John McCain Wants Ron Paul Support, I Laugh

The Washington Times is reporting that John McCain has his sights set on Ron Paul and his supporters. This is totally hilarious because John McCain is a socialist. "Mr. Paul has refused to endorse Mr. McCain, and Mr. McCain's operatives have refused to let him address the Republican National Convention. " In fact, it seems that the McCain people are playing hard ball by restricting his camp's access to the convention. Says statesman.com,

Paul spokesman Jesse Benton said later that Paul can go to the floor like any Republican House member. But, Benton said, the party has yet to agree to permit Paul to be accompanied by a political aide and someone to keep watch over him.

“We thought we had an agreement over the weekend” enabling Paul to circulate with two aides on the floor among some 260 delegates in his camp. “It looks like there is a hang-up.”

All very interesting stuff. These people really know how to win over your support. I'm sure after being treated like Ralph Nader, Ron Paul is dying to hand over his donor list.

And here's Ron Paul at the Rally For The Republic:

Ron Paul, Bigot or Victim?

One of the age old questions posed to Libertarians and ACLUers alike is, do you let nazi's march in front of the courthouse? If you answer yes, you're a bigot. If you answer no, you're a fascist. Lose-lose. So while that question is hypothetical and often rhetorical, I ask one that requires answers: Is Ron Paul an evil bigot, or has he merely fallen on the wrong side of the above question? Seriously. I want your thoughts and links. Because honestly, I don't know what to think. The Daily Paul has come out saying that Paul is merely a victim of smear tactics as corroborated by Austin NAACP President Nelson Linder. Below is a fun little poll put together by Pajamas Media that let's Ron Paul speak for himself. And he sounds like a racist. I look forward to your comments.


Poll Answers

Ron Paul Wins Maryland Straw Poll

The Maryland Republican Party’s first-ever presidential straw poll at the State Fair resulted in nearly 1,000 Marylanders casting a vote for their favorite Republican candidate for president. And the winner was: Ron Paul.

While most campaigns didn't have a representative present, the Ron Paul campaign had full representation for all eleven days. Paul came in first place with 263 votes, Mayor Rudy Giuliani was second with 220 votes, and Senator Fred Thompson received 188 votes, which garnered the third place spot.

The rest of the votes were cast as follows:
89 votes for Governor Mitt Romney
54 votes for Senator John McCain
35 votes for Governor Mike Huckabee,

Chris Cavey, First Vice Chairman of the Maryland GOP, stated the following: “The final vote showing Ron Paul won is a lesson for all campaigns of how grassroots politics can make all the difference. The Paul campaign repeatedly e-mailed their base of support to turn out at the State Fair to cast a vote for Dr. Paul, and in doing so, demonstrated that a small organized operation can beat the odds.”

Looks like Paul's Viral Campaigning has made quite an effect - at least at this local level thus far. We'll continue to monitor. Read more from the Maryland Republican Party here.

An Open Letter To Ron Paul

Dear Dr. Paul,

Congratulations. As I'm sure you are aware, you're the only presidential candidate that I am yet to rag on. And I'd like to keep it that way, as I've never intended the Viralroots media empire to be just another second rate burn blog that rags on everyone for LOLs. See, ordinarily at this juncture, I would say something snarky and cruel in hopes that my dry humor lands me a new subscriber or two. But instead, I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and write you a letter imploring you to see the error of your ways and do your best to fix them.

My specific grievances have to do with your videos in the YouTube YouChoose Spotlight. In the text of your first video, you proclaimed yourself the "Internet's BFF." And over the months I've published statistics that support that claim. The fact is, I'm not aware of any candidate ever achieving such a level of success through a viralroots campaign as you. Your accomplishments are truly remarkable. Which is why I'd like to make you aware of two major missteps in your YouChoose Spotlight and am humbly asking you to correct them:

A) Why on earth would you allow a vacuous-eyed meat-head fratboy to introduce all of your spotlight videos? I mean seriously. There's never gonna be a rEVOLution when your poster-child looks like you picked him up from a Campus Republicans meeting. I swear I saw him on HotChicksWithDoucheBags last week. I beg you to lose this guy.

