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Ron Paul: CALL TO ACTION
Presidential Candidate Ron Paul won a recent “Zogby Blind Poll”. What does this mean? When voters are polled, and told about the different positions held by top Republican candidates, without hearing any names, they overwhelmingly agree with those positions held by Ron Paul. When we include the names, Giuliani remains the front-runner.
So what?
Ron Paul is, by far, the preferred candidate of America. The problem is: they don’t know it…yet.
Our mission: NAME RECOGNITION. We need to help our fellow Americans begin to associate Ron Paul’s name with his incredibly popular political positions.
Let’s get real: we own the Internet. We all blog, email and create endless graphics and YouTube videos. This is great, and has helped to ensure, and retain, Ron Paul’s total domination of the Internet. However, as we approach the primaries, we need to begin focusing on the dinosaurs among us. America’s elderly may be anachronisms, however, they hold the same values displayed by Ron Paul- the values that made America GREAT once-upon-a-time. Most importantly: the elderly VOTE, and they vote in greater numbers than any other demographic.
The problem is: they don’t use YouTube. They don’t Google. They have no idea to whom all your base belong. However, they DO read newspapers, and this is where we need to shift our focus.
The next Ron Paul “money bomb” is scheduled for December 16, 2007, and if November 5th was any indication, this will be another huge success for the campaign. However, a recent email from the official campaign explained that they needed donations now, not in a month.
Let’s think this through. Why do they need donations? To advertise. Why do we want to wait for December 16? So we can show an impressive 1-day fundraising total, and generate some more free publicity. How can we resolve this?
Step 1: contact your local Ron Paul meetup group, and show them this post.
Step 2: pool your money, and collect the largest advertising budget you can afford (make sure to save some money for the tea-party money bomb).
Step 3: contact your local newspaper, and see how much advertising you can afford. The bigger the ad, the better. Color is better. Sunday edition is better. More circulation is better. Running the same ad a few days in a row is even better still. Once you have negotiated the advertising rate, you will know the size of your ad(s). Most newspapers offer a complete advertising spec sheet, complete with prices and sizes. A decent-size ad is not as expensive as you might think- check out the rates before claiming its “too expensive”.
Step 4: design an ad to run. Your ad should point out three basic things:
- Ron Paul’s name
- Ron Paul’s record & positions
- The December 16, 2007 “money bomb“, complete with url: http://teaparty07.com
Why bother?
1. This will bring more attention to the money bomb, and hopefully, result in an even greater result.
2. This will help to expose Ron Paul to all the “old foggies” who don’t use the Internet.
3. This will provide Ron Paul’s campaign with more pre-primary exposure; enough to tide them over until the next “money bomb“.
I will be following my own advice, and running an ad in Florida Today, which is the largest paper down here on the Space Coast of Florida. I will be contacting the local meetup group to see if anyone else would like to get involved with this. I will do my best to design a decent ad, once I see what size I can afford. Remember: advertising rates are extremely negotiable, so haggle, haggle, haggle. The more you buy, the better your rate.
If you are broke, but like the idea, please help me to spread the word. If anyone has experience designing ads, and would like to help-out with this project, please contact me. With your permission, I will post all ad designs online, so that others can use them elsewhere.
Running a newspaper ad is not as expensive as you might think, and more importantly, it exposes our message to millions of Americans still living in the Stone Age “real world” outside.
If we all claimed a local paper, and followed this game plan, we could create a wave of publicity greater than any mainstream candidate has ever seen.
Viva le rELOVution!
Your pal,
Zap
UPDATE: 11/21/07 @ 7:34 am - I couldn’t get to sleep last night, so I slapped together this promotional video instead. Please, help me spread the word. Let’s get organized, and start flooding our local papers with Paul-aganda.
Hungry for more?
