At Random

Some thoughts which occured to me in the night watches.

Why doesn't someone start a Huck 4 VP website? Everyone, except that voters, knows what he is really running for.

I'm quite disturbed by the failure of the Paul Campaign to take down both Governor Huckabee and Senator McCain. They have great targets painted all over them.
Hell, I managed to get in some subtle digs at Gov. Huckabee in my newspaper ads.

But there's no doubt that when Jesse Benton and Lew Moore wake up to the facts that:

1. Gov. Romney won't pick a religious nut as his running mate.

2. Sen. McCain will be defeated by Romney.

3. Gov. Huckabee is going to stay in the race, until he gets the VP slot.

It will be too late.
By the time they realize these salient facts and seek to remedy the situation, their amateurish efforts will almost certainly be meant with defeat.

Why is Jesse Benton still in the campaign?

This is a Cato hack who on the eve of the November Money Bomb, announced that Fred Thompson was his second choice for president.
This statement demonstrates not only weakness, but also patent stupidity.

There is a lot of hostility among the grassroots towards Mr. Benton and Lew Moore.
In my humble opinion, they ran a great campaign, right up until the going got tough in October.

Having lurked on dozens of conference calls and sat in on many meetings, I can safely venture to say the problems here outlined by Mr. Martin are not exaggerated. The only reason these issues are not more acutely felt is that the other campaign's grassroots activities are nearly invisible and lacklustre.

3. The Michigan situation has grown intolerable. You have put people in place there with next to no political experience AND THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT PRIMARY before Super Tuesday. You have a former Communist Party member and pornographer, a housewife who never voted before, and a very young former Bush campaign staffer handling this state now, and we are going to pay for it dearly on January 15th.

4. We were promised a campaign liaison for this message board (and others) MONTHS ago and one was even hired at one point, but there is no liaison and has not been one since somebody told Justine to stop posting here months ago. That is intolerable. There are pinned threads at the top of these boards FOR A REASON.

5. Iowa reports say that we had only one copy of a voter list of all RP supporters NOT BACKED UP ANYWHERE on a computer that was to be used by 250 college volunteers all day in Iowa for the day before the IA caucus and it was destroyed. WHAT KIND OF INCOMPETENCE ALLOWS FOR SUCH A SITUATION? Remedies must be instantly employed to insure: A> It was not intentionally destroyed, and B> That this can never happen again.

6. There are eminently qualified people who have offered expertise on many issues who are being snubbed continually--especially with regard to commercial production.

Warning was given that the situation in Iowa was not good, back in mid-November. There was little we could do to rectify the situation, however.

The campaign needs a decided shakeup. Bring in some old, Buchanan die-hards who are loyal and know how to do business. Delays should be not be tolerated.
We know how long it takes to create and submit radio and newspaper ads. The answer is not weeks and weeks and thousands of dollars for sub-par ads.


An email from an Atlanta RP meetup member in Iowa

Dear all:

I sincerely regret to inform you that today, the GOTV day, the biggest day of the whole Iowa campaign for the 300 students up here, was completely destroyed--and the circumstances point towards a deliberate sabotage.

We were told from the very beginning that all of our hard work would be nought if we didn't hit Iowa hard on January 3rd.

Our job? Call every Ron Paul supporter in the state (our numbers were bigger than Huckabee's), man as many precincts as possible, drive voters around, pick people up, get them back home, check voters off as they come in, &c., &c..

We were told to be ready to leave camp at 9 a.m.
...

We were ready.

But then at 2:30 in the morning, all the camp leaders received a phone call that the database the Des Moines office put together of all our phone banking and door-to-door canvassing was totally scrambled, jumbled, and even partly deleted. All the data was scattered and completely jumbled. Missing phone numbers. Missing precincts. A big box of random data. Thousands and thousands of voters.

The original file was supposed to have broken all voters down into counties and precincts. Didn't happen.

Each page was supposed to be correlated with precinct captains and chairmen. Didn't happen.

We were looking at a day of turning out over 17,000 voters. We maybe called 300.

We picked up nobody.

We manned no caucuses.
...

So what happened?

We were told we'd have the numbers by 11 a.m.

Then noon.

Then 2.

Then 3.

Then 4.

We finally got the numbers around 4:30. We couldn't even print them. A couple camp leader floored it to a Kinko's and printed them out. We got started calling at 5:15. Caucusers were supposed to show up at 6:30.

I have received word that one particular person is responsible for all this.

I've also heard word that this is not true. That's why I won't release the name.

In any case, the database the Des Moines office was supposed to be compiling was completely compromised, either technically or personally. The word used to describe the master file was "unusable."

I don't know what to make of this, but everyone here is super despondent.



The sagacious, hard-hitting Paul Mulshine writes,

Ron Paul made the mistake so many politicians make: He didn't take my advice.

Back in November, when I first encountered his campaign staff, I wrote a column warning the candidate that he needed to get rid of the bozos running his campaign and hire some professionals. I came to that conclusion after I showed up for a press conference prior to Paul's appearance in Philadelphia.

I was shocked to find there were only two other journalists in the room. His staff had scheduled a press conference but neglected to tell the press. Worse, when the three of us tried to interview the candidate, Snyder rudely cut us off. He told us it was more important for the candidate to shmooze with donors than to keep his commitment to the press.


A last word for the nay-sayers. I see the big picture, or rather I see the big picture that Jesse Benton, Lew Moore and Joe Seehusen visualize.

They're betting on a brokered convention.

This isn't a wise decision.

I pray that every Meetup Coordinator will do their duty and hold together what has been created so painstakingly over the last year.

Our own goal is to win in four counties; mine is to take my town and precinct for Ron Paul.