I’m suffering from mixed feelings about the New Hampshire primary results. There was only one candidate truly worth voting for on Tuesday, who truly exemplifies the Live Free or Die spirit. Then again, the Old Man of the Mountain is gone, and perhaps that Live Free or Die spirit fell with him.
So Ron Paul didn’t win the primary. With 289 of 301 precincts (96%) reporting, John McCain is the declared winner with 37% of the vote. Ron Paul picked up 8%, just a few hairs behind Rudy Giuliani. And Fred Thompson, who barely noticed New Hampshire at all during his campaign, was left eating dust.
I was feeling really bad about this until I got an email from Fred Thompson’s PR firm reminding me that in the GOP race there is still “no clear frontrunner,” according to Thompson’s communications director, Todd Harris. “The race is wide open.” Fred has moved on to South Carolina, and it seems, so has Ron Paul and the rest of the pack.
Though, back here in New Hampshire, I can’t help but think something’s gone terribly wrong with a state where people are supposed to generally want the government to leave them the hell alone.
I saw some of this on the other side of the aisle over the last week, when at Murphy’s Taproom, the hottest political hangout in New Hampshire, I had trouble finding a single Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama supporter who actually lived here in the state. Indeed, last night while I watched the late returns come in, three Hillary supporters walked in and ordered tequila shots. The barman asked them for ID, and sure enough, two of them presented California driver’s licenses, and the third a Massachusetts license.
One of them actually had the audacity to speak the words, “Live free or die, baby,” right next to me. It was all I could do to restrain myself from exploding. It’s people like these three who are destroying the Live Free or Die spirit, bit by bit, voter by voter, with the carefully orchestrated snow jobs they pull on voters every election cycle.
Have I ever mentioned how much I hate Massholes? Almost as much as I hate California’s nuts. It’s bad enough they screwed up their own states; why do they have to screw up mine?
The other candidate with a significant out of state supporter presence was Ron Paul. Though there are some significant differences: While Hillary and Obama paid their supporters to come here, Ron Paul’s supporters came here on their own dime and the dimes of other real supporters who couldn’t make it, and are sleeping in places like my kitchen and living room, while the other candidates’ paid staffers masquerading as grassroots supporters keep the local hotels doing a brisk business.
Along with those three, I met a man who lives here and told me he supports Ron Paul but didn’t vote for him because he felt the fix was in on the election and his vote wouldn’t have counted anyway. I halfheartedly tried to convince him otherwise, but since the polls had already closed, it was a bit late for it to do any good. Perhaps the fix is in: I read an anecdotal report from some people in the town of Sutton who claim to have voted for Ron Paul there, while the precinct results show no votes at all for Ron Paul.
Anyway, the race is far from over. With nearly $20 million raised in the fourth quarter, Ron Paul has enough cash to make a serious campaign through Super Tuesday and perhaps all the way up to the convention. But the campaign made at least two serious mistakes in New Hampshire and it will have to avoid repeating those mistakes in other states if Ron Paul is to win.
The first serious mistake is that Ron Paul didn’t spend nearly enough time in the state during the last three months. This is, after all, how John McCain rescued his floundering campaign and managed to win the primary: by sticking to an aggressive schedule of town hall meeting after town hall meeting until his throat was hoarse and he was barely able to speak. (I’ll never vote for him; his staff literally tried to take away my guns last weekend.) Ron Paul’s in much better physical shape than McCain, and could have done this as well. Indeed, we warned the campaign months ago about this, and they didn’t listen.
The second serious mistake is that the campaign has had a rocky relationship with the press. Any supporter will tell you the media hasn’t given Ron Paul enough coverage, though the fault for this doesn’t lie entirely with the media. “If Ron Paul is polling 8%, he should get 8% of the coverage,” reporter Declan McCullagh, who is covering the New Hampshire primaries for CNET News.com, told me Saturday night. “But he’s gotten about 3%.”
Part of the problem is the campaign hasn’t communicated well with the press. For instance, the campaign has frequently failed to put Ron Paul’s appearances in the Associated Press daybook, which newspaper editors and television producers (and not just with the AP) consult to figure out what to cover each day. And many campaign staffers have been ambivalent or even openly hostile toward the press. Last month I watched a Ron Paul staffer blow off a FOX News TV crew who wanted to cover Ron Paul activity here in New Hampshire. With media relations like that, is it any wonder that FOX doesn’t cover Ron Paul? If I were running the campaign, I would have fired that person on the spot. But I’m not running the campaign.
So those problems must be fixed going forward, as soon as possible, or the Ron Paul campaign has no chance.
