competing currencies? How about competing campaigns?
Yes this is my first post. But I'm a long time reader.
Ron Paul likes a market based approach to things. I've even seen interviews where he said he has a 'laissez-faire' attitude towards the grass roots.
So I propose an official grassroots campaign headquarters.
With their own money donation ticker screen.
People can then vote on which youtube ads to fund, which radio ads, etc.
There are so many wonderful chip-ins that could be funded.
This way if people don't like the official campaign ads or strategy they can vote with their amero. er wait I guess it's still dollar.
The next money bomb would then be a grassroots money bomb. This would all have to be done extremely quickly to buy air time. Wouldn't it be funny to see some of those youtube commercials
on t.v.? Or just some better ads with Ron Paul speaking about the war and limited government. Concise clips that appeal to the majority.
Or we could sponsor bingos or whatever. 3 a.m. goofy infomercials.
The sky is the limit.
Let's let the market decide who to give money to.
The website could be called "RonPaulgrassroots.com"
or "RonPaulRebelAlliance.com" (I think I've seen a few too many of those Ron Paul youtube videos with that wookie.)
Also the website could serve as a clearinghouse for
story ideas to send to the press. (fantastic idea thought of by someone else on here.)
So Let's take over the campaign! One other benefit. This will give people an alternative to complaining about the official campaign.
If you think about it,
If you think about it, almost every campaign is a top down centralized campaign at the national level with headquarters in various key states that report to the central campaign hq. To me, this is like the argument for a strong central government.
The Ron Paul campaign to date has certainly been more of a grassroots decentralized effort at the local level. This is more like the form of government that Ron Paul wants, where states rights is key and government is run at the local level.
Of course, if we ran competing campaigns that would be rather free market of us. However, the problem with this is that our donations of time and money do not get counted in the official totals. It has always bothered me, especially early on that I donate money to the official campaign and end up spending more than that on Dr. Paul doing stuff outside of the official campaign.
Money is supposed to talk, and it was our lack of money to the central hq that kept us from being taken seriously by the media. At least that's the idea.
I think at this point, we should still give preference to donating to the official campaign, so that our donations get counted. I'm not knocking the blimp and think it was a great idea, but add that $400K to the official 4th Q total and we'd have been at 20 million. Of course, those that have already gave the max need the other creative outlets and have to donate outside the official campaign. So, in a sense there will always be a sort of competing campaign in that sense.
At this point, I think we will get a bit of free publicity when the FEC reports on the Q4 fundraising with news that Ron Paul outraised all of the Republicans. If money is the barometer for a campaign, then it will be even harder for the media to say he can't win. Then, we have the MLK moneybomb on the 21st, which should be another $5 million to the campaign. I think this will give us the momentum leading into super Tuesday, especially if we can get a strong showing in Nevada or Michigan.
But, we are running out of time and need to start winning states.
response to Webpence and Private Pyle
Hi Webpence
Actually I see value in a decentralized
grassroots too. It may be more difficult for other campaigns to thwart things that way.
However, I don't think having an official grassroots site would keep meet ups and others from still doing lots of wonderful projects on their own.
It's just seems like it would give a venue to all the
"I wish the campaign would run this particular youtube
ad talk". or "why is the campaign running these radio
ads?" This would give people a forum to actually
have more control over their money.
Plus it would just be sort of funny to have a competing
campaign. I can't imagine anything that would
embody the spirit of Dr. Paul more.
Private Pyle -
Glad you like the idea. I'm not sure about
the FEC part. But I think as long as individual contributions
were under a certain level it wouldn't be any different
then any other PAC. But this is why I posted. So
that all the brains of dailypaul can flesh out the idea.
p.s. I just saw another post entitled 'Is headquarters
communicating enough with grassroots'. See, we could circumvent much of this by becoming headquarters ourselves. maybe we could even have an ambassador who would take important topics and ideas
over to the official campaign. Or give Dr. Paul a daily Presidential
Briefing.
Excellent!
I actually think this is a great idea. I just wish I knew enough about building websites to get it going.
I love ronpaulgrassroots.com or ronpaulunited.com
The best idea I've heard about since the first money bomb. I wonder if we can get that guy who set that up to get this going?
The only problem I see with raising money for this is it most likely need to be some sort of 52whatever PAC or something to get past federal election law.