Mainstream Media Begins To Report Paul Campaign

Best “Defending the Surge” Quote Of The Year (so far):

"There's been real changes. In Ramadi, that has been one of worst places in Iraq, it is now one of the less bad places in Iraq."

      David Frum, American Enterprise Institute Fellow, National Review Contributor on CNN's Reliable Sources, Sept. 16, 2007

Now for those of you who don’t know about such things, let me explain that the third quarter is traditionally slower than the second when it comes to campaign fundraising (do, after all, have to take pundits’ words on SOME things). Vacations are over, children are going back to school with all the attending expenses attached thereto, and for whatever other reasons I’m not privy to. Candidates tend to raise less money in the third quarter than the second, and for so-called “second tier” candidates who started out with practically nothing to begin with, this can often sound the death knell of their campaign if they have not generated support that can be shown with dollars donated.  Ron Paul’s campaign had raised about 2.5M dollars in the second quarter, and they wished to show growth of support. To that end, they erected a calendar on their campaign site that went from 0 to $500,000 with 7 days left and asked their online community to help raise that half million dollars in the last week to boost the campaign’s numbers. 48 hours later the goal had been met as people across the nation began pouring money into the campaign. Astonished, the campaign headquarters doubled the goal to $1M. Money still kept pouring in. By the end of the cycle, $1.2M had been raised in the last week!

 

In the first quarter, his campaign raised about $640,000. In the second quarter, that figure quadrupled to $2.5M. Many expected this to drop off considerably in the third quarter, but the third quarter found the fundraising figured over DOUBLE that of the second quarter, or up 114 percent over the previous quarter. Ron Paul’s 114 percent increase is in stark contrast to the decrease suffered by Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani, and John McCain. Romney’s fundraising was down 29 percent. Giuliani was down 40 percent. McCain was down 55 percent. Of course, in dollar amounts, he is still behind most of these folks, but it’s pretty obvious that momentum has been steady for the last six months.  This shocking turn of events by a candidate that has been marginalized at every turn by every major news media (our own paper here in San Diego has yet to even mention his name at all, under any circumstances whatsoever, although it didn’t escape my attention that Mike Thompson, a late arrival, managed to grab a dozen column inches on the front page along with a color photo and another dozen column inches on page 8.

 

In reporting one straw poll result, these hacks managed to mention every single candidate’s result that participated in the poll, starting with the ones that finished in ahead of him, and finishing with those who finished behind him, without ever once mentioning his name. Oh, well. Somehow word still seems to be getting out. But I digress. I hate the Union-Tribune.  

To get back to what I was saying, this shocking development along with the phenomenal and raucous attendance everywhere he goes, is beginning to find air time in mainstream media in spite of themselves. BY THE WAY.......while I’m on the subject......the average size of  the donation to Ron Paul’s campaign was $40. THAT, folks, is quite a few ordinary folks dipping into their movie money. So here are some links to mainstream media reactions to Ron Paul’s success:

Here’s ABC NEWS catching up with him at the airport to ask him his reaction to the news. Here’s a short blurb entitled “Paul’s Fundraising Shock” on CNN’s Political Ticker. Here’s one off the REUTER’S WIRE. And let’s not forget the ASSOCIATED PRESS. THE HILL had, among other things, this to say: “Fundraising in the third quarter slowed for most candidates other than Democratic front-runner Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.), but in terms of growth, nobody was as successful as Paul.”   ABC news reporting: Ron Paul Tops Fund Raising.

But there’s another point that I would like to make about fundraising that is invisible in these figures. I’m referring to the thousands of members of meetup groups across the nation who are taking it upon themselves to invest their time, money, and efforts in a concerted effort to make the nation take notice of the one man that they feel deserves to be President. Here’s just three of LITERALLY THOUSANDS of videos showing just what’s going on in this country just out of sight (for now) of the main stream cameras. In the first one, I’d like you to pay particular attention to what the newscaster says about the number of signs that are being erected across the nation. Enjoy.

 

Watch what happened when a group from the Memphis meetup group decided to paint the town Ron: Be sure to listen to what the newscaster has to say about how many signs are going up across the nation.

 

Here’s another one from Jacksonville that also made the news there:

One of my personal favorites, this is a meetup group that decided to take their campaign to the Michigan State-Notre Dame game. Not content to pass out flyers to the fans going into the game, they pooled their money and hired an airplane to fly over the stadium towing a Ron Paul banner! How cool is THAT? Total media exposure: A captive audience of 110,000. Cost to the campaign: $0.00. This kind of thing is going on everywhere. I have personally converted nine people in the last two days just during the course of my day to day travels just by talking to them and passing out a card or a flyer on the No Tax On Tips bill. One of the guys I converted was a demolition worker working on the houses on Mount Soledad that had been destroyed in the slide. When I asked him about Ron Paul he said: “No, I never heard of him. I wondered who he was when I saw signs plastered all over Pacific Beach with his name on them. Now I know.”

