Ron Paul speech after South Carolina Primary – Jan 21 2012

Does anyone know what that  “Florida Republican Voters” chart is showing?

liked all of it except for the last 7 seconds…..could have done with out that.

It looked like the Florida GOP voters stayed in the positive area the entire time, correct?

The guy to the rear-left looks like Frank Luntz’s good twin…lol.

Ron Paul and Mitt Romney “The Tortoise and the Hair”

After the recent last place finish of Congressman Ron Paul in South Carolina many of his supporters, me included, can’t help but feel a bit disheartened. But as I have to remind myself every couple of days and especially yesterday, this is still only the begining in a long battle to the nomination. While Romney, Gingrich, and Santorum are in a sprint for first place it seems as though they have forgotten that this is a marathon. They have been treating each state as if it were the winner take all of the nomination. While they repeatedly depleat all or most of their campaign funds trying to get any fractional edge they can in each state, Congressman Paul has been doing something very different. Instead of following suit and spending massive amounts of money focusing all time and attention one state at a time, Paul has decided to pace himself and start smaller cost effective efforts in states with primaries and caucuses yet to come. While this foward planning won’t help him much in Florida, a state like South Carolina where he is not expected to do well anyway, it will give him a huge jump start advantage when states like Maine, Nevada, and Minnesota come up in February. Another thing to take in consideration is that Gingrich and Santorum lack the funding and organization to keep a drawn out national campaign going. Only Paul and Romney have this sort of organization and the national funding to keep it going. They also are the only ones on the ballot in all 50 states. Newt Gingrich won’t even be able to vote for himself when it comes time for him to cast his vote in Virginia.   So as we get deeper into this primary season it will become clear that this is a two horse race. This is where Paul will start having the clear advantage. It will be pretty hard for the Texas Congressman to be ignored on the debate stage when its only him and somebody else on it. Gone too will be alienating effect of having the only differing opinion on a stage where everyone else is saying the same thing in a different vernacular. As soon as realistic debate takes place without this mob mentality it will be clear that Paul’s logic is actually the sane one and repeating the same policies over and over and expecting a different result is crazy. At this point would come the sea change this country deperately needs. The same one on one debates that would force the press to take Paul seriously would not only win Paul the nomination but would ultimately seat him in the office of the President. So far in the national polls, only Paul and Romney are in striking distance. Realistically, Romney would lose this head to head mash up with Obama. Granted all Republicans would go out in droves to get Obama out of office, but as we’ve seen in the past Obama’s campaign will go pick up people in busses, sign up homeless people, and basically do anything possible to win. Add to that the Independants and the Occupy movement who don’t want to see a “rich guy” get any more power and the libertarians, who after a Paul loss, would vote for Gary Johnson, and he’s toast. A Paul nomination on the other hand will get those Independants, many of the Occupiers, the Libertarians, and even some of the Anti-War Democrats without which will cement an Obama loss. Now I’ll be the first to admit that I’m biased on the subject, however, stranger longshots than this have happened before. When Reagan ran he too was told that he was too old, too far outside of the mainstream, too “unelectable”. He too didn’t win many of the early states. But as the Rolling Stones once sang “you can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometime, you get what you need” and so too can a pricipled and logical Tortoise beat the highly flawed but outwardly polished Hair.