B) As the Internet's BFF, what on earth would possess you to use chopped up clips from what looks like a CSPAN-2 BOOK TV interview for the YouChoose Spotlight? I'm really confused. It seems that while candidate after candidate botched their time in the YouChoose Spotlight, you were making creative videos and engaging YouTube better than anyone else. You spoke to James Kotecki in his dorm room. You called out Rudy Giuliani. You posted humorous and enlightening clips from TV personalities like Bill Maher and Jon Stewart. You did a fantastic interview with Google. In other words, you did everything right. And finally, it's your turn to really shine and you posted a bunch of recycled crap. You don't talk to the YouTube constituency. You don't ask questions. You don't answer questions. Nada. Please, for the sake of this new political age, I beg you Dr. Paul, fix this. Go back to what works. You're good at it. No. The best at it. So please: Own it.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Warmest Regards,

Philip Marlowe
Private Detective/C-List Blogger

Ron Paul In YouTube Spotlight

Ron Paul, the self-proclaimed "Internet's BFF," takes to the YouTube YouChoose Spotlight this week. Ron Paul will be coming at us with a video every day this week, addressing a different topic. In his first video, Ron Paul talks about his Internet popularity and the importance of the Internet in Politics.

CNN-YouTube GOP Debate Roster Shaping Up Or Shipping Out?

There's been a lot of buzz lately about whether the Republican CNN-YouTube Debate is going to get canned. That would be a shame. I think it's really important to see both parties participate in this platform, which is clearly a breakthrough component of election politics 2.0. Just this morning on KFI AM640's Bill Handel Show, they were claiming that it looked like Ron Paul was the only Republican candidate committed to participate as of today. They did not cite sources. But just yesterday The Hollywood Reporter reported that Ron Paul, Tommy Thompson and John McCain were on board. Also yesterday, Washingtonpost.com's The Trail included Mike Huckabee as a participant as well. And then there's the possibility of CNN postponing the debate until more candidates agree to participate. We will continue to keep you posted on this matter.

Ron Paul Talks With Google

There has been "more questions for Ron Paul than any other candidate that has visited google," says Google's Elliot Schrage in the introduction to a 65 minute chat with Ron Paul. This interview is truly fascinating. Ron Paul discusses everything from constitutionalism to Iraq to NAFTA and free trade to taxes to prostitution to privatization to the gold standard and on and on.

Ron Paul is so rational and so eloquent. In other words, a far cry from all psycho libertarians of the past. I can see why he is so actively ignored by mainstream media. And I'll bet money that there will be active attempts by both parties to block him out of future debates like Ralph Nader was. Why? Because he presents a real threat to the two party system, which in turn threatens lobbyists and big business. His fiscal conservatism has gotta appeal to many Republicans and his moral liberalism has gotta appeal to many Democrats. And as for more polarized individuals such as religious pro-life Republicans and bleeding-heart social-welfare Democrats, Ron Paul's support of state's rights would allow for local regulation and taxation. Different regions have different ideologies so why should they all be governed by the exact same rule of law? Ya can't shake a stick at that. The major two parties really should be shaking in their boots.

See more candidates@google videos.

Five Creative Internet Campaign Tactics

YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, blogs, we've been there, done that. Now, let's take a look at some of the more unique techie tactics to which candidates have taken.

First, There's text messaging updates. Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Barack Obama all have little fields on their websites that either allow you to enter your cellphone number or tell you where to send a message. Complete the step and you'll start getting SMS text message campaign updates. Regardless of how useful the updates are, it's always fun to go to Hillary Clinton's page and enter a co-worker's cell phone number as a practical joke.

Next, let's talk about the Ron Paul. There's a link on his homepage to Digg. Why? Cuz his supporters are the craziest Diggers ever. They'll click on anything if you tell them it'll help get Ron Paul some network media attention. 7000 Diggs to support Ron Paul getting on the Daily Show? It sounds a little like spam to me. But the Digg guys know better than to take it down cuz Ron Paul rEVOLutionaries would burn the Digg headquarters to the ground.

Next up is Barack Obama's very own Social Network built right into his website. It's an ambitious effort, but when you have the type of support that he has on MySpace, Youtube and Facebook, it's just redundant and excessive.

Now, Rudy Giuliani's got a weird one. As a fundraising tactic, Rudy wants you to start a baseball team. Go online, register a team of nine players. Each player donates $25 to Rudy. Do that, and you'll get you're very own Rudy Giuliani pennant! If your team raises $2008 you get your very own SIGNED Rudy trading card! And $5000? Get read for this one. You get your very own Rudy Giuliani signed Baseball! Yeah!

Last up is EONS. Eons is a social network for OLD people like babyboomers. So far I've found Hillary Clinton and John Edwards on there. Hillary Clinton even links to her Eons profile from her site. But it doesn't seem all that effective. Neither candidate has more than a handful of "Eons friends." It just goes to show how effective the web is with young people. So I hope the candidates keep up the creative web marketing and look forward to getting messages from Ron Paul on Pownce.

