I’m not only on Ron Paul’s mailing list but all the major Republican candidates. A little while ago I got this from the Huckabee camp:

Sean Hannity…Now It Makes Sense

Sean Hannity: “I’ll tell you right now, and I’ve not announced this, but I will be voting for Mitt Romney in this campaign. It’s the first time I’ve stated it publicly. I’ll state it now.” (”Sean Hannity Radio Show,” 1/31/08.

Well I have to admit I am very disappointed by this statement even though I am not surprised. That said, statements like this personally motivate me even more. If you feel as I do I encourage you to commit to doing these three things by Super Tuesday:

1. Make a contribution of $25 or more in support of Mike Huckabee between now and Super Tuesday.

2. Make at least 5 voter contact calls for Mike everyday until Super Tuesday. Click here to signup as a Ranger and start making calls tomorrow.

3. Call your friends and family in Super Tuesday states and ask them to vote for Mike.

If you are willing to do all three for Mike before Super Tuesday, please leave a comment on our campaign blog and encourage others to do the same. I will email you again soon about our new television advertising buy.

Chip Saltsman
National Campaign Manager

Hopefully Rush continues protesting the current front runners. Instead of sending Huckabee $25 I recommend sending Paul $51.

• Fred Thompson was really on fire tonight. Maybe a bit too much in fact. I hope that this splits the pro-war neocon vote more. He went after Huckabee which I think was the right thing to do. Both because he’s high in the polls but also because besides Rudy he’s the most liberal and is easy to attack.
• Huckabee I think did the worst of the bunch. Not terrible but I think he got beat up a bit because of his record and I think he deserves it. The religious question about the ad though could have been left out. I don’t think those that support him care much.
• McCain keeps getting more and more smug. It upsets me he was my Republican choice in 2000. A coworker said the same. He wasn’t particularly good or bad tonight but his smartass smirk and chuckle gets to me more and more. I don’t know how his donations are going but I hope he’s tight on money. It’ll be interesting to see this 3-4 man race go while they all are running out of cash.
• Romney… nothing to really mention. His pot shot at Paul about reading Ahmadinejad’s press releases was retarded. It was great however to see Paul respond: “Laugh it up”, “Keep laughing” or whatever it was.
• Rudy didn’t do much either tonight except laugh at Paul… again.
• Paul had some real spunk. Must be carrying over from the CNN interview earlier in the day about the newsletters. The other day after the results in NH someone made up a list of suggestions for the Paul campaign (and today he asked for suggestions.) One was to take off the gloves. The feel good policy ads in NH and Iowa didn’t appear to be worth the millions we spent on them. He needs to start pointing out how his opponents are wrong. Hold the voters hand a bit. It appears that suggestion was taken and I hope it continues. He needs to be careful not to come off as the grumpy old man (which may have already happened) but he needs to be firm and forward. Like when asked about 9/11 truthers again. The person asking the question said that many of Paul’s supporters where truthers. At least that’s what I recall. And that’s absolute bullshit and was done to further discredit him. I would have liked Paul to point that out but I thought his answer which amounted to: No I don’t agree with that, no I don’t endorse that, and while I can’t tell them what to do given that that association doesn’t help him that they not speak in his name. And immediately after saying that he asked to address the latest issue with Iran. Now Brit Hume seemed to be fishing for the answer that the captain of the ship acted incorrectly. That he was too passive. It felt like he was assuming it was self evident that the passive response was wrong and that the candidates were going to go all warmonger on the stage and call for the heads of the captains and the bombing of the Iranians. None of the candidates took the bate. Paul fully recognized what Hume was implying and correctly went off on the warmonger neocons who are looking for anything to start another war. He should have been more explicit in pointing out what Hume was implying but he was right on the mark. The panel very quickly realizes and tries to make Paul to be a paranoid fool by pointing out that the rest of the candidates were calm and had agreed with the passive response. Of course that’s not what Paul was referring too but much of the crowd fell for it anyway.
• Frank Luntz was Frank Luntz. “An idiot.