Why Ron Paul is a Front-Runner
The disconnect between Old Media and the Internet in the way they perceive Ron Paul should be obvious to everyone by now. I have heard a couple of different explanations, most of them making the strange distinction that the Internet is this fantasy land that lives outside “the real world,” the subtext of this suggestion being that television and talk radio are somehow more accurate depictions of “the real world.” I have a different theory.
Ever since Ron Paul opened an exploratory committee to see if he should run for president, I have been vigorously campaigning on his behalf. Ron Paul was among the great men in modern political and economic thought that shaped me in 2004 into the liberty lover I am today. I have been reading his work for at least these past three and a half years, and now that his presidential campaign is in full swing, I have noticed that I in my enthusiasm am not alone. There are a few reasons Ron Paul should be considered a front runner, even though his campaign purse is smaller than the others, and classical polling methods do not appear render significant support for him.
There’s a Big Market for Ron Paul Stuff
The “Paulite” community is so numerous and enthusiastic that there have developed whole markets serving the grass roots level of his campaign. One man is selling car-top signs like you see on pizza delivery trucks that advertise Ron Paul’s campaign. The American Liberty Dollar is selling “Ron Paul Dollars,” which are specie that come in copper, silver and gold in denominations of $1, $20, and $1000 respectively, which all bear Ron’s likeness. The copper pieces sold out very quickly. Libertycard.org is selling very professional-looking Ron Paul campaign cards in bulk to activists. They are not a campaign site, but a business that sells libertarian literature. Clearly they detected demand for Ron Paul merchandise.
An old book by Ron Paul, written back in 1987, has not only come back into print, but the Ludwig von Mises Institute’s online store can hardly meet the demand for any of his books.
The grass roots activity promoting Ron’s campaign has provided a chunk of change to Meetup.com, who gets $12-$19 per month from the 832 Ron Paul Meetup Groups throughout the world (That’s right, the WORLD. There are Ron Paul Meetups in Germany, Australia, Japan, and many other countries.). If you do the math that’s anywhere from $9,984 to $15,808 per month. And that’s just the money Meetup.com is making off of a tiny fraction of Paulites–the ones who pay to run Meetup Groups. I have no way of estimating the income being made by CafePress.com on user-made Ron Paul paraphernalia, but some are investing a great deal in creating quality artwork to sell there, all for the benefit of Ron Paul’s campaign. Some of them may make money, others may not. But the hard work and enthusiasm that has gone into the merchandise is obvious. From what I’ve seen on Paulite forums, plenty of people are patronizing services like VistaPrint. Some are commissioning and buying products like car door magnets. The Ron Paul Meetup Group I am involved in has three decked-out Paulmobiles. One is an SUV, one is a sedan, and the other is a Prius, each complete with decals and the car-top signs. And my group is one of the smaller ones. The amount Paul supporters will spend outside of campaign contributions is impressive indeed.
Loud Support on the Internet
I doubt I need to reiterate that Paul has been among the biggest names in the blogosphere for many months now, and remains the second-highest searched term on Technorati. He obliterates the competition in online polls, and popular news and user-driven sites can barely contain the support he’s getting from the users. Social networking sites and YouTube have him either near the top of the charts for presidential candidates, or light-years ahead of the competition. This doesn’t necessarily mean his supporters are in the majority on the Internet, but it does mean they are the most vocal and enthusiastic, and that yes, there is a great deal of interest in him — and awareness of him — that exists on the Internet. Even if the Paulites are a minority on the Internet, he is unquestionably a recognized name among web-dwelling techies and bloggers.
Pure Grass Roots
One thing to note about the support one sees for Ron Paul, whether it be at the Iowans for Tax Relief forum, straw poll attendees, or general public activism, is that it is the definition of a grass-roots campaign. Campaign headquarters has spent very little that it didn’t absolutely have to. All the pro-Ron Paul advertising you see out there is done entirely by volunteers. I joined my area Meetup to gather on a public street corner (there were about 20-30 of us) advertising his name, passing out literature to those who asked, and generally getting attention for the campaign. I defy anyone to show me the Obama activists, or the Romney supporters, who have even half the enthusiasm and energy of the Ron Paul campaigners.
