Claims of $5 million turn out to be lies
Right-wing Republican and Presidential non-contender Ron Paul,
the John Bircher with a long history of racism and anti-Semitism,
claims he has more money in the bank than John McCain even though his
second-quarter fundraising efforts fell far short of his campaign's
lofty predictions.
Paul tells ABC news,
in an interview taped for airing Sunday, that he raised $2.4 million in
the second quarter of the year and has that exact amount in the bank in
cash on hand, exceeding the $2 million claimed by McCain.
If true, the $2.4 million falls way short of claims of $5 million
made by the campaign and its supporters in recent weeks and is way less
than the $11.5 million that McCain actually raised in the second
quarter.
And while $2.4 million may sound like a lot to political amateurs
and bottom-rung candidates, it is a mere drop in the bucket in a
presidential campaign season where Democratic candidate Barack Obama
pulled in $35 million and three top Republican candidates raised $42
million during the same time frame.
"It may seem like a lot to the fringe elements that flock to Ron Paul but it doesn't amount to a hill of beans in the real political world," says one longtime GOP strategist. "The bottom line is
Ron Paul doesn't stand a chance of winning the GOP nomination."
Indeed, Paul remains mired at the very bottom of GOP candidates in real public opinion polls
, although the campaign has spammed online polls to try and claim a non-existent grassroots swell of support.
The latest Fox/News Opinion Dynamics polls shows Paul
with less than one percent among likely GOP voters, a drop from a month
ago when he polled 2 percent. The latest CNN poll shows Paul at one percent, trailing other bottom-tier candidates like Sam Brownback, Chuck Hagel, Duncan Hunter and Tom Tancredo.
Paul's
supporters continue to flood online polls, bulletin boards and forums
with claims of grassroots support that don't pan out when checked.
Inflated estimates of crowds at Ron Paul events mirror the bloated claims of $5 million fundraising estimates that simply aren't' true.
Political strategists say Paul's
obscurity is his greatest asset at this point because any real scrutiny
by the media and public would expose his long affiliation with fringe
organizations like The John Birch Society and his history of ethnic
slurs against Blacks, Mexicans and Jews.
"If you have ever been robbed by a black teen-aged male, you know how unbelievably fleet-footed they can be," Paul wrote in his newsletter in 1992 and
reported by The Houston Chronicle in 1996.
The Chronicle also reported that Paul
said "opinion polls consistently show that only about 5 percent of
blacks have sensible political opinions," and also said that while "we
are constantly told that it is evil to be afraid of black men, it is
hardly irrational. Black men commit murders, rapes, robberies, muggings
and burglaries all out of proportion to their numbers."
Some Paul campaign supporters issued false reports claiming the comments were written not by
Paul but by a staff member who was later fired but Paul told the Chronicle that the words were his and claimed his observations were backed by "current events and statistical reports of the time."
Former campaign workers for Paul
say they left the campaign after discovering that it was dominated by
white supremacists, anti-Semites, conspiracy theorists and other fringe
elements.
Jennifer Gordon, who worked on one of Paul's
Congressional campaigns while in college, said she quit after one day
because "I got tired of hearing the 'N-word' tossed around." Gordon,
who has since married and left Texas, said she is "appalled that anyone
would feel this man deserves to be President."
Paul's
self-professed populist appeal brings back memories of another
self-styled populist who garnered attention, news and even some votes
in 1972: racist Alabama Gov. George Wallace. Wallace actually won the
Florida Democratic primary and appeared to be a spoiler in the primary
race until a would-be assassin's bullet left his paralyzed.
Like Wallace, Paul's
"grassroots," strategists say, come from the fringe elements of
politics, the demographics that other candidates don't want and the
kind that can't deliver the votes for any serious run at national
office. Appealing to racists, bigots and the uninformed may work in Paul's Texas Congressional district but it won't play nationwide.
July 7, 2007 - 7:37am.
We weren't surprised at the juvenile attempts by the Ron Paul
campaign to spam our site after we reported on their candidate's latest
failures -- a laughable attempt to spin disappointing fundraising
numbers.
We learned long ago to cut off comments on stories that deal with the antics of the sham campaign of pseudo-populist Paul. They deploy a legion of teenagers to flood sites with propaganda and inflated claims of their candidate's so-called record.
Thwarted in that attempt, they turned to the usual collection of
obscene and threatening emails. We boosted the spam filters to cut them
out. So they tried flooding our office voice mail with obscene calls
and threats, attempting to hide their identity by masking their caller
IDs.
So we turned the matter over to our phone company's security department who put a trap on the line and called in the FBI because making a threat by phone across state lines is a federal crime. Memo to the
Paul propaganda posse: That knock on the door is not Dominoes Pizza.
AND:
http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:4jsMhmDznZwJ:www.capitolhillblue.com/cont/node/2838+capitol+hill+blue+ron+paul&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2&gl=us
text:
July 4, 2007 - 11:22am.
Fundraising projections more hype than truth
After three months of unmitigated and unabashed hype surrounding the bottom-tier campaign of Presidential wannabe Ron
Paul, reality is about to set in.
Carefully controlled campaign leaks had claimed the campaign was
raking in massive donations after the initial round of Republican
candidate debates. Estimates by the Paul
propagandists claimed second quarter fundraising would reach $5 million
which, while still small when compared to the massive money machines of
the first-tier contenders -- would have elevated Paul into the second tier.
But the propaganda posse has tempered its rhetoric and new estimates
say the campaign will report second quarter fundraising of, maybe, $1.5
- $ million, a figure that will keep the John Bircher from Texas firmly
mired at the bottom of a long list of Presidential improbables.
Free Market News Network, a fervent Paul
supporter that had trumpeted the claims of $5 million, is trying its
level-best to put a positive spin on the lowered expectations while
trying to wipe the egg off its face for believing the earlier hype from
the Paul campaign.
Reports FHMN:
Campaign observers had estimated that, at the low end,
donations were "definitely" in the area of $3 million – and could run
as high as $5 million - while cautioning, however, "that such amounts
are somewhat speculative." Recent information from campaign observers
indicate that campaign donation receivables could total up to $3
million or more as soon as next quarter, given pledges, current
donation trends and the continuing enthusiasm for Ron Paul's free-market message.
These sources believe that current fund-raising totals at least $1.5
million - riding a groundswell of support generated by his small
government, anti-foreign-war message. Cash-on-hand could reach $750,000
or more.
Blogger Doug Mataconis puts it in perspective:
FMNN tries to spin this latest rumor in the best way possible for Paul,
but the reality is that, if the $1.5 million number is closer to
reality than the $ 5 million reported last month, it wouldn't even put Paul
in the second tier of candidates when it comes to fundraising. And,
well, quite honestly, you cannot run a modern Presidential campaign on
$ 1.5 million.
True enough but $1.5 million or even $3 million will allow the
campaign to continue to con more of the gullible masses into falling
for the sham that is the doomed campaign of Ron Paul.
(EDITORS NOTE: Because of the documented practice of Ron Paul's
campaign of spamming web sites to try and artificially inflate their
already-discredited claims of widespread support and our own experience
with the underhanded and unethical tactics of his supporters, we have
suspended comments on this story. This web site does not serve as a
shill for any political campaign and we will not allow it to be used by
Paul's
small but loud legion of unethical supporters to spread misinformation
or perpetuate their candidate's record of deception and hate. As we do
with all elected officials of candidates for public office, we will
continue to report misdeeds of the Paul's campaign and expose it for the sham that it is.)
