Archive for May 12th, 2009
Written by Charles Scaliger
Wednesday, 06 May 2009 18:53
Although he officially abandoned his presidential bid last summer, Texas Congressman Ron Paul’s star continues to brighten. Once shunned by the mainstream media and marginalized by the national leadership of the Republican Party, the modest Ob-Gyn-turned-congressman has become something of an éminence grise these days, feted and fawned over by the likes of Fox News, which once dismissed him as a quack.
The reason? Dr. Paul’s unexpected fund raising prowess during his presidential campaign turned more than a few heads, and the bestseller status of his book The Revolution: A Manifesto attracted further attention. But besides the growth of his Campaign for Liberty and the swelling ranks of followers, recent events have proven Congressman Paul right time and time again. What once seemed to those with no understanding of so-called “Austrian economics” as dour paranoia has turned out to be spot on, as the Mother of All Speculative Bubbles has imploded.
Read The Rest Of The Article – http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/election/1089
Hotshot political numbers maven Nate Silver at fivethirtyeight.com thinks the numbers indicate yes:
The best benchmark I’ve been able to come up with for libertarianism is the amount of contributions to Ron Paul’s 2008 presidential campaign. Fundraising data has the advantage of being extremely clean and comprehensive — all contributions of at least $200 are reported to the FEC and itemized by their location…..
We have New Hampshire, we have Texas (where Paul is from) and we have a whole bunch of states in the Mountain West. Per capita, Paul raised about twice as
much money in the
West as he did in other parts of the country. In New Hampshire, he raised about three times above the national average….
Now then, which states had the most tea party attendance?….As measured on a per capita basis, eight of the top ten states for Tea Party attendance were West of the Mississippi. Five of the top ten — Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Wyoming — overlap with the best Ron Paul fundraising states.
Matt Welch and Nick Gillespie from Reason magazine’s December 2008 issue on why we may be entering a new libertarian moment, tea parties aside. My profile of the Ron Paul movement from Reason magazine’s February 2008 issue,