Well, The Repubes are starting to show their fear. The demonizing of Ron Paul has begun in earnest.
In Gandhi's progression (Thanks FTL, that is where I learned this):
First they ignore you.
Then they laugh at you.
Then they fight you.
Then you win.
We are in that region between laugh and fight.
The Statists in the party are right to be scared. If RP doesn't get the nomination,
he's sure to go independent (IMHO). That will pull voters from both the
right and the left, and they (rightly?) suspect mostly from the
right, but who really knows.
I heard that the Iowa Republicans (caucus) are going to count the
votes at some secret location or some such BS, supposedly to
prevent the "occupy" movement from f-ing with them. I wonder
how many "Paul" votes are going to be "overlooked".
An associate of mine suggested that it is almost certain that RP (covert?) operatives will be in a position to monitor this, so we shall surly hear of it. Not that that is at all likely to change the declared result....
An some Politicos have already claimed that if RP wins in Iowa, it won't actually mean anything anyway....
And now that the "newsletter" thing has pretty much run it's course, I don't know of anything else remotely "legit" they can go after him on.
But what I fear most is him being painted as a "kook."
To a hell of a lot of people, who have never stepped out of the Statist mindset, his ideas are so far from the conventional / "business as usual" that it will be easy to terrify them.
On the plus side-
At this point even the most slack-jawed "likely voter" has to acknowledge that there must be something to RP in order to have garnered the huge, enthusiastic support of so many people, even after being systematically marginalized until now.
That strategy apparently is no longer working so now they are shifting to the scare tactics mode.
In my opinion, here are 2 big questions to be posed to "regular" people in casual conversation-
"Have you ever noticed, once you get past the great sounding sound bytes that make us all happy inside, that the results are pretty much the same no matter who gets elected? More Expensive, more Wasteful, more Dangerous / Intrusive government which is less and less responsive to "We the People"?
"Isn't it time to give REAL change a try?
These are what I plan to go with when I have conversations with "The Masses" over the issue.
Also, Since it almost always comes up, I suggest responding to the term "Isolationist" with the term "Non-Interventionist"
-Kelvin