What an unfortunate time to begin a blog about my experiences volunteering with the Ron Paul campaign. I just received an e-mail the other day in which Dr. Paul essentially concedes defeat (with apologies for length-I know blogs are supposed to be for those with short attention spans):
…Let me tell you my thoughts. With Romney gone, the chances of a brokered convention are nearly zero. But that does not affect my determination to fight on, in every caucus and primary remaining, and at the convention for our ideas, with just as many delegates as I can get. But with so many primaries and caucuses now over, we do not now need so big a national campaign staff, and so I am making it leaner and tighter. Of course, I am committed to fighting for our ideas within the Republican party, so there will be no third party run. I do not denigrate third parties — just the opposite, and I have long worked to remove the ballot-access restrictions on them. But I am a Republican, and I will remain a Republican.
I also have another priority. I have constituents in my home district that I must serve. I cannot and will not let them down. And I have another battle I must face here as well. If I were to lose the primary for my congressional seat, all our opponents would react with glee, and pretend it was a rejection of our ideas. I cannot and will not let that happen.
In the presidential race and the congressional race, I need your support, as always. And I have plans to continue fighting for our ideas in politics and education that I will share with you when I can, for I will need you at my side. In the meantime, onward and upward! The neocons, the warmongers, the socialists, the advocates of inflation will be hearing much from you and me.
So he’s not quitting, but he kind of is…but not really. I absolutely, totally understand that there is an upcoming Republican primary in his congressional district, and that should certainly take first priority, but its certainly not very encouraging to those of us on the ground (or at least to me).
This comes on the heels of finding out through the media that Dr. Paul is only going to be focused on caucus states from now on, not primaries. This is certainly wise strategically, and confirms what I had suspected. He’s done very well in the caucus states, possibly winning Louisiana (the caucus version) and beating McCain repeatedly elsewhere in Alaska, Montana, Nevada, Wyoming etc, and came within a few votes in Iowa, Washington, Minnesota, North Dakota and most recently Maine. But again, this is not very encouraging to someone like myself, who worked extensively in Illinois and will possibly be going up to Wisconsin soon, my home state, both of which are primary states.
Here’s the NY Times’ take.
Oh well, I’ll soldier on. I’ll try to update regularly and recount some of my experiences. In the meantime here’s a video that sums up everything I love about Ron Paul, his supporters and this campaign. It’s from New Hampshire, when Dr. Paul was excluded from a so-called Republican debate on Fox so-called News. Sean Hannity emerges from a building and he finally gets a look at what real Americans look like, as they chase him down the street:
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