Ron Paul Speaks Out On His Internet Popularity

At a recent Kansas City rally, Ron Paul addressed his overwhelming popularity amongst young, Internet Savvy voters. "It might just be that freedom is popular," said Ron Paul. Ron Paul is right about this, but he's being humble. The correct answer is, Ron Paul is popular. You see, the core Libertarian tenets for which Ron Paul stands have been popular ever since the founding fathers proposed them. The trouble is, through the detour of a bureaucratic two-party system, these Libertarian values disappeared from the mainstream and found purchase amongst a fringe. A fucking crazy fringe. I've been registered Libertarian since I was 18, but I've never voted for a Libertarian candidate. Not even once. Why? Because they're almost exclusively extremist wack-jobs. Seriously. They're a bunch of Anarchists. Not even college students are ready to get behind that. Then along came Ron Paul. He's like a Libertarian, but he's so... normal. (Viralroots is on the fence about coming out with an endorsement, but here's a good hint as to where I'm leaning.) Seriously, Mr. Paul. The values have always been there. Your success is entirely thanks to the way you sell them. Congrats.

YouChoose Roundup

It's been a little while since I've gone into any depth on YouTube's YouChoose '08, so I'll cover some bullet points:

1. I'm not covering Sam Brownback's time in the YouChoose Spotlight. Why? Because I don't think anyone will give a shit if don't.
2. It's a little surprising that Barack Obama didn't get a bigger pop in Channel subscriptions off of his Spotlight video. It's becoming obvious that the fanaticism is over and we've been over saturated. He still trails light-years behind Ron Paul, who continues to grow stronger.
3. Why on earth didn't Hillary Clinton's people post her Soprano's spoof video to YouTube? Now, a handful of schmucks have uploaded it and are getting all the hits. With that mentality, they might as well hand the White House over to Fred Thompson on a silver platter.
   
4. BTW, I really like Carl Bernstein's notion that Hillary and Bill would be co-presidents. If that was her platform, she would be unstoppable.
5. I like Mike Gravel. He reminds me of my Grandpa. He sits you down and tells you a thing or two about the world.
6. Is it bad to crack jokes about Maya Angelou? Like, is that just crossing line? Okay, I'll refrain.
7. Dennis Kucinich: More hot wife please. You're starting to lose us.
8. Tom Tancredo: Less walks down memory lane, more securing our borders please. I don't care where you went to elementary school.
9. John McCain: Thanks! I'm actually dumber from watching your last video. It's good to know that if you were president my taxes would go to NASCAR stadiums (nascar is in stadiums, right?)

Viral Politics takes to Ning, The Social Network For Social Networks

Ning is a fairly new venture by a team including one the the Netscape founders. It is a platform for building your own social networks. Last time I've checked, that's exactly what Facebook has become, but never mind that now. Anyway, the point is it's the newest Internet outlet that netroots political supporters have taken to. There are already social networks created for most of the popular candidates, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Ron Paul...

The problem with allowing users to dictate what might constitute an affiliation is that it actually discourages unity and cooperation. I say this based on the fact that if you search for say Ron Paul, there's 6 different Ron Paul networks that appear. And it's not like one is for "hollywood gays for Ron Paul" and another for "gun-toting anti-Semites for Ron Paul". That would make sense. But Nope. They're all competing versions of "Ron Paul For President." This sorta suggests that Ning is going to need to undergo some sort of evolution to separate itself from Myspace, YouTube and Facebook. Because as-is, it seems to be competing head-to-head, but from light-years behind the pack.

That said, the platform seems to have a uniquely flexible architecture as some pages are heavily customized like the Rate This Candidate social network. But still, it would be nice to see a political network that includes various applications such as one for rating candidates. It should not exist as a network itself. Check out Ning.com

Ron Paul on the Daily Show with John Stewart

Ron Paul recently appeared on the Daily Show with John Stewart (June 4th) to discuss his role in the presidential race. We dig his plain spoken interviews with taste makers like John Stewart.

As a reminder, for those of you dizzied by the 20 or so candidates you've seen in the recent debates between the GOP and Democrats - he's a 10 term Republican Congressman from Texas. Back in the 80's he was a Libertarian. He's against involvement in Iraq, calls Halliburton evil and seems to be up for the challenge of digging into the other candidates' leads. Check the video out:

Ron Paul On Bill Maher Remixed

Previously, we posted footage from Ron Paul of his Appearance on Real Time With Bill Maher. You might have noticed that since then the video has been taken down by YouTube for copyright violations. The video has now resurfaced from the Ron Paul camp, but now it's re-cut with a fancy lead-in and graphics prompting you to watch Real Time With Bill Maher on HBO. This seems to be a game of lets-make-a-deal between Time Warner and the Ron Paul people, no?