On the 6th, Ron Paul spoke at the War Memorial Auditorium in Nashville. This video is Christine Maddela catching up with Ron for an interview just before the rally.

And THIS is an interview with a Ron Paul supporter who drove 400 miles to hear his guy speak only to find out that with more than 1400 people in attendance, the auditorium was filled to capacity, and some hundreds (reportedly) got turned away. His philsophy?  “Well, I guess that’s a GOOD thing.”

October 16, Now here comes a nice 10-minute interview on Fox Business News. This is pretty awesome stuff, especially for Fox

Another news spot for Paul on Fox on October 16. Nice. Also, a plug for the weekend debates. It will be interesting to see if he gets any more time to speak at this weekend’s debates. Last time his percentage of air time was just over 5, and he won the post debate poll by 77%.

JUST in case you might still think that he has no prayer, I submit the press conference from this morning (October 17).  Now it is true that Gulliani has more bucks, but one thing that I keep remembering when I look at these numbers is that they don’t show all the thousands of people across the nation that are putting in their own time, efforts, and money to make this happen. I don’t see a lot of rabid Gulliani fans, that’s for sure. Maybe because HE’s rabid enough for all of them.

MAINSTREAM!! Ron Paul on NBC Nightly News 10-19-07--AWESOME!

NORAH O'DONNELL interviews Ron Paul on MSNBC Oct 24--MIND BOGGLING the costs of our military adventurism

October 26 interview with Dr. Paul on CBS.com right HERE. No interviewer can resist asking him whether he will support the actual nominee, but other than that, a pretty darn good interview.

November 6, 2007 and the big news is, of course, Ron Paul’s Money Bomb that exploded all over these United States yesterday and left absolutely EVERYBODY mouth agape in astonishment and wonder. I’ve got a whole bunch of stuff over on my Financial News Page here.

FINALLY...the good Doctor makes the front page of the November 11 N.Y. TIMES, talking about the Web taking him for a ride.

An interview on Face the Nation on Veterans Day

Donald Trump look-alike Matt Tower does his webcast on the Ron Paul Brigade

Great December 7 interview on ABC News on Freedom of choice. This was actually a full hour interview, but it’s being broken up into segments to be released over a period of time. Check back here and I’ll post the rest as I can get my cursor on them.

Action News 36 at Lexington with Ron Paul supporters at a Giuliani ralley and him talking about how they’re everywhere he goes.

Here’s an article on Washingtonpost.com wondering how all this Ron Paul business is going to play out in New Hampshire, and here’s a great article from  News Long Island and Ron Paul’s Empty Pot For Americans. Guess you’ll have to check it out to find out what THAT’s all about. I find it a good read. Well, I guess that’s why I stuck it here.

2-part Newsweek interview with Howard Finneman. Part 1 has to do with faith in public place, addressing Huckabee and Romney. I find it interesting that he never feels the need to bash the other candidates, no matter how outrageous their stances. Actually, when I wrote that I was thinking more about that crazy business with McCain than these two. Part 2 is about Israel and Palestine.

During the CNN/Youtube debate, (where Ron Paul received less than 3 minutes of air time out of the 90, and was not addressed until more than ½ hour in) John McCain went on the attack about the Iraq war, and Dr. Paul had to educate him a bit. Here’s a post-debate interview with CNN’s Wolf  Blitzer, who has probably the bet newsman name in the business. I mean WOLF BLITZER? The only better job for a guy with a name like that would be an NFL linebacker. Anyway, here’s the video:

In  Operation Live Free or die, just another grass-roots effort by folks not affiliated with the official campaign in any way, people are uprooting their lives in order to travel from other states as far away as Arizona, to New Hampshire to live hostel-style, and freeze their butts off going door to door to campaign for their guy. I’ve looked, but I haven’t noticed any other campaign getting this kind of support.

On the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, a man named Lawrence Lepard did an extraordinary thing. He took out a full-page ad in USA Today, the United States’ largest daily newspaper, at a personal cost to himself of some $86,000. That ad was composed on the Internet with the help of Ron Paul’s forums and was a plea to elect Ron Paul of the United States. Why on earth would somebody DO such a thing? Well, many people have been asking that question, and so today, December 10, Mr. Lepard took it upon himself to answer it in his own words.

Lawrence Lepard, the great individual who took out a full page ad in USA Today, has now taken out a full page ad in the NEW TIMES! You can download it here.