Comments:Ron Paul receives US$4 million in donations in 24 hours
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Thought I would take a moment this morning and reflect on what this Nov. 5 fundraiser might mean, and what better place than my favorite cooperative mind-sharing site. If this grassroots support had been pulled off by any other "anointed" candidate, the press would have been absolutely gushing. The real story is not that Ron Paul's supporters raised $4 million in $120 donations in one day, it's that they did it in the face of a near total media blackout on their candidate. I won't try to analyze the zeitgeist; but it seems obvious that ordinary people are urgently bypassing all the checks and balances of a media-driven political process. That means real politics, real ideas, substance, the actual threat of fundamental policy course-corrections due to popular demand. What a thrilling example to set for a world that may be doubting whether our American democratic experiment really works better than authoritarianism.
- This simply isn't accurate at multiple levels. First there hasn't been some "media blackout" of Ron Paul, he has been covered substantially. Furthermore, if there is any media problem it has nothing to do with Paul per se but rather reflects a media focus on a few highly popular candidates (and there's an important distinction between focusing and a "blackout"). Many qualified candidates in both parties are not getting much in the way of press coverage; to some extent that's inevitable when there are so many people in each field. As to the claim "ordinary people are urgently bypassing all the checks and balances of a media-driven political process" I'm not completely sure the phrase "checks and balances" [[w:Princess Bride|means what you think it means so a restatement may be useful. In any event, everyone knows that Paul's base is driven and well organized. While that by itself may be impressive it means that successes of the campaign are hard to correlate with actual popularity. JoshuaZ 13:13, 6 November 2007 (UTC)
Every day I find it harder and harder to believe that he only has single-digit numbers. Also, since when has following the Constitution become 'extreme'? Fephisto 17:27, 11 November 2007 (UTC)