Ron Paul On Bill Maher's Real Time

Here's Ron Paul on Real Time With Bill Maher from several nights ago. They are of course talking about Rudy Giuliani butting heads with Paul at the debate regarding our presence in the Middle East. Ron Paul talks about spreading the goodness of America by doing it here, cleaning our own house, not by doing it abroad. Ron Paul also says that the Republicans have lost their way. They talk about small government but they don't enforce it. It's interesting stuff.

Ron Paul Drops Knowledge On Rudy Giuliani's Ass

Ron Paul held a press conference just to educate Rudy Giuliani on the history of the U.S. presence in the Middle East. Personally, I think it's fantastic to see a candidate have a vendetta:

Stat Watch: Ron Paul Most Popular Candidate On YouTube, Clinton Leads Polls By 9 Points

Ever since the Republican Candidates debated on May 3rd, Ron Paul has rocketed in popularity. He actually has twice the YouTube channel subscriptions as Barack Obama. Check it out: In non-viral news, Hillary Clinton is polling at 35%, 9 points ahead of Barack Obama. John Edwards has trailed out of significance to 14%.

As for the Republicans, Rudy Giuliani maintains a 25% share while Mitt Romney has nipped John McCain by a point, 16% and 15% respectively. Ron Paul is still not tracking in Rasmussen data, which we think is a mistake.

Savvy Ron Paul Is Worth A Digg

CORRECTION: Okay I lied. Apparently I was asleep at the switch and fell for some viralroots trickery. This was posted by a Ron Paul SUPPORTER with a very similar YouTube name to Ron Paul's official account. It was NOT posted by the Ron Paul camp. So please disregard this shit post. Contrary to my earlier belief, the Ron Paul camp is still only semi-savvy. Thanks. I quit. Back to drinking. bye.

Libertarian, I mean Republican Presidential candidate Ron Paul has posted great footage to YouTube from Real Time With Bill Maher. The footage includes Chris Dodd on a giant screen saying absolutely nothing and Bradley Whitford waxing political but what's really cool is that this is the first video that I have seen on YouTube submitted by a presidential candidate that includes a link to DIGG the video. As we all know, when the stars align for an article or a video on Digg, a viral avalanche can ensue that yield hundreds of thousands of hits over a very short period of time. That's not to say that this video is the one that will get Ron Paul on the map, but none-the-less hats off to his people for getting jiggy with Digg. You can Digg the video HERE and watch it below:

Giuliani vs Paul

An interesting debate has decided to stay at the forefront of GOP politics - and Giuliani and Paul are in the eye of the storm. The issue is whether or not the 9/11 attacks on NYC could be argued as 'blowback' for US involvement in the Middle East over the last decade. Paul's mention of this and subsequent smackdown by Giuliani at the debate earlier this week, has become newsworthy and continues to stick around. Surely Giuliani is not so sheltered that he would have 'first heard' of this theory that night at the debate - but maybe that just doesn't matter. Its an opportunity for him to look strong on National Security and relatively to make Paul look weak. Perception is everything in this race and Giuliani is no fool. Read more on it here.

GOP: Republicans Debate In South Carolina

Welcome to the wall o' Republicans.

Ron Paul Opinion Video to Radiohead

I found this rather interesting little video response (posted yesterday) on why a YouTuber is going to vote for Ron Paul. Its neither ground breaking, nor visually arresting (bordering on boring), but since I don't actually know much (or anything) about Ron Paul or his positions it became rather informative. (fyi: Paul is a 10th term Republican Congressman from Texas) And, at the very least, I got to listen to Radiohead for two and a half minutes to keep me entertained.

That's what our youthful attention spans need these days, brief summaries to a melody. But not because we can't handle the knowledge, we're just busy with our XBox, our American Idol, our Sopranos, our Entourage and our day jobs - and we need help wading through the tides of information. To learn a smidge on Mr.Paul's opinions watch this:

btw: Does Mr. Paul even have a shot against the rockstar, another Clinton or even his fellow GOP compatriots: McCain, Romney or Giuliani? Well, the video is only 2 minutes of your life, maybe his opinions will align with yours. Watch and judge him for yourself.