[…] If you’re a libertarian, a constitutionalist, opposed to the war, opposed to the current system of taxation, tired of the government’s fiscal irresponsibility, or simply tired of the corruption of modern day politicians, you no longer have an excuse to feel disenfranchised and apathetic towards modern politics. Now is the time to get involved and do something. Ron Paul has by far the most momentum of any candidate and his polling numbers keep going up, and will continue to do so as long as we keep getting his name and his stances out there. Here are a list of things in order of priority you can do to help: 1) Register republican and vote in your state’s primary. Your vote actually counts a lot more in the primary since the voting pool is much smaller. This is the most important thing you can do, as this is what all the money being spent, all the publicity is intended to accomplish. Even if you manage to track down a “supervoter” (someone that has voted in the last 3 consecutive primaries) and convinced them for sure to vote for Paul, there’s still less than a 90% turnout for that group. EVERYONE needs to be doing this. Most states still allow for you to change your party, and in a lot of them you don’t even need to, since they’re open to everyone. http://www.ronpaulnation.com/register/ and/or GOP.com | Republican National Committee :: Home. Registering is really quite easy. 2) Increase his real world exposure. Posting a message like this on the internet is easy, but the internet is already quite saturated with Paul*. It can’t hurt, and I do encourage you to post something like this (shit, or exactly this, w/e) anywhere you think might be somehow sheltered from Ron’s message or lacking in frequent exposure, but the difficult task of expanding beyond the computer takes priority. A) Try to tell at least 1 person a week that has similar views to Paul and probably hasn’t heard about him as much as they should have about the good Dr. and what he stands for. If you know someone personally they’ll be much more open to what you have to say, and this is the best way the foundation of support will be expanded. This will increase his name recognition since they’ll surely mention him at least in passing occassionally if they support him, increase the odds of anyone that person knows of being educated about him, increase his cash (not everyone will donate but if you convert a few at least one of them will), and really just help expand the campaign beyond the internet. B) Join a meetup group. There almost certainly is one in your area, check Meetup: World’s largest community of local Meetups, clubs and groups!. It might seem weird showing up to talk to a bunch of strangers at first, but it is definitely worth it and helps the organizational and motivational aspects of things a ton. Your meetup probably has a list of supervoters in your area to really maximize the impact you can make in the primary (and if not I encourage you to get them to contact the official campaign about it), and this is where you can really make an impact in the primary results. 3) Donate. Money is the best way to reach all demographics but the Amish. The message doesn’t translate as well to 30 second TV spots, but he needs to really get his name out there to the soccer moms and nascar dads. A) www.teaparty07.com is coming up this December 16th. Try to get the word out to any Paul supporters that may not have heard about it, especially ones that don’t use the internet as much and would’ve been less likely to see. At this point anything less than $5,000,000 will be considered a failure now that the media has gotten wind of this. The actual money will be a little late for the first primaries, but If it’s very successful he’ll have the money to spend for Super Tuesday and the event itself will generate about as much instant free publicity as spending all of it will. We’re already pretty close if the non-pledged donors to pledged donors ratio is about the same as November 5th, which isn’t too unlikely considering the real world name recognition and media promotion has skyrocketed largely due to the success of the first event. Donors that have heard about it but never visited the website should be higher, and donors that haven’t pledged or have unpledged to avoid the spam the site sends should remain about the same (myself included, although if you don’t have an alternate source of Ron Paul news it is a good way to stay informed). If the pledges graph at ronpaulgraphs.com for Dec 16 keeps the same growth and the non-pledged donor ratio remains the same, we’re probably looking at $6-7 million on the 16th, which is good, but $10 million would be a much better looking number and get a ton of free attention. B) If for some reason there’s anyone here that really wants to spend on Paul’s campaign but doesn’t have the time to really follow what’s happening with it, pledge to www.ronpaulblimp.com. Frankly it’s not the most efficient use of cash, but if you’re at your $2300 donation limit and want to spend more, there’s no reason not to. If you’re under that I’d strongly suggest donating to the campaign rather than to this project. 4) Become more deeply involved with the grassroots campaign. Really much more has been done for this campaign by people just like you and me than the official staff. As support grows we can keep doing larger and larger things, and it’s exciting to be a part of. Most of the brainstorming/discussion goes on at Grassroots Support of Ron Paul’s 2008 Presidential Campaign, and I’d suggest visiting if you have any questions about Paul’s campaign issues or want to learn more about him, too. note: this has not been proof read at all, I’m running late because I spent too much time writing this as is. I had been meaning to write it for a while now, but I’ve just been so damn busy. Try to make it so I didn’t waste my time, huh =p oh and a general list of links for people that don’t know: grassroots HQ: Weyand Flooring - Professional Tile and Flooring Installation ronpaulnation.com official: ronpaul2008.com data: ronpaulgraphs.com oh and something I should’ve touched on but forgot and am now out of time: Zaphod for President - » Ron Paul: CALL TO ACTION * no real life campaigning has been harmed by this public service announcement […]