1) McCain wins next few primaries.
2) Ron Paul wins TX (not required, but it’s my fantasy)
3) McCain reaches the magic number of delegates.
4) Huckabee drops out. He said he would if McCain cinches it.
5) Since it’s no longer possible for Ron Paul to win, the MSM ends the media blackout. His ideas get enough exposure that conservatives start wishing they had only known…
6) McCain (choose one: is arrested for corruption, has a melt-down, is caught inflagrente delecto with Larry Craig in the Senate cloakroon, has a heart attack, gets hit by a bus) 2 weeks prior to the convention.

My fantasy for Ron Paul winning the General election (this one is not just possible, but also plausible)

1) Obama wins the primary race, but Hillary gets the superdelegates and manages to get FL and MI delegates seated, and thus steals the nomination from Obama.

2) Ron Paul tags Hillary with the War (she voted for it, he didn’t)

3) Obama’s supporters, angry over Hillary’s back-room dealings, stay home, or vote Republican out of spite.

4) Ron Paul wins in a landslide.

(Nota Bene: the above is also how any Republican could win the general election.)

Told you that Romney would be the one to quit (if anyone would)

Huckabee is in it for certain. He will not quit early.

Ron Paul is taking a breather to campaign in TX. Primarily for his Congressional seat, and secondarily for the TX presidential primary. Ron Paul is going to convention.

The next person to get out out of this race will do so only for death (physical or political)

Romney’s suspension (instead of withdrawl) means that his delegates are bound to him for the first round of voting anyway (depending on state rules)

This will definitely be a brokered convention. McCain will not win an absolute majority of delegates.

Meanwhile, “I would not care even if Ron Paul wrote those newsletters himself, in longhand” is just about enough for me to discount anything you’ve written here. If you’re not concerned that your candidate may have racist tendencies (and Ron Paul has some nutty tendencies, but I don’t really think that’s among them) then I don’t trust your judgment.

Just like when you say “This campaign isn’t really about Ron Paul, it is about the people of the United States rising up and reclaiming their natural rights,” I have to wonder: If the campaign is not in some measure about the candidate, then what is it?

let me address the second question first, since it relates to the first.

This campaign is in large part, a measure of Ron Paul’s consistency and integrity. No other candidate would have activated such a large movement no matter what positions they advocated, because few people would trust them. One can call Dr. Paul all the names in the book, but the one thing you can’t call him is unprincipled or a mugwump. You may disagree with his principles, and many do, but he certainly has them, and they guide his actions 100%. (He doesn’t vote that way because a focus group told him to.)

That brings me to my second point, about not really caring about Dr. Paul’s personal beliefs. Even if he were a racist, and I agree with you that he isn’t, everyone who has given this any thought at all would understand that Ron Paul would not violate the rights (or stand idly by while a state governmnet violated the rights) of any minority, (racial or otherwise) because Ron Paul wouldn’t stand for, or be part of, violating anyone’s rights.

Internet outreach, futile? So you would advise that political campaigns eschew hiring a liaison to work with bloggers? No, definitely not. Not every successful campaign attracts energetic advocates like Howard Dean or Ron Paul (and I can’t help noting that these are/were NOT successful campaigns).

Yes, I would advise that. Bloggers are a notoriously independent bunch, and rarely are they led by nose. They may support a candidate because they believe some lie that candidate tells about his positons (I don’t mean that as any kind of barb against Thompson, he seems honest enough as far as that goes) but they are not likely to be led by what some paid “liason” says. Any candidate worth his salt could get exactly the same result by doing a press conference. It’s the message of the candidate that bloggers care about, not the fact that someone emailed them about it and tried to get them to write a story.

But, Hey! if you can get paid for doing what you love to do, then more power to you. I’m not trying to break your rice bowl here. It’s not something I would pay for but I have rather frugal tastes anyway.

And Paul’s campaign is real (whatever that means) he has to file all the same paperwork, and put up with all the inane questions and belittlement that every other candidate has to put up with. He is measured by the same yardstick (# of delegates in St. Paul) too. As long as we keep doing the work, Ron Paul will stay in the race.

I’ve said it before: this isn’t a sprint, it’s a marathon.

Of all the candidates, the one most likely to drop out is Romney, because he knows when he’s throwing good money after bad. He is the only one who will know when to pull the plug, and actually have the fortitude to do it.

McCain is just plain stubborn. There are only two ways he is getting out of this primary either he gets to the convention, or he dies trying (politically if not physically.) I doubt even a lack of funds will affect him, because he will have no problem going on political welfare.

Huckabee has faith and an ability to campaign with little or no money. The religious right is going to keep voting for him, and it will be enough IMHO to keep him going. Huckabee might drop out if the money totally dries up, but that is the only reason I can see that he would do so.

Ron Paul has said he will stay in it as long as we (the people) keep working and donating. Ron Paul isn’t stubborn like McCain, but we Paulunteers sure(!) are, so don’t look for the support or money to dry up anytime soon.