On the bright side, we reached some 18,000 people here with the message of freedom. To them, and to those of you who live in the other 47 states yet to have a primary or caucus, I say this: The Ron Paul Revolution is only just beginning, and it will continue whether Ron Paul wins or not. It’s already begun to revitalize the Republican Party here in New Hampshire (more on this tomorrow) and led several people to consider runs for state and national offices in 2008 on similar platforms.
Before the campaign kicked into high gear, a group of freedom lovers living here in the Merrimack Valley were meeting at Murphy’s Taproom every Tuesday night at 6:30 to socialize with others who still take Live Free or Die seriously. Eventually and inevitably the Ron Paul Revolution took over those meetings. Even with the campaign leaving New Hampshire, we will still be meeting every Tuesday, for there’s still freedom to be fought for at the state level, and if you’re one of those 18,000 voters, pick a Tuesday and join us.
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32 Comments
Michael,
Excellent post. Thanks for sharing!
I enjoyed your article. It’s NH is a disappointment, but perseverance is key. The message is the important thing and this thing is a long way from over. Millions more will be woken up before november.
i read somewhere that 75% of the republicans voting said the last debate influenced their decision. that couldnt have been good for r. paul who wasnt allowed in that debate by fox.
you know everyone finds that so appalling it amazes me when r.paul supporters arent angry at fox for stealing away his time. fox has always been the lowest demoninator of journalism.
i cant blame the campaign worker for not wanting to talk to fox, fox truly sabotaged ron paul, since they dont like his message. I also cant blame the young r.paul supporters who chased hannity with curses and snowballs. i think that guy deserves worse then that for all the manipulations, lies and low class remarks he makes on his show which go way beyond just bad journalism.
besides that, a certain core of republicans are just plain brainwashed by the idea of the power of the establishment, which can do no wrong, and dissenting voices which oppose their warmongering is not welcome. if you believe the MSM, and get your information from there, you might think Giuliani or Huckabee or Mccain could be what we need.
not that the democrats arent without fault. they have shown little backbone in opposing bush, and seem to truly underestimate the need for individual liberty and the potential for government to do wrong to a very great extent.
i feel like america is kind of a mess, the media is so fake, and people are a bit brainwashed. someone like ron paul and the freedom movement is nonetheless a bit of hope among all that uglyness and falseness.
This is post is full of selective interpretation. You cannot paint Obama as being a corporative element as an antithesis to Paul solely because he has popular attention, a large financial base and an opposing viewpoint. The nascent Obama campaign was nearly as grassroots as Paul, look at the draft effort last year, look at the download numbers for his 2004 speech. Here in Grand Forks, North Dakota, college students divorced from party control hosted house parties over the expectation of his win. The campaign was able to operate with hotels because it had the financial means from supporters and it felt that it was a proper use of money. This doesn’t mean that Obama fans didn’t also drive down and work pro bono publico. Furthermore, this doesn’t mean that Obama is less legitimate.
And your state? You are an invader as well. Sure, their stay was much more ephemeral, but your end motivation was the same with the Free State Project, to shape the existing political climate of a state. Native residents probably thought the same of you as you did of the staffers.
Also, just for reference sake. Staying in NH is how McCain rescued his campaign twice. The first time is when he beat Bush in 2000, but that obviously didn’t help.
I wish Ron Paul luck, I for one am still mourning the withdrawal of Dodd, and I appreciate the introspective nature of your post instead of the digg tendency to blame others (and I think you are correct in your criticisms, and I think they have started to change media relations).
Oh yes, Obama has had a significant grassroots as well, and I don’t mean to diminish that. (On that note, I should say that whenever I saw Obama supporters and Ron Paul supporters mix, there were always one or two converts to Ron Paul, and many more who say they respected Ron Paul and would vote for him if they were Republicans.)
As for the Free State Project, it’s been my experience that about half the people who criticize it actually have no idea what it is, and the other half are people who understand exactly what it is and how it threatens their plans for tyranny. I can live with that.
It’s hard to believe, given the results yesterday, that the free-staters picked NH. I kept hearing how it’s a freedom-loving state, and that a huge number of residents there were already amenable to the FSP’s agenda. Needless to say, the data do not bear that out. New Hampshire is evidently as full of statists as every other state in the union, or it’s full of corrupt vote-counters. Either way, it doesn’t give me a warm fuzzy about moving there.
Hey, nobody said it was going to be easy.
I am still very hopeful that this will turn into a movement that will get as big as Ross Perots did(with more substance)
I still dont get how anyone over a 50 IQ would vote for anyone not fixing our debt and spending…Are they blind and deaf??
