Secular Café: Ron Paul's Electorally-Irrelevant Support

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Ron Paul's Electorally-Irrelevant Support Apr 5th 2012, 15:06 Strength and Weakness in Ron Paul's Campaign - NYTimes.com Quote: Even Mr. Paul cannot entirely explain why the passion he generated, especially among young people and those his campaign identified as motivated supporters, did not translate into more votes. He's gotten something like 50 delegates so far, less than 1/20 needed to win, but Quote: Whether he will use those delegates to help Mr. Romney is an open question. Mr. Paul demurs when pressed on whether he would help Mr. Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, should he fail to clinch the nomination on the first try, saying, "I haven't thought much about that." While he has a personal affinity for Mr. Romney (though he can be scathing about his friend's politics), Mr. Paul has tart words for Mr. Santorum and Mr. Gingrich, even scoffing at the idea the two men could ever agree to cooperate to try to defeat Mr. Romney. "I think their egos are too big," Mr. Paul said. "They'll fight over who's going to be top dog." There is no There There -- Ron Paul's Loud, Thin Base : denialism blog Quote: Ron Paul has fans, in the traditional sense of the word--fanatics. They foam over this small and strange man, whose career in Congress has largely been ineffectual. Thousands go to his rallies, but as Oppel observes, "A Feb. 27 event at Michigan State University drew 4,000 people. But at polling places the next day, Mr. Paul finished third -- with 3,128 votes -- in Ingham County, where the campus is. Mr. Romney got more than three times as many votes." Paul's supporters attribute this to a failure in conveying the urgency to vote. The entry's author then commented on how Ron Paul groupies remind him of Lyndon Larouche ones from his Berkeley years. They'd start out with some sales pitch with broad appeal, like "Impeach Cheney", then move into lots of kookiness. Ron Paul & Clicktivism : denialism blog Quote: Perhaps the answer is clicktivism. Paul's fervent base is all over the internets, commenting on this blog for instance, but clicks and comments do not create voter turnout. Nor are they part of anything resembling a dialogue. Libertarian movements are something akin to PR firms, all transmit and no receive. Able to create the appearance of broad appeal, but with a actual following that is quite shallow. I think that that's correct, and that that shows how Internet-based movements can have problems. The comments are also worth reading. Some of the denialist-blog commenters claimed that RP's low vote numbers were due to massive vote-counting fraud. However, they did not offer any direct evidence of this massive fraud or propose any efforts to uncover it, like have independent election observers. The United Nations might be a good place to turn for expertise in monitoring elections, but I doubt that many RP groupies would like that.

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