No way that Paul will run 3rd party. Too many states have sore loser laws which prevent party hopping. Also ballot requirements in a whole host of other states are also very onerous (Okla. for a prime example)

Ron Paul might register for write-in status if he does terribly on Feb 5th (gets absolutely no delegates, or no good results in any state – like comes in dead last in Alaska or someplace he expected to do well) but there is no way that he will run 3rd party or independent party.

I’ll bet you double or nothing on that. Think you can handle two plates of crow? ;)

Later.

PS I do check in here once in a while, so whenever you get to thinking about it, you can post your response.

Internet outreach, futile? So you would advise that political campaigns eschew hiring a liaison to work with bloggers? No, definitely not. Not every successful campaign attracts energetic advocates like Howard Dean or Ron Paul (and I can’t help noting that these are/were NOT successful campaigns).

Meanwhile, “I would not care even if Ron Paul wrote those newsletters himself, in longhand” is just about enough for me to discount anything you’ve written here. If you’re not concerned that your candidate may have racist tendencies (and Ron Paul has some nutty tendencies, but I don’t really think that’s among them) then I don’t trust your judgment.

Just like when you say “This campaign isn’t really about Ron Paul, it is about the people of the United States rising up and reclaiming their natural rights,” I have to wonder: If the campaign is not in some measure about the candidate, then what is it?

I know what it is: It’s not a real political campaign. It doesn’t have to do all the establishment hoop-jumping that a legitimate candidate like Fred Thompson had to do. It doesn’t even have to be measured against normal yardsticks, like Fred Thompson’s was.

If Ron Paul does launch an independent bid once the GOP nomination is decided, and I half-expect that he will, this will only confirm again that Ron Paul has been the absent-minded leader of a highly disorganized activist movement, not a real presidential candidate.

Congrats to Fred Thompson for beating Ron in SC. I guess the pundits predicting his early demise are wrong.

So let’s look at the score:

Fred beats Ron: (and has 8 delegates)
IA, SC, WY

Ron Beats Fred: (and has 6 delegates)
NV, MI, NH

Looks like this game is all tied up.

Are you ready to concede the point that “Internet Outreach” is a futile effort? All your time, all your effort, all the natural talents of your candidate, all the fawning adoration by the MSM, all the advantages and Ron Paul is still holding his own.

Ron Paul barely understands how to use the internet himself, and has not hired any expensive “Internet Consultants” the buzz is totally generated by the popularity of the message.

Again, Ron Paul is not reaching out, we the people are reaching in. This is one more reason why I would not care even if Ron Paul wrote those newsletters himself, in longhand. This campaign isn’t really about Ron Paul, it is about the people of the United States rising up and reclaiming their natural rights. And while certain individuals wanting their rights certainly are racists (as one would expect in any random sample of 10% of the population) they are very few in number, and the rest (nearly 100%) find such views not only incorrect, but repllent, I have no fear that those who are racists will be completely marginalized

The “kind words for David Duke” was a short 7-paragraph factual blurb about the results of his election, and why the people of LA voted the way they voted. There wasn’t a word of praise or condemnation in it. It was totally neutral. The author doesn’t praise David Duke’s platform, he says “To many voters, this seems like just plain good sense.”

The “calling Dr. King a plagerist and homosexual pedophile” was reporting what “establishment media sources” (Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe and the New York Times) and the FBI had said. But nothing was ever said about race! Even if the article was critical of Dr. King (and it was) that criticism wasn’t based upon his ethnicity or race, it was based upon the content of his character as reported by the FBI, and credible newspapers.

It may be true, it may be false – seems to me the biggest problem the author of these newsletters (not Ron Paul) has is a supposed Libertarian trusting the FBI (and the FBI under Hoover at that) to:
1) know the truth.
2) tell it.

Similarly, when you really read the L.A. riots article, you see the author trying to make a weak “cops are lazy” joke, and saying that the since cops are notoriously lazy (in Libertarian-speak) if they only arrested 70% of a given population, then 100% of them must be criminals – while missing the point that real laziness among police officers would have it that if the police arrest 70% of a given population, then probably only 35%-40% are really criminals.

Now there is some downright racist stuff in that article, no doubt, but it’s not the virulent hate-mongering that TNR tries to make it out to be. But what can you expect from TNR? They aren’t exactly known for their objectivity, or their accuracy. Remember this is where Stephen Glass was from, and TNR once published a cover story literally comparing Ross Perot to Adolf Hitler when he was running for president. Hysterically told half-truth hit-smears are their specialty.

On the bright side, since this is coming out now, it can’t be a last-minute surprise for Feb 5th.

Yeah, Dr. Paul does seem to be a little too willing to take people at face value. That disassociation thing can be tricky – get it wrong, and it looks like (or can be edited to make it look like) you are apologizing for actually sharing the tainted supporter’s view.

And then it never stops with the first group. Once you return Stormfront’s money, then someone is going to yell that you need to return JBS donations and bit by bit, they chip away at your base. I think Dr. Paul is very clever to frame it the way that he did, and point out that if Don Black thought he was supporting a candidate who held racist views, then Don Black is wasting his money, and giving the money back would only allow Don Black to spend the money on racist goals.

See you in MI, only because it’s next.