Ron Paul wins Dekalb County GOP Straw Poll!

IMissLiberty

Great news,

but what would also be really interesting to know is how many of the 20 votes were from the "regular" people there? How many did you win over? How many do you think left the event with the serious intention of checking out Dr. Paul?
All those straw poll wins will avail to little, if not nothing (since the MSM is obviously determined to just ignore them), if we can´t actually win over a significant part of the "usual suspects", the rank-and-file GOP that usually attend these events and influence public opinion in their community.

Looking at video footage from some of the events (I´m not talking about this specific event but in general, especially the smaller ones) I´m afraid that some of you put too much emphasis on just winning the polls by sheer "external" numbers and putting up a big and loud show of support for Dr. Paul (I know that´s just enthusiasm but to most of the other attendees, especially the older ones, it will come across as pretty rude) instead of politly engaging them in discussion and trying to convince them to vote for Dr. Paul. After all it´s their home turf and we are essentially just guests. And they don´t really conduct their straw polls to gauge the opinion of a bunch of strangers, some of them not even republicans, but that of their local longstanding members (from their point of view you could easily say that we simply started "spamming" their straw polls ;-) ).
If we had a fair press covering that wouldn´t be much of a problem since a decent reporting of the win would easily outweigh a score of potentially pissed off locals. But as it stands now we have the risk without much gain.

All this said, I think the current result is great, but a strong showing coming exclusively from the regular attendants, would be immensely more valuable.
How about the following strategy for comming events (not the big "public" ones like fairs, but the small events of local "clubs", "committees", etc.):
arrive early before the voting begins, don´t stay in a big Ron Paul group, each of you single out one or a small group of the other attendants, start a conversation, don´t start with offensively promoting Ron Paul, first just talk generally about standard conservative issues, taxes, small government, fiscal conservatism, border security, Ronald Reagan, identify where they stand on the issues then pick the ones that fit best and start introducing Ron Pauls views ( = don´t talk about your pet issues but the ones they want to hear about), hand them some info material and leave them for a while, return shortly before the voting starts and resume conversation, at the start of the voting if you have the impression that there is a good chance the person might be considering to vote for Dr. Paul say something like "Time to vote now!", when they then start to go to the voting area remain where you are, when they ask you if you aren´t going to vote tell them it´s their poll and you´re quite confident that they are perfectly capable of identifying the only truely conservative candidate for themselves.
I´m convinced that would make an enormously positive impression and tip many of the still wavering ones over.

This way we might not get as many wins with 4-to-1 or 3-to-1 margins but I don´t have a doubt that the massage is strong enough for narrow wins or strong second places. And unlike the current ones, those couldn´t be ignored and explained away by the party bigwigs.
(And if you were to see that there is no chance of having your target convinced you could still vote yourself)

Any opinions?