My Rant for the Ron Paul Freedom Fighters
I received an e-mail from Ron Paul the other day, just as every other supporter probably did. I personally was devastated...Not by the subject or contents of the e-mail, but by the reactions it elicited from some of the supporters. The e-mail was much like all the other e-mails I have received from Dr. Paul: positive, uplifting and (most important to me) realistic. Dr. Paul reiterated that this fight will continue on to the Republican National Convention, whether it will be a brokered convention or not. He also stresses the importance of continuing to fight for his congressional seat which is currently under attack by a neo-con from within the GOP. My response when I saw this e-mail was that he was doing what is necessary to keep the neo-cons that have taken over the Republican party from destroying all the important advances we have made over the last year or so. With all that being said, I feel I must rant a bit below...
People are stupid. This is an uphill battle that we always knew we would be fighting. Even those people that are intelligent often have a mental block when it comes to some of the ideas that have been put forth throughout this effort. I, for one, know of some pretty smart people that when I broached the subject of things like income tax reform, responded with the classic Pavlovian inspired conditioned comeback of "But how will we pave the roads you drive on?". Whenever you take on such a large scale iconoclastic endeavor as the Ron Paul Freedom Movement (if you will allow me to coin that phrase), there will be a great deal of resistance among the unmotivated, uninformed masses. People are willing to argue indefinitely about ideas and concepts for which they have no factual basis, or even minimal understanding of. Unfortunately I have found this to be just as true within the supporters of this movement. Some do so because of lack of understanding as I previously mentioned, others do so with the blatant disregard of the facts through the lenses of their rose colored glasses. Optimism is great, but like most things, best when doled out in moderation. A perfect example of this was when we made the local paper and word spread throughout online forums that we had won 17 WV delegates for Ron Paul (which hadn't actually happened).
I for one am not ready to give up the fight. I know for a fact that there are others who are still standing strong with me in this fight. I also know that many people, regardless of whose names are printed on their voting ballot this November, will be smiling and writing in big proud letters RON PAUL for their choice as president. The reason I am so confident in continuing this fight is because of the person who initially inspired me to start fighting in the first place: Ron Paul. Whenever I feel like I am wasting my time or I get depressed and want to give up, I think of how hard Dr. Paul has been fighting virtually alone in congress for so long. His strength inspires me to keep up the fight. Seeing the voting results from Saturday night, it seems we should be more excited than ever about what we already have and what we still can accomplish. I hope that everyone I have met thus far will also continue fighting this battle in one form or another. For now, I think the most important thing is to continue informing potential voters for Ron Paul and letting them know that the television isn't giving them all their options. I also think we need to get more involved locally and anyone that has the inspiration or ability should run for a local office and we can take the system over from the inside. When we went to the WV GOP convention, we came away with delegates for Ron Paul by beating the establishment candidate. Almost everyone who was part of an executive committee or holding office in WV was an automatic delegate who was voting for Romney. And as much as I didn't like voting for Mike "Hucklebee" in the second round, I loved watching all the GOP party hacks squirm as they saw the power of the Ron Paul voters at work. Remember this when it comes time to vote for your local officials this November as well.
The reality of the situation is this: The GOP base is NOT excited about Johnny McWar and that leaves us a small window of opportunity. Combine that with the constant repetition on television that McWar has already secured the nomination and that could mean lower voter turnout and unhappy republicans looking for a protest vote. Both of these things work in our favor and we need to begin taking advantage of this immediately! Let's do everything in our power to get out the vote for Ron Paul in the remaining primaries! The name of the game now is getting delegates. This is the one way we can continue to work towards a brokered convention. Even Huckabee wins at this point are good for our cause. We need to get the republicans to go out and vote against McCain. And when they look for a name to choose other than McCain, we need that to be the one true conservative left in the race: Ron Paul.