They say things have to get worse to get better sometimes..
How much worse can we make it and survive?
They say government dosent do anything well…Thats not true..They dumb down society better than anyone.
Ups or downs, wins or losses, our Moderator has stayed in the fight.
Michael, regardless of the final outcome, either of the election, or of the fight for our liberties in general, your faith and “stick-to-it-ness” puts the many arm-chair activisits to shame.
Success or failure, it is people like me that owe people like you a debt of gratitude that will likely never be repaid.
You’re right, Michael: the results were disappointing, but with RP’s campaign cash and grassroots support he will continue to spread the message of liberty in So. Carolina, Nevada, and elsewhere. That is the good news in this otherwise tragic election.
NOTE TO FREEDOM CANDIDATES: We may want to run as Democrats instead of Indies or Republicans. There were approximately 51,000 more votes cast for Democrat candidates yesterday than for Republican candidates. Since there are more Rs registered than Ds, this means that the huge “Independent” faction of voters leans to the left. This is an important datum and a caveat.
You must admit, though, that there isn’t a large difference between campaign workers and the FSP. The philosophy and motivation is the same, the time duration and commitment is the great difference. I do commend you for the dedication of moving. Out of curiosity, where did you live before the FSP?
Thanks for a good article. I am also disappointed but not totally discouraged, and I’ll keep spreading the message of freedom to whoever will listen. I do have one caution that I’d like to mention to all my fellow Ron Paul supporters: it’s very important that we stick to the way Ron himself would talk about the issues–that is, calmly and only stating facts, with a focus on what we’re specifically for instead of what we’re against. If anything can ruin his chances of being elected it’s being seen as having fanatical followers who would do and say anything to get what they want. Let’s leave that to the neocons. Our ideas ARE important, but we don’t want to become the very obsessive, scary, ranting, end-justifies-the-means crowd we’re against.
That depends, again, on whose campaign workers you’re talking about. Remember, Free State Project participants aren’t paid anything, either before or after they move; they come here because they believe strongly enough in the cause of freedom to make a stand for it in a place where the political system is still somewhat amenable to such a thing.
Incidentally, philosophy and motivation are why we had such success in bringing independent voters from Obama to Ron Paul. Not nearly enough of them, of course, but there are so many firsts in this presidential campaign that almost everybody is getting things wrong and seeing plenty of room for improvement. Who changes strategy fastest will probably be the winner.
And there are dark days ahead.
P.S. Prior to moving back here, I’ve lived all over the country, including western Massachusetts and southern Vermont, from where I did plenty of tax-free shopping in Keene. I’m no stranger to this area, unfortunately for those rare people who would like to dismiss me as being a flatlander. (Okay, I’ve never been to Maine, but who cares.)
My family lives in NH. I spent my High School years in the White Mountains during late 70s and thrived on the ‘Live Free or Die’ spirit. I joined the Air Force, saw the world and am stuck in NC right now. For a while though, I would visit NH every year. Yet, every time I did, there were more people moved in from Taxachusetts. Every year, the ‘Live Free’ spirit seemed to have died a little more as the mentality from transplants infected the local governments. I last visited a couple of years ago when I had to bury my parents. Every where I went in the state, things seemed to have changed for the worse. It was as though NH had become just like Massachusetts or Vermont with a hand on your wallet and a nose in your business. Then I heard that the Old Man In The Mountain fell away from his holding. I’m not surprised. I guess that, just like freedom, you can’t take anything for granite.
HELLO. I’M TYPING IN ALL CAPS BECAUSE THIS IS IMPORTANT…
I watched the voting unfold last night and when I finally went to bed late last night, politico had 0 votes for Ron Paul in Sutton County with 100% of the precincts reporting. Just now when I logged in, they had Ron Paul with 51 votes in Sutton County with 100% of the precincts reporting.
Please, someone explain WHAT THE HELL is going on with this election fraud?
Hi! Good article…while I was looking up info on the Sutton situation I found this:
“The head clerk of the New Hampshire town of Sutton has been forced to admit that Ron Paul received 31 votes yet when the final amount was transferred to a summary sheet and sent out to the media, the total was listed as zero. The fiasco throws the entire primary into doubt and could lead to a re-count. An entire family voted for Ron Paul in Sutton, yet when the voting map on the Politico website was posted, the total votes for Ron Paul were zero. Vote fraud expert Bev Harris contacted the head clerk in Sutton, Jennifer Call, who was forced to admit that the 31 votes Ron Paul received were completely omitted from the final report sheet, claiming “human error” was responsible for the mistake.”
