Rep. Ron Paul may be ready to spend some of his hard earned campaign cash on a media blitz — but one of his new spots, which features regular folk in New Hampshire talking about their support for the libertarian Republican presidential candidate — seems to be less than popular with Paul supporters.
The campy advertisement was lambasted by Slate.com, which used voiceovers to share YouTube.com comments from loyal Paul supporters who thought the spot was an embarrassment.
“I’ve been supporting a moron all this time,” wrote one YouTuber.
Campaign spokesman Jesse Benton said the campaign will continue to run the ad despite criticism from die-hard Paul backers.
“I think they didn’t realize that (the ad) isn’t designed to speak to them. It is for people who are still getting to know Dr. Paul,” Benton said. “As people start to roll it around in their head a little more… they are saying ‘it makes sense, it’s supposed to be for people who are considering Dr. Paul.”
Campaign and Elections magazine reports that Paul plans to spend $1.1 million on the television advertisements in the key primary state. Paul officially filed to enter that race last week.
“We didn’t raise all that money last quarter for nothing,” Kate Rick, the New Hampshire spokeswoman and media contact for the Paul campaign, told the magazine. “We’ve got the grass-roots support and the resources. Now we’re really ready to blast it out.”
Last week, the campaign got some great news from a Saint Aslem College poll that put Paul in fourth place in the New Hampshire Republican primary, placing ahead of Fred Thompson at 7 percent.
“It is nice and encouraging to see an improvement in the one metric in which we still trail,” Benton said.
The campaign has a fundraising goal of $12 million by the end of December. Benton said the campaign has raised $3 million toward that goal.
The campaign made headlines last month when it announced it had raised more than $5 million in the third quarter, outpacing several of his more high-profile opponents for the Republican nomination.
Paul is back in the news on the “Wired” Web site, but the story isn’t positive. Wired is reporting that a computer forensics researcher found that supporters of the candidate are using hacked computers to spread Paul-spam over the Internet.
Paul spokesman Benton said the campaign did not know about the spam and that it is not affiliated with the operation.
“This is clearly a criminal act in support of a campaign, which has been committed with or without their knowledge,” Gary Warner, the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s director of research in computer forensics, said in the Wired interview.
Wired reports that the spam was detected by Warner through e-mails by the University of Alabama’s spam data mining project Spam Data Mining for Law Enforcement Applications after the Republican debate Sunday. The messages contained subject lines featuring gibberish familiar to anyone who has received spam: “Ron Paul Wins GOP Debate! HMzjoqO” and “Ron Paul Exposes Federal Reserve! SBHBcSO.”
While Paul has plenty of real supporters online, some of his unusual successes in online polls are alleged to have been tied to spam activity as well.
On Thursday, Wired added more on the story, reporting on more examples of alleged Paul-related spam.
Time magazine also provides one more Paul anecdote: Tuesday, both Paul and Tom Cruise were guests on the “Tonight Show” with Jay Leno. Cruise went to Paul’s dressing room and told him: “Go. Go. Go. Go hard.” Cruise apparently likes Paul because he fought against a bill that would force kids to get screened for mental illnesses. Paul asked his aide, “What movies has he been in?”
I never thought The NewsHour would join the rest of the media's clear bias against Ron Paul, until I saw Ray Suarez intentionally not swing at several hanging curveballs during his discussion of the last GOP debate -- easy hits that could have worked Ron Paul into the piece seamlessly, rather than omitting him so glaringly.
The media has refused to even acknowledge Paul's existence until it managed to cook up a scandal, and now The NewsHour is on that bandwagon, too.
You're way behind the curve, but hey, at least you're taking a swing, right?
Guilt by association. I'm sure bin Laden has a dog in this race, too. Will you be writing a hit-piece on that candidate when you decide who it is? Hey, it may very well be Ron Paul; he does want to leave the Middle East, after all, unlike your chosen candidate. Maybe you can PhotoShop an image of Paul wearing a turban and holding an AK-47.
You media shills know perfectly well that only Ron Paul can beat Hillary Clinton, because he has an unassailable record of upholding the Constitution. You remember the Constitution, that antiquated old piece of yellowed parchment that every politician in America swears to uphold and defend? Go check their voting records, then come back here and post an apology to the only one who took his oath seriously.
