Banned in the Blogosphere - Ron Paul Supporters Face Backlash

The following piece was produced by the Huffington Post's OffTheBus.

The blogosphere is alive...with the sound of disgruntled Ron Paul supporters.

For a while, the ardent Paul fans complained that the mainstream media were ignoring them. Now, though, the not-so-mainstream-media has joined in as well. On Monday, conservative blog Red State banned Ron Paul-related comments from users who have been registered on the site for less than six months. In a post explaining the new policy, Leon Wolf wrote:

"Now, I could offer a long-winded explanation for *why* this new policy is being instituted, but I'm guessing that most of you can probably guess. Unless you lack the self-awareness to understand just how annoying, time-consuming, and bandwidth-wasting responding to the same idiotic arguments from a bunch of liberals pretending to be Republicans can be."

Ouch.

The first thing to get out of the way is that this does not impinge on Paul supporters' freedom of speech. This is not the government censoring the site. Red State's owners have the right to run their site the way they want. It's their sandbox and they can decide who gets to come in and play. They think the Ron Paul supporters are annoying, obnoxious, and bratty and don't want them around anymore. Okay, that's what they want, they can do that (though considering that bloggers and commenters on Red State often refer to the Ron Paul group as moRons, it is questionable as to whether they should be judging anyone's maturity and fitness to contribute to a discussion).

The Wolf statement, though, shows that Red State's problem with Ron Paul and those who clamor for him is not just that they are pests--it's that they are, well, not Republican enough or conservative enough. They are considered "liberals pretending to be Republicans." The trouble with this belief, though, is that Ron Paul's conservative views are a lot more stringent than some of the other candidates: he's for small government, he's anti-tax, he's pro-life. But his stand against the war has gotten him labeled as a liberal--undoubtedly the most peculiar Democrat ever. So is being anti-war all it takes? Doesn't the rest of his classic conservative points count? The GOP, it would seem, has a bit of an identity crisis.

In the beginning, Ron Paul was regarded as kind of the slightly crazy (well, more than slightly, depending who you're asking) uncle crashing the party. But then he raised five million dollars in the third quarter. On Red State (of all places!) a poster notes that a recent Rasmussen poll shows Paul losing to Hillary Clinton, 38% to 48%. That's far worse than leading GOP contender Rudy Giuliani, who has a 48% to 41% lead over Clinton. However, it's better than Fred Thompson, who loses to Clinton 52% to 38%. Suddenly the crazy uncle can't just be shoved into the corner with a piece of cake; he's standing in the middle of the crowd, telling the same story over and over and louder and louder.

And it's the way they keep telling the same story over and over that's driving everyone else over the edge. Red State isn't the only blog that has been frequented, well, frequently, by the Ron Paul supporters. Editors of newspapers and other major blogs have received more than their share of emails demanding more Ron Paul coverage. On Sunday night, the Fox News crew was visibly annoyed after the debate when it became clear that Ron Paul was winning the viewer poll. To show what they thought of this result, they cut to one of their correspondents, who asked a roomful of supposedly ordinary voters if any of them thought Paul had won the debate. No one raised a hand.

Fox's point was that the vote had been skewed by a small group of Ron Paul supporters who ruined the poll by texting votes over and over, thus overwhelming those who voted once on their (of course) honest opinion of who won the debate. This fits the general perception of Ron Paul supporters as a bunch of Internet geeks who use their fierce powers of geekdom to overwhelm blogs, polls, and online votes.

It is true that much of Paul's support grew over the Internet. And this isn't campaign-generated support either--the actual official Ron Paul campaign site is pretty bare bones. All the other websites, commenting, and voting comes from people who have just devoted themselves to the Ron Paul cause.

The question, though, shouldn't be how news outlets and blogs can get rid of these irritants. Instead, shouldn't the GOP be asking why the other candidates don't have the same level of support? They can text in their votes as many times as the Ron Paul voters. They can spread out to comment on as many blogs as the Paul posters. They can start as many websites as the Ron Paul fans have. They can organize groups of supporters and bring them cheer at debates. No one is stopping them from trying to outwork or at least equal the Ron Paul group. But since they don't seem to be doing that, the only conclusion that can be taken from this little blog-banning spat is that voters just don't seem to care about their candidates as much as the Ron Paul supporters do. Indeed, the GOP is much more passionate about Hillary Clinton and getting rid of Ron Paul than the other candidates. At the Fox News debate, everyone talked about Hillary Clinton more than anything else; saying something negative about Clinton got a bigger response from the audience than any position or view aired by the other debaters. It's really nice to be united by a common opponent, wouldn't it be much more helpful for voters if the candidates did something that made them feel happy to be voting for a specific nominee rather than just happy to be voting against Hillary Clinton?

