Feeling Down About Iowa? Read this!
by Paul Heller

I first heard about Ron Paul in 2001. I was just starting to get into free market capitalism and paleoconservative thinking. One of the first webzines that I happened upon by accident one day was LewRockwell.com. After reading a few of Ron Paul’s articles I was hooked . Not only was this guy of the same political persuasion as me, but he also held a position in Congress. Maybe my pro market capitalist libertarian views weren’t totally insane after all.

In 2004 I signed the Ron Paul for President petition. Old fans of Ron Paul will remember exactly what I’m talking about. Last year when I heard he was running for office, naturally I was over the moon, but as thrilled as I was, I was near positive he would poll around 1% and raise around $20,000. My candidates are never very popular, liberty is just a buzzword these days it seems. I can’t tell you what I felt after Ron Paul won the first Fox News debate phone poll, it was the exact opposite of what I felt when a girl told me she thought she might be pregnant one time. Although I didn’t get to feel that wonderful feeling of surprise and joy tonight that I felt after the Fox News poll, that doesn’t mean that I’m giving up.

As I scan over the posts on this forum, I’m seeing many who seem ready to throw in the towel. I actually read someone who said “If we can’t do better than 5th in IA, whats the point in even trying, its just a waste of money and time.” I don’t vote for a candidate based on whether he is gonna win or not (I leave that up to Giuliani and Clinton supporters to do), and before tonight neither did most of you, I vote for a candidate because that candidate represents what I believe in and I fight for what I believe in until the end even if I know from the beginning that I’m gonna lose. This is a matter of principle, if this country is moving in the wrong direction, they’re gonna have to drag me kicking and screaming. In the end, do you wanna be the guy saying “See, I told you so” or the guy who has to admit “Yeah, you were right”? If I give up now do I even have a right to complain about the state of our country when the next president is elected and we see “politics as usual”? We all know who the candidate of change is in this election, and it ain’t Obama or Hillary, all we gotta do now is let their supporters know that.

It’s been 15 years since Pat Buchanan ran, and 44 years since Barry Goldwater ran, 15 years since we have had a candidate running in a major party that we can unite behind and 44 years since one won the Republican caucus, and it probably won’t happen again in any of our lifetimes. Think about that for a minute, THIS WILL PROBABLY BE THE LAST ELECTION THAT YOU WILL EVER TRULY CARE ABOUT. This will probably be the only election you ever donate to, or hand out flyers for, or meet others and make friends with those who think like you do. Now is our shot at liberty, now is the time to fight because we’ll have the rest of our lives to be apathetic to politics, so lets fight now and complain later. When this is all over I don’t wanna look back at this time in my life and say “I wish I would have done more, I wish I wouldn’t have left it up to others to fight for what I believe in.” Up until now, that’s exactly what I’ve done. I’ve contributed a measly 50 dollars to Ron Paul’s campaign, talked to a few friends and convinced a handful of people, but tonight I’m gonna change that, as of tonight I’m actually gonna get off my ass and fight for what I believe in. If I don’t stand up for my principles then who will?

I truly believe that Ron Paul supporters are the brightest bunch in politics, and I know for a fact they’re the most passionate. We started off broke, no one new who Ron Paul was, the ones who did called him crazy and laughed at us. Since the end of the summer we’ve taken a candidate polling at 1% with no money, raised him 20 million dollars in 3 months, broken a world record in single day campaign contributions, and built more websites then all of the other candidates combined. We’ve even raised him money for a blimp for God’s sake, a friggin BLIMP!!! Have any campaign managers with their Harvard MBAs and posh business suits ever thought of that? We’ve won just about every straw poll, internet poll, and post debate phone survey, and we did all this with NO support from the MSM. Ron Paul and his campaign managers didn’t do this, WE DID!!! The next time any one of you think we can’t win this thing, I want you to think about that. We had NO HELP FROM ANYONE. We’re the most technologically advanced voters in this election and like I said, we’re definitely the smartest, all we gotta do now is figure out how to use it to get to our fellow citizens. Can you imagine if we were as organized as the mainstream politicians, we would have blown this thing out of the water already.

Never before in the history of politics has this ever been done, and Ivy league political science classes will probably be studying what we’re doing today for the next 20 years, so lets give them something to read about. At the beginning of the chapter entitled “The Internet, Politics, and the 21st Century” I want the first paragraph to be about what we have done and how we have done it. So lets not morn what happened in Iowa tonight, instead lets be thankful to God for leading us to the first step and for giving us a wakeup call saying “This is it, this is what you say you’ve been waiting for all of these years, you gonna get up and do something about it or you gonna just watch from the sidelines?” I want all of us tomorrow to examine 1 question, “Am I doing everything that I can do to win this election?” From now on don’t work like its Ron Paul running in this election, work like its YOU who’s running in this election.