just wants to go half as fast.
The media wants to go as fast as Obama, but wouldn’t be too upset if we went as slow as McCain, according to this theory.
Ron Paul wants to go in the opposite direction, as fast as possible. The media cannot have that.
Palin is the wild card here. Palin is the best political talent the Republicans have now and have had for quite some time (Reagan?).
However, she has not been “vetted”. By “vetted”, I mean, the media does not know where Palin stands on socialism, and other big questions. Is she a prettier version of Ron Paul?
The media doesn’t know. Or pretends not to know. Who does know? Does John McCain know?
Perhaps they do know. Palin said some pretty flattering things about Ron Paul a few months back (theres a video on mtv.com where she praises Paul and Romney). She is against Real ID.
I guess it boils down to how much of a threat they see Palin as. She certainly will be President if she gets to be VP.
The media is in panic mode regarding Palin. I think it’s more safe to say that the media would not hype Paul if it was a McCain/Ridge ticket or a McCain/Lieberman ticket.
The media would have to weigh the risks of a potential new Reagan, or a Republican version of the Kennedys (Track Palin in 2040) against the risk of a rise of a powerful new voting block that demands much much less governemnt.
>>Oh pshaw....
Paul’s following is the anti-war crowd.
He hurts Obama worse than McCain/Palin.<<
That’s an encouraging thought...
But would people who basically want no government and isolationism really support Obama?
>>Ron Paul to Make Major Announcement Next Week
Thanks for that ...but what celebrity would they get to speak for him?
>>LOL... the 1% of the electorate are forming the lunatic coalition.<<
That’s nationally. I don’t know the 3 of them’s combined effect in Florida, Ohio and other key states... maybe its less than 1%... but Florida and Ohio may be decided by 1%.
>>Oh for God’s sake, we’re trying to blow Obama out of the water and this nutcase wnats to screw things up.<<
The sad thing is Paul has some right ideas about smaller government and government respecting constitutional limits.
When Guiliani laughed at Paul for saying government should respect limits on governmental power - that was the moment I wanted Rudy defeated so soundly he would never run again.
And Paul is the only one I know of who said years ago that Kosovo is really about Georgia.
Its really a shame that he is both crazy and an egomaniac.
>>How would that work if somebody was the candidate for two parties? Do they just combine the vote totals from each party? Or do the parties merge and present one name on the ticket? Talk about the butterfly ballot being confusing, imagine those poor old folks when they see the same guy’s name twice on the same ballot, LOL!<<
I know in New York they have multiple candidates and often the same candidate on more than one party’s ticket. I don’t know how that works in the primaries but apparently its simple in the general where you just vote the guy (or girl).
Two things that don’t exist in the same universee:
Ron Paul, and major announcements.
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