Which came from here:
Is this just craziness or is there something to it?
Please everyone continue to spread the word about Ron Paul!!! We got to help rally for him!! He is very favored!! They better do the paper ballots!!! We will continue to show our support. Oregon is good for tax-free shopping!! Hopefully it is spelled correctly!!!
When Ron Paul loses, and you’re feeling like all hope is lost, you should check out agorism. For centuries classical liberals and libertarians have tried the political approach, trying to use government to provide liberty, but all these efforts have only led to abject failure, with government growing exponentially larger and more intrusive over time, and this is precisely because government by its very nature is anti-liberty and can never be made otherwise. Liberty can only exist in the free market – in that system of social organization based on voluntary action and the genuine unanimous consent of all concerned in any given transaction or relationship – and so it is only through the market that liberty can be achieved, in ours or any other lifetime. Political libertarianism has failed, and will continue to fail. When you’re tired of failure, and are ready to try something that might actually work, consider agorism.
Fox news gives you the headlines of stories that will run “later”. The only problem is that “later” is sometime within the next 8 hours!
It is such BS the rigged elections. They should not be allowed to cheat. Several voters had problems with machines making choices for them before the Florida mishap in the past election. Something needs to be done and FAST!!!
You vote, but FRB decides and not us.
Analysis of how the anti-Paul smear campaign propagated on the day of the New Hampshire primary, including its odd association with a Washington, DC subway line:
The Orange Line: anatomy of a smear campaign
Thought you guys might get a kick out of this…
Hang man knows the bs inside thier evil minds. They will face an evil demise!! They had a choice.
Vote fraud is an attempt to over through the legitimate government. Isn’t that treason?
They will have to face what they did!! We have seen corrupt cops murdered by higher ups such as the FBI. It really does happen. Those UFOs over Texas could be asteroids that could not fully develop due to Global warming which is good because, we don’t want to die like the dinosaurs did!!! That is not related to the subject but, is very important just like this sight.
Two cops were killed recently that were supposedly model citizens. They were working a second job as a security guard at an apartment complex. They still wore thier police uniforms. This is were they made a mistake. They were playing with fire because, they did not have back up. That may have lead to thier demise. That does not mean it was right but, was thier deception right?? Sure they were police officers but, they were off-duty at the second job. Security officers do not have the same powers as police. We need Ron Paul to clean up things like this. We can’t have people taking the law into thier own hands when they are off duty.
i see it this way, Michael:
for folks like us, fighting for freedom isn’t just our calling, it’s our very *identity*. it’s in our nature, and as a genetics buff no-one knows better than i that one can’t change one’s nature (not yet at least).
unfortunately our particular strain of human seems to be in the minority, but our identities are all we have in this world – all that’s really truly ours – and (imho) the only real sin in this life is the betrayal of one’s principles.
it doesn’t matter if our struggle is a Quixotic one: Patriots is what we are and defending Liberty is what we do. it’s not about winning, it’s about being able to look in the mirror and like what you see.
so i’ll make you a deal: you keep fighting the fight, and i’ll keep having your back. your passion inspires me and your writing nourishes and informs me. i love you and all our sistren and brethren in Liberty here on Homeland Stupidity.
that you keep being yourselves is good enough for me, and i think Ron would second that emotion.
love,
28
Please keep it up and save us from this bureacratic nightmare hell that America has becom. Why does are loss of freedom make our lives like that of a grade school child. It is time to take back what was ours!!!
Sorry for spelling errors but, it is 2 am and everybody is sloppy then ha ha
Live Free or Die doesn’t mean we don’t want the government to support things like education. I think you might interpreting that line in a way that only agrees with your opinion. That’s silly if you ask me. My vision of freedom includes the freedom of everyone to have an education despite wealth. And though that is only one example, it is things like that which I would die fighting for.
It is also fairly ironic that you believe that only some people should be allowed to say Live Free or Die. What kind of twisted logic loopholes do you need to come up with that notion? And of course the topping for all of this is that those people you saw could be college students and *might* even have lived in NH longer than you since you only moved here recently. The thing we people in NH hate the most is someone telling us how to think and feel. You’re entitled to your opinion, but it isn’t mine and that is something you’ll have to accept.
How ironic, Jon, that you post that comment from Japan rather than New Hampshire. Are you sure you aren’t making that up?
After all, people here know full well that having faraway bureaucrats in D.C. controlling your children’s education is a bad idea, not the good idea you suggest it is.
And if it’s true that you would die fighting to give every child a “free” education, then take your gun out and shoot me if you can.
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