Heading home, exhausted.

Posted today, January 15th. Written January 9th, 2008:

I guess it's only my second time flying in the past twenty years, but the roar of the jet engine as the plane accelerates towards lift off is unnerving and thrilling, as the airport flashes past the windows at two hundred miles an hour. I'm looking out on New Hampshire right now, at the forest of trees painted over the snowy white canvass, and the rolling White Mountains rise from the horizon and fade into the gray. Moving above the clouds seems a paradox I can't quite wrap my head around. Window seats, for me, remain essential.



We headed out of the Moultenborough house this morning around ten—those of us that were left. Most headed out earlier this morning around three, needing to hit the Manchester airport for early morning flights. Lorin and I both had to get there by this afternoon, so we jumped in the van with the trio from Pennsylvania that was staying with us, along with Dave and Pat Wallin, who had hitchhiked to get here two weeks ago and were once again hitching on back to Michigan.

We were all incredibly disappointed with the final New Hampshire primary results. Three weeks of ten hour days knocking on doors and going from house to house resulted in a solid 17,000 votes, but it also accounted for only 8% of the total Republican vote. Panama Harry was so disappointed when the vote started to roll in he couldn't even go to the "victory celebration" that we'd scheduled for the evening of the primary. Extremely high voter turnout was a part of the problem, as January 8th turned into one of the most gorgeous, balmy days in more than two months.

We were, however, also a little upset with the official campaign, and their strategy for “winning.” For instance, the official campaign made the strategic decision not to run very many television advertisements in the state, focusing instead on direct mailings and phone calls to as many Republican voters as possible—as many times as possible. “It worked for Congressman Paul in Texas,” we were told repeatedly. Clearly, it was too conservative a strategy for winning a primary.

Many of us here in the grassroots community are upset and concerned where we feel that the official campaign is not listening to us. There were many examples that could be cited where OLFDers were blocked by the official campaign's staff when we wanted more signs, or wanted to blanket canvass or wave signs or change the stock message we were told to deliver when making phone calls on behalf of the campaign. They were rather arrogant in their assumption that we were all amateurs who did not know what worked and what didn't, and they were also rather arrogant in their assumption that their strategy would be wholly successful.

This is the way it is: so many in the official campaign are amateurs themselves. Ron Paul's popularity has grown so quickly, and his funding ballooned so exponentially, that the official campaign is simply not yet prepared to actually utilize its resources properly and find a way to get non-Internet users to recognize and support Dr. Paul. They are using “tried and tested” techniques that worked in Paul's small Texas district—where he already knows everyone anyway and everyone knows him—and they're failing to realize what brought the entire grassroots movement to Dr. Paul in the first place.

We in the grassroots, on the other hand, know exactly what got our attention, and that was Ron Paul himself.

The official campaign's strategy so far is to basically stifle Ron Paul's message, then wrap him up and make him look like any other ordinary, Republican candidate. But we in the grassroots understand that Ron Paul is a fundamentally different creature than anyone else running for the Presidency of the United States, and we realized it by watching clips of Dr. Paul on YouTube. No direct mailing, or radio broadcast of Paul's positions can convey the honesty, sincerity, and common sense that the man speaks with, and the passion with which he speaks out against tyranny and for freedom. It isn't just Internet users—people all over the country are hungry for his message, as the viability of Barack Obama proves. People are hungry for his message, and for his principles and honesty, but unless they see him speak in the debates or in television advertisements, they will not understand who this man is or what he stands for.

A number of us in the OLFD sat down and made a list of a number of things that went right in New Hampshire, and what went wrong. Here is a short list of what we came up with:

The commercials suck. They don't show Ron Paul speaking, which is the best selling point for Ron Paul. Better commercials are made for FREE on YouTube by volunteers who have a better sense of advertisement than the campaign. The campaign should be showing specific clips of Ron Paul speaking on the issues, particularly the war and the economy. Clips that are already widely available on the Internet. Those are the clips that turned us on to Ron Paul, showing a man who makes common sense, who's intelligent, deeply sincere and who's deeply anti-establishment, and those are the clips that will wake voters up to Ron Paul as well. The campaign essentially stifles Ron Paul's very appeal when they don't get him on television, instead relying on voice-overs or statistics. Ron Paul sells himself, and he sells the message better than anything else could, and we need to realize it.

We walk up to people and they've NEVER HEARD of Ron Paul. An old woman saw our signs when she was walking out of the polling station in Moultenborough and asked who Ron Paul was. We told her and she said that if she'd known she'd have voted for him. The campaign's decision not to show Ron Paul in television ads has left voters with no impression of who he is or what he stands for.

OLFD notes: We should have had more door-to-door training before we send out volunteers door-to-door.

As far as door-to-door efficiency goes, put two or three in a car, then hit ONLY houses with cars in the driveway or lights on in the house. And when we talk to people, we need to make sure to ask if they're willing to support Dr. Paul in the election before we move on.

Sign waving in pairs is GREAT. Make EYE CONTACT and WAVE!

Phone polling is pretty awful, ESPECIALLY the scripts! People should be told to mention two or three points, and not be given a script AT ALL. Again: NO ONE SHOULD BE READING FROM A SCRIPT! If we're going to spend time personally calling people, we need to speak with them personally, not reading from a script (even if they let the answering machine pick up the call).

Hand-made signs! Personalization! Anything that reeks of industrialization is automatically ignored and dismissed.




All for now. I'm in Chicago, waiting to board my plane for the final leg home to Nebraska. This experience was one I'll never forget, and I fully intend to write more articles and post here in the coming weeks. Until then, I'll be taking a few days off. There's little more exhausting than working your ass off for three weeks, and seeing incredibly little impact for the work you've done. We all feel like that right now, but we'll get over it. This movement will continue with or without Dr. Paul, but we'll all be a little more hopeful if he remains our flag bearer.