Look at it this way: On Meetup.com, the closest competitor, Barack Obama, has support from 5,788 members worldwide, about 1/7 the number of activists on that website that Ron Paul has (39,600). If this election were happening on the Internet, a Ron Paul victory would be a foregone conclusion already, and it’s more than a year still before the general election.
The Two Worlds
Part of this must be that fans of the big-money media darling candidates have the luxury of taking media attention for granted. Supporters of the big Democrat candidates feel no fire because for them, politics is largely a spectator sport. They are there to cheer the giants in Washington as they slug it out with one another, each with some corporate giant in their respective corners, and it will all play out on the cable news channels on its own. All the Clintonites and Obamamaniacs can really do is watch. For us, though, this is still a participatory game. The currently anointed “front-runners” are anointed by the spectator media. Television, radio, all the outlets that are controlled by small groups of powerful people.
The Internet is a completely different animal. The Internet consists of participatory media. Ron Paul supporters did not simply leap into existence when he announced his candidacy. We’ve existed for years, reading the blogs, the books, and the commentaries that never see the light of day in the Old Media. Some of us compose the growing libertarian undercurrent in America. Some of us are disgruntled Democrats, still others disenchanted Republicans. Others are anarchists, Christians, gun owners, pot smokers, businessmen, or advocates of tax honesty. We’ve had nowhere to go with our frustration other than the Internet.
New Media vs. Old Media: Neither are the Real World
I’ve heard it said in different places in different ways that the Ron Paul campaign needs to translate this Internet support into “real world support,” assuming that what Television covers is the real world. I’m afraid it isn’t. The television is an even bigger circus than the Internet. Television is a singing, dancing caricature of the real world almost none of us have any power to influence. It is the product of the perceptions, prejudices and premeditations of the few who control it and it is crafted for one purpose: to sell your eyeballs to advertisers.
The Internet, on the other hand, while still a freak show filled with distortions, is nothing but the product of its participants. The Internet cannot be bought, its slant governed from the top-down by a digital Rupert Murdoch. The content you find on the Internet is a combination of what you seek out, and what is pointed your way by others. I dare say that, if you keep a few hefty grains of salt handy, the Internet is a more reliable depiction of the real world than what you’ll see on TV. You’ll typically only observe one microcosm at a time, but the picture you’ll get of it is one much better than what will ever be pre-packaged for you on the tube. The Internet is also a realm where ideas can be rolled around, tested and debated. This is orders of magnitude better than Television, which can do little more than give you immediate impressions.
So while the Old World Media still uses its Old World Methods for gaging interest in a topic, it misses those of us who have moved into the New, who may not have land-line telephones, who read on the Internet instead of watching any TV news, who express our responses to news not by writing letters to editors or phoning in to some preening narcissist’s radio show, but by blogging about it ourselves or generating comments and discussion threads on the Internet.
Conclusion
We may be a minority, but we exist! The people who vote in online polls are not phantoms that only show up when said poll opens. Internet users are not some species of goblin that lives only inside Ethernet cables. They are just a different demographic than the TV is accustomed to dominating. So don’t be surprised when the results of something on the Internet is at odds with the TV/Radio perceptions and expectations. There is a different demographic at work.
The demographic split — between younger Information Age types and everyone else — is causing this perceptual split, where those who still get their information in the Old Media are getting and reinforcing one view of this election, while those of us in the New Media painting a whole different one.
I have no idea if he’s winning or not, but Ron Paul’s presence and popularity among the demographics less dominated by Old Media should enter the equation when you’re deciding who the “big” candidates are. Support on the Internet is not just some freakish phenomenon perpetrated by unpredictable digital gremlins. It is the product of actual humans using the best among the few remaining free press outlets.
So don’t discount Ron Paul’s popularity just because you see most of it on the Internet. While I stood on a street corner advertising his campaign last Sunday the positive responses from passers-by far outweighed the negative ones. There is no more distinction between “Internet” and real-world support than there is “mainstream media” and real-world support.