It's easy for the GOP to ignore Ron Paul and to act like his supporters are a bunch of cranks who should be put down. The real winner, though, will be the candidate whose supporters care enough to out-Ron Paul Ron Paul.

Comments welcome.

Comments

[MetalCanuck]

People should be thinking more about corruption than the other window dressing issues. Ron is NOT corruptible, he will at least work for you and he WILL NOT take away social programs.

[lafrance]

I watch Washington Journal on cspan and we are treated to the Paul supporters clogging up the phone lines and disrupting the topic everyday.
I don't mind them that much, myself, but, they go so overboard.
Ron Paul seems like a really nice and sincere person and someone with integrity.
However, his supporters, and everyone knows they are very passionate, can be pains. they do not know the meaning of limit.
They just try so hard they become annoying rather than informative. They are go so overboard that people after awhile just get sick of them.
I do hope the supporters take this for constructive criticism and not a bash.

[cognate]

Nothing can stop an idea whose time has come.

No more senseless wars. No more imperialism. No more torture. No more government spying on its own people. No more printing money. No more state corporatism.

Freedom has a lot of appeal.

Ron Paul will win and help us turn this country around.

[green13]

That's cute! Hahahahaha! It seems that sometimes Ron Paul supporters get a little excited in their defense of Ron Paul. There are some very knowlegeable and well spoken people in the military, in education and business who have spoken in some depth of Ron Paul, in support of his bid for office. The sites I usually post on are very tolerant of high emotions as long as it is kept decent and truthful. I say to Ron Paul supporters: Contact your state Republican organizations and brief them on Ron Pauls positions. His campaign is supported by a lot of baby boomers as well as college people. The Republican Party thinks it is going to lose anyway so it went in the closet. It needs to come out and join the rest of us! Thanks for the article, we all need to respect the wishes of anothers web page and blog. Still, Ron Paul 2008! (A simple statement can't be too offensive.)

[sgt.]

When is a democrat not a democrat?
When his name is Ron Paul.

Hillary is not a Democrat...She's a corprocrat.

Just like the other "top Tier" candidates.

Ron Paul is a leader of people, not business.

[uglicoyote]

Ron Paul claims to be a libertarian, but then allows for governmental interference in the decisions of a woman to control her own destiny. He votes to oppose gay union. He favors corporate power. Libertarians are allegedly all about individual rights and freedoms, especially their own right and freedom to persecute and control those with whom they disagree.
He's just another religio-fascist like the rest of the Republics. I've never had a serious discussion of political philosophy with a loonitarian party member which didn't eventually deteriorate down to him wanting to kill everyone with whom he disagrees. Of course, the same could be said about some of the extremists of the left.

[MrMurder]

Ron Paul wants to let state run entitlements, so the federal gov't shovels the money out and gets no oversight of its use or even how it could be tallied...

what a moron.

He's the best choice the sorry republicans have.

That says a lot about the other republican candidates, and at the same time, so very little about the GOP and any semblance of credibility it could claim to have.

[inline6]

I am an RP supporter, even though I don't agree with his take on all the issues. So I thank you for your contributions to this effect.

I am happy to see that the so-called "media blackout" is ending, and the candidate and his message are getting out there. I'm very encouraged about this.

Thing is, I want this war to be over. Now. And since Clinton, Obama, and Edwards can't even promise that we're even halfway through it at present - since none would say we'd be out by the end of their first term (in 2013) - I feel like RP is the only candidate who has a snowball's chance in hell of winning the WH and actually ending the war anytime soon.

He's consistently pro-life by being anti-war, anti-capital punishment, and anti-abortion. He's the only candidate that can say so consistently. I know that many on this site don't look upon being anti-abortion with approval, but he is CONSISTENT in his stance in that he applies it to the Death Penalty and war. But he also believes that abortion isn't within the scope of the Federal government's jurisdiction.

