Rep. Ron Paul from Texas is a libertarian and a Republican presidential candidate. He voted against the authorization for the Iraq war. Surprisingly, Ron Paul appears to be the most viewed candidate on YouTube, with his videos often generating several hundred thousand views.
I haven’t done the math, but, after a quick eyeballing of stats, I think Ron Paul’s average viewership per video makes him the No.1 Most Viewed candidate. Better than Rudy Giuliani, better than John McCain, better than Hillary Clinton, better than Barack Obama, better than John Edwards. (Sure, it’s possible a handful of people could inflate the number of views on YouTube, but I have no reason to believe that’s what’s happening here. He has the most subscribers, 17,564.)
OK, popular videos on the Internet don’t necessarily mean votes (think of Ned Lamont or Snakes on a Plane), but if this guy had the political machinery and money behind him, who knows what kind of noise he would make on the Republican side. Ron Paul got a lot of national attention after he went toe-to-toe with Rudy Giuliani, who took umbrage at Paul’s suggestion that U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East had played a part in making the terrorists hate America before 9/11. Giuliani characterized Paul’s comment as saying that American policy invited the terrorist attack on 9/11. Paul did not back down to Giuliani’s interruption, though, and reiterated his point about interventionist foreign policy abroad creating blowback against America. After the debate, Paul even gave Giuliani a reading assignment to read the 9/11 Commission Report, Blowback, Imperial Hubris, and other foreign policy books. The exchange is on the video above.
[Disclaimer: This is not an endorsement of any kind.]
June 22, 2007 at 6:50 pm |
It aint just YouTube!
The guy is an online phenomenon. I don’t really have a good explanation for it.
June 22, 2007 at 6:58 pm |
Here’s your explanation right here:
http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?t=4031
you don’t have to register to read …
But I encourage you to join us!
June 22, 2007 at 7:39 pm |
R0N PAUL,
A BANQUET OF ETHICS.
WHERE MEN OF PRINCIPLE CAN FEAST!
Others will starve.
June 22, 2007 at 8:35 pm |
The answer is simple – Ron Paul has the guts to say what most Americans think. No other candidate of either party has the slightest clue about what Americans think and what’s more – they don’t care. The other candidates only care about one thing- getting their hands on the reigns of power.
Ron Paul also only cares about one thing – Liberty. He is the only one who understands the Constitution and understands its relevence to today’s world. He is the only one who understands economic issues like inflation and the massive national debt. He is the only one who understands that we can repeal the income tax and not replace it with anything if we are willing to reexamine exactly what it is we want our government to do.
The problem Ron Paul faces is that for most voters he has near zero name recognition. People who rely on the Mainstream Media for their information may not have ever heard of him. But when he does get his message to people they respond with the highest level of enthusiasm I’ve seen in decades.
BTW – be watching out your window this July 4th. You just might start seeing Ron Paul signs and banners showing up everywhere.
June 23, 2007 at 3:30 pm |
Go Ron Paul! Go Ron Paul! God Bless Ron Paul! Ron Paul for President 2008!
Ron Paul in CNN debate on June 5, 2007!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwJKGfAWQUo
“In the time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act” GEORGE ORWELL
“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and he carries his banners openly. But the traitor moves among those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the galleys, heard in the very hall of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor—he speaks in the accents familiar to his victims, and wears their face and their garment, and he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation—he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of a city—he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to be feared.
— Cicero: orator, statesman, political theorist, lawyer and philosopher of Ancient Rome.