About Me

Name: Tonewah
Biography
Loading...

Create Your Own Blog Find Other Townhall Blogs

Comments

Ron Paul's Money

Posted by Tonewah on Tuesday, October 16, 2007 4:37:00 PM
According to the latest financial disclosures, released yesterday, after subtracting debts from cash on hand, Ron Paul has the 2nd highest dollar amount among Republican candidates for President with around $5.5 million.  Giuliani has the most, with $16.5, and Romney the least, being about $8 million in the red.  Of course, most of Romney's debts are to himself, so it's not like he has to pay it back.  Still, if you allow the others' borrowed money to count as fundraising, the Paul camp has raised the 4th highest total without borrowing a cent.

What makes this blog-worthy is the fact that Ron Paul is not a name on the lips of most Americans, yet he pulled in popular money last quarter.  Paul's  campaign has one of those fundraising thermometers on it's web site.  Currently, it shows about 1 million dollars raised from online donations in 2 weeks of the 4th quarter.  It depicts a goal of $12 Million for the 4th quarter.  That's almost more than any GOP candidate has raised in any quarter! 

The question must be asked: Will this reflect votes in the primaries?  If so, the front-runners should be getting a little nervous.  This guy seems to say almost the opposite of everything they say.  In the debates (I've watched all of them), I've noticed the candidates modify their answers after Ron Paul gets a big pop from the crowd.  If it doesn't result in votes for Paul, the other candidates will recognize that millions of dollars that could have promoted them, didn't, because they didn't take seriously an active segment of their possible future constituency.

National polls show Paul at around 4% among registered Republicans.  Among moderates, however, he polls in the double digits.  On the internet, he's practically been elected President.  At locally promoted straw polls, for whatever they're worth, he finishes in first on a regular basis, even beating Mitt Romney in a straw poll where Paul was absent, and Romney made an in-person appeal for their votes.  What does this mean?

I think it simply means the supporters of Ron Paul are more engaged in the election than the supporters of the other GOP candidates.  If they can get 20% more of the Republican American voting public turned on to his message of small government, low taxes, and a return to a pre-2001 GOP foreign policy, the election could get quite interesting.  If their efforts at least get his name into the ears of those 20%, there could be a big shift.  If not, it will still, at the very least, be a lesson in fundraising.

*Blogger's Note: After initial publication of this blog entry, OpenSecrets added a line for Fred Thompson.  Fred's $6 million places him in front of Paul in 2nd. 
Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (1) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

Red/Blue Flip-Flop

Posted by Tonewah on Wednesday, October 10, 2007 4:23:00 PM
I was looking at Presidential election results from the last 60 years on Wikipedia.  It was interesting to note how some states changed from Red to Blue from election to election.  I also noticed the colors changed for Republican and Democrat after 1980.  

Of particular interest, to me, was to see that my state, Alabama, has sent independent electors to the Electoral College quite a bit in the last 60 years... 4 out of 15 elections.  At one point, we had sent 4 out of 7!  Over half... that's pretty independent.  However, after Reagan, we've seemed content to vote for Republicans.  I wonder if the lack of religious conservatives in the 'upper tier' of the party will invoke another independent elector in '08, or if the GOP will figure out it can't win without the south, and nominate one of the 'lower tier' religious conservatives?
Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

Anti-War

Posted by Tonewah on Wednesday, October 10, 2007 4:15:00 PM

I am NOT a war protester.  If my country is at war, I support our Soldiers, Airmen, Marines and Sailors FULLY.  HOWEVER, I do NOT support politicians who would risk the lives of those brave men without a real threat to our country, or to 'save face'.  I despised Bill Clinton for it back in the '90s when he sent our military into the Balkans as a diversion for his nefarious affairs.  Why should I blindly support Bush, now?  I just won't do it.

First of all, back in 2003, when we first went into Iraq, our President, MY President, the one I voted for in 2000, George W. Bush, told us there were weapons of mass destruction and that Al Qaida was being trained to use them against us with the full knowledge of Saddam Hussein.  We were shown pictures of training camps, and weapons caches.  I believed him.  He wouldn't make that up just to start a war.  After all, he was the man who said we would no longer 'police the world'.  Iraq had horrendous weapons they intended to use against us. We had to stop them.

Meanwhile, a small doctor from Texas screamed in opposition from the House floor.  We laughed him to scorn, but he would not shut up.  He said there were no weapons of mass destruction, and Iraq was no threat to American national security.  He advised that we should keep our troops here to secure our borders to protect us from terrorism.  At least "declare war," Dr. Paul said. We didn't listen.  He proposed sensible, Constitutional ways of bringing terrorists to justice.  We disregarded them.

We invaded Iraq.  We hit the targets dead-on, because our military is the best trained, best equipped fighting force in the world.  But when the 'shock and awe' was over, we found no sizable amounts of WMD.  If there had ever been WMD, our intelligence failed in that we didn't find them before they were moved out of the country.  If WMD were never there to begin with, someone is a LIAR.  Either way, Saddam is overthrown... Mission Accomplished: Iraqi threat eliminated.  Right?
Suddenly, the emphasis shifted.  We were now 'liberators'.  That's why we stayed.  But 'insurgents' were determined to mess that all up for us, and Iraq.  Bush told us we needed to stay longer to clear out the 'insurgents'.  That's when the bodies started piling up.

Now, we're 'Nation Building'... more bodies.  What happened to 'Mission Accomplished'?


Nobody really likes war in the long run.  Seeing people dying will wear down the support of the most popular causes.  This I understand.  It is NOT, however, the reason I am opposed to staying in Iraq.  If this was a true war on terrorism, I'd be behind the 'war' 100%.  But it's not.  It's a time consuming, soldier killing, nation building exercise, something George W. Bush promised he would not do.*

"We broke it, we bought it." Gov. Mike Huckabee so quaintly put it.  We 'broke' Iraq, now we're supposed to 'buy' it, whatever that means.  Firstly, we didn't 'break' anything.  Saddam Hussein broke it.  If you want to get down to the nitty-gritty, the Iraqi people broke it by not rising up against a brutal dictator on their own.  They never asked for our help to overthrow him in the first place.  It's like when we went into Somalia to try to help the starving people that were being oppressed by greedy warlords.  What did they do?  They shot down our helicopters and killed our men, doing unspeakable things that anger me, even now.  I know there are good people in Iraq, but, for the most part, they don't DESERVE our help.  Let 'em make their own country. We did it.


* "If we don't stop extending our troops all around the world and nation building missions, then we're going to have a serious problem coming down the road, and I'm going to prevent that." "...we're going to have kind of a nation building core from America? Absolutely not. Our military is meant to fight and win war. That's what it's meant to do. And when it gets overextended, morale drops." "I don't think it's the role of the United States to walk into another country and say, 'We do it this way, and so should you.'" "The exit strategy needs to be well defined." “I don't think our troops ought to be used for what's called nation-building.”
- George W. Bush, October 2000, Presidential Debate

Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive
« Previous1234Next »