Trying to explain Ron Paul's internet polling success by calling spam is like trying to say the New England Patriots only win football games because of videotaped signals. Ron Paul's answer of $4.3 Million in one day is like the Patriots' 9-0 record and their 52-7 thumping of Washington. Time to send another Patriot to thump Washington!
Journalism schools do a great job of teaching their graduates to focus on anything but issues during elections, so we end up with this sort of chit-chat drivel. This election is about peace, prosperity, and liberty; it is not about spam and malicious gossip.
You cannot please all the Ron Paul supporters all the time. You have to reach out if you want to grab more votes. If we all agreed 100% on every issue there would be a grand total of one of us voting. Go Ron! At my last project, I knew a guy that was on the left that wanted Paul just on his stance on Iraq. I think that's pretty cool myself. I consider myself more of an anarcho-capitalist libertarian or at least a minimalist when it comes to government at all levels, including the states, by hey I am willing to compromise and vote for the best candidate out there... That's Ron Paul! Don't forget folks, there will still be plenty of liberals and neo-cons in control of several seats in Congress and Ron will have to work with them as well when he wins. Have to reach out!
Americans are not as naive as the government/media complex believes. Americans are educated and can see through the sad manipulation tactics. Please all Americans if you want the war to end, if you want this government to represent the people and restore the law of land as the founding fathers intended than read, educate yourselves and know this 2008 election is the Revolution to save our country. Vote for Ron Paul.
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Welcome to last week.
I never thought The NewsHour would join the rest of the media's clear bias against Ron Paul, until I saw Ray Suarez intentionally not swing at several hanging curveballs during his discussion of the last GOP debate -- easy hits that could have worked Ron Paul into the piece seamlessly, rather than omitting him so glaringly.
The media has refused to even acknowledge Paul's existence until it managed to cook up a scandal, and now The NewsHour is on that bandwagon, too.
You're way behind the curve, but hey, at least you're taking a swing, right?
Guilt by association. I'm sure bin Laden has a dog in this race, too. Will you be writing a hit-piece on that candidate when you decide who it is? Hey, it may very well be Ron Paul; he does want to leave the Middle East, after all, unlike your chosen candidate. Maybe you can PhotoShop an image of Paul wearing a turban and holding an AK-47.
You media shills know perfectly well that only Ron Paul can beat Hillary Clinton, because he has an unassailable record of upholding the Constitution. You remember the Constitution, that antiquated old piece of yellowed parchment that every politician in America swears to uphold and defend? Go check their voting records, then come back here and post an apology to the only one who took his oath seriously.
Trying to explain Ron Paul's internet polling success by calling spam is like trying to say the New England Patriots only win football games because of videotaped signals. Ron Paul's answer of $4.3 Million in one day is like the Patriots' 9-0 record and their 52-7 thumping of Washington. Time to send another Patriot to thump Washington!
Journalism schools do a great job of teaching their graduates to focus on anything but issues during elections, so we end up with this sort of chit-chat drivel. This election is about peace, prosperity, and liberty; it is not about spam and malicious gossip.
You cannot please all the Ron Paul supporters all the time. You have to reach out if you want to grab more votes. If we all agreed 100% on every issue there would be a grand total of one of us voting. Go Ron! At my last project, I knew a guy that was on the left that wanted Paul just on his stance on Iraq. I think that's pretty cool myself. I consider myself more of an anarcho-capitalist libertarian or at least a minimalist when it comes to government at all levels, including the states, by hey I am willing to compromise and vote for the best candidate out there... That's Ron Paul! Don't forget folks, there will still be plenty of liberals and neo-cons in control of several seats in Congress and Ron will have to work with them as well when he wins. Have to reach out!
Americans are not as naive as the government/media complex believes. Americans are educated and can see through the sad manipulation tactics. Please all Americans if you want the war to end, if you want this government to represent the people and restore the law of land as the founding fathers intended than read, educate yourselves and know this 2008 election is the Revolution to save our country. Vote for Ron Paul.