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Paul finally begins to translate online popularity to mainstream America

by Charles Coughlin

For the past month, there has been a gigantic difference between how Ron Paul did on online polls and how he has done on “official” polls by the likes of Zogby and Rasmussen. A few people charged that Ron Paul followers were somehow hacking online polls, but these charges have been dismissed by computer experts. A more likely explanation was that patriots, libertarians and true Conservatives spend a lot more time on the Internet (since their views are seldom presented and often ridiculed in the mainstream media). These folks are more likely to vote in Internet polls and they found Ron Paul to be the best candidate by far in the Republican Primary.

Ron Paul has been consistently placing first in online polls ever since the first debate, often far ahead of his nearest competitor. An MSNBC poll after the first debate had over 91,000 votes and Ron Paul won that poll by a double digit lead over Mitt Romney. An MSNBC poll after the third debate had Ron Paul getting 63 percent with over 17,000 votes. Paul ran away with the ABC online poll (which didn’t even include him at first since he was seen -by them- as a long shot). Several independent online polls have also seen Paul winning against his Republican opponents, and even against Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

Despite these fantastic online results, Ron Paul was getting only one percent in a variety of “official” polls by the likes of Zogby and Rasmussen. These polls typically call up one thousand randomly chosen Americans and then ask them a series of questions to see how likely it is that they will vote and who they would vote for. Ron Paul has only been in the public eye for about a month since he announced his candidacy. Very few Americans watched the first Republican Debate, and public interest has been increasing slowly as the second and third debates took place. In the first debate, Ron Paul had a heated exchange with Rudy Giuliani who demanded that Paul take back what he said about the root cause of the 911 attack. The not-too-bright Giuliani didn’t realize that Ron Paul had been quoting from a government document, which was based on a study to determine the cause of the 911 attack, and which found that our foreign policy had been making enemies for us in the Middle East.

Ron Paul was getting widespread attention for being the only Republican who wanted to pull US troops out of the Iraq War. Paul pointed out that we have already tried keeping a large US troop deployment in Iraq for the last four years and it wasn’t working. This was a huge breath of fresh air for Republicans, who were getting tired of the neocon fear-mongers, who demand that we stay in Iraq forever regardless of how many losses we suffer. Paul pointed out that withdrawing our troops would give the Iraqi government the strongest possible motivation to get its act together and to get its military and police to become effective (if possible). Paul expressed himself brilliantly in stark contrast to the other Republicans who had no real plan for getting out of Iraq.

During the last few weeks, George Bush and Congress tried to sneak through a horrendous Amnesty Bill. This attack on our national sovereignty alarmed many ordinary Americans and greatly helped Ron Paul, who advocates enforcing existing immigration law and actually deporting illegal aliens. Paul has also advocated getting rid of “birth-right” citizenship so that illegal aliens could no longer produce “anchor babies,” which has been a big issue for serious patriots for years. Ron Paul appears to be the only one, who gets it.

Ron Paul is the most popular candidate for interviews on talk radio and Cable news shows. Paul has a tremendous cross-over appeal to liberals and moderates who fear that they will get a pro-war Hillary as the Democrat candidate. After three debates and appearances on a variety of shows, including the Daily Show and the Bill Maher Show, Ron Paul is apparently gaining support among mainstream Americans as shown in the Utah Straw Poll.

Obviously, the Utah straw poll is not some online poll that the pundits can easily dismiss. These were real voters. The expected winner in Utah was obviously going to be the Mormon candidate Mitt Romney and he won the state by a landslide getting over 80 percent. But the most eye-opening result was the second place winner, who was Ron Paul at 5.4 percent. After languishing for the first month of the campaign at one percent in official polls, grouped in the bottom of the poll with the mostly unknown Republicans, Ron Paul has suddenly had a 500 percent surge in his support. Even more significant was the fact that Rudy Giuliani and John McCain were beaten by Ron Paul in this straw poll. All the talk about the “Big Three” candidates, Romney, Giuliani and McCain, now needs to be revised.

Opponents of Ron Paul will try to dismiss these results saying “He’s only got five percent.” Five percent however is pretty good especially after starting at one percent and after being in the race for only a month. It’s also a good finish when McCain and Giuliani only got four percent. Paul has relied entirely on media appearances to reach ordinary Americans. A few Internet pundits suggested that Ron Paul’s landslide victories in online polls might begin to translate into growing support among mainstream Americans as they get to know him. Ordinary Americans are beginning to learn about Ron Paul, and they see a real American patriot, not some empty suit, who throws around mindless neocon slogans.

There’s a lot of time remaining before the Republican primaries. If Ron Paul continues to gain support at the rate he has done in his first month, it won’t be Ron Paul dropping out of the race for lack of support; it will be McCain and Giuliani as their pro-war rhetoric falls on deaf ears.