He's for a smaller FEDERAL government. But all that means is that he believes that more power should go to the individual states...where the voters are actually CLOSER to their government and can have a greater hand in affecting it.

He's for the free market system, but that means that he's PRO-COMPETITION, and encourages entry into markets, not monopolizations of them.

He advocates for the government getting out of America's bedrooms, and getting out of the business of marriage entirely.

He wants to repeal the Patriot Act (where's Congress been on this one? Maybe they want their party's Prez to have these powers), the 2006 Military Commissions Act, and close Gitmo.

He's honest. He's principled. He's consistent. You know what you're getting. We haven't had an option like him in a long time. He should be considered.

[sunshower7]

I agree - He's honest. He's principled. He's consistent. I admire and respect him.

But do you know what you're getting?

An end to Social Security - the only issue that prevents me and millions of others from voting for him.
Paul's plan to dismantle Social Security is more dangerous for Americans than Bush's evil neocon ploy of "Privitizing" it.

Most working Americans don't have financial portfolios or own much, or have pensions.

They work all their lives, and when they grow old or unable to work, they depend on those meager SS checks - which they have paid for all along - just to help them get by - but not really survive.

Paul should explain why and how his SS plan would work for Americans - so far, he really hasn't - that is what worries me.

[wassup]

Ron Paul is very interesting to listen to and watch. He has a set of beliefs and doesn't change his tone to play to the masses.

I think a lot of people are noticing that he is a mature, knowledgable candidate who isn't part of the circus the other candidates are part of.

He states what the laws are, what the constitution says about the issues and bases his decisions on that. I believe thats what all the candidates are supposed to do, but don't have the knowledge or the desire to uphold it.

I'm no R.P. supporter (or any supporter for that matter), but if he won, I would feel comfortable about it. To elect one of the other republican candidates after what the current administration has done to the country, our rights and our standing in the world probably wont happen. Even the most die hard republican at this point is pretty embarrassed.

One last thing, has anyone thought about the fact that there are 300 million US citizens, and if Hillary is elected, the whitehouse house will have been in the same 2 families for 4 presidencies? The odds are too far off for that to be coincedence. The powers that be are comfortable with either family doing their works.

[tenzing]

A fun way to get around this ban is to creatively imbed "RON PAUL" or "RON PAUL FOR PRESIDENT" within messages that seem innocuous. E. G. using "r" at the start of the first word in a sentence, "p"for the first letter in the next word; or writing a message of 7 sentences, the first word in the first sentence an "r", the second sentence beginning with an "o." Etc.

This may sound frivolous, but it could be great fun and a way to get the goat of, uh, the elephantine blog-meisters.

In addition, it might be helpful to get used to creating codes in case the Bush-Cheney cabal declares martial law, and more open communication is rendered cause for being gitmo'd.

[milo9]

I would be a wise thing for the top tier democratic candidates to co-opt R.P.'s reverance for the Constitution. It seems to be lacking in Hillary, Barack, Edwards.

[Bluesman48]

I've never known a republic who could text.

[AristophanesJones]

On the matter of polls, this country and our media really need to stop giving so much credit to text messaging polls and web site polls and straw polls and any polls with a self-selecting sample. In serious political science such polls are described as having "haphazard sampling" which is patently unscientific.

Sorry, if you want a reliable poll, you're gonna have to go with Gallup or another serious polling firm that uses probability sampling and is careful with the wording of questions.

[MsLiz]

I hope the Ron Paul supporters show up for the Iowa caucus and vote in the early primaries. It would be interesting to see him defeat Rudy and Romney.

[metropolitan]

the republicans can't get excited about their candidates, only about defeating hillary clinton.

sounds sort of similar to the democrats in 2004. no excitement for the candidate, all emotion was for defeating bush.

if i remember correctly that strategy was not enough to get the middle of the road voters to go to their side.

[Cooltruth]

I'm as excited about voting for Ron Paul as I have ever been about voting for any candidate EVER! No 'yellow dogging' for me if Ron Paul makes it to the general election ticket! I can be proud to vote for Ron Paul. He will be the most likely candidate to end the war, delete the IRS & numerous other great things for this country. Unfortunately, if the Republicans nominate Rudy Giuliani, there won't be much of a difference between him & Hillary other than Hillary looks better in a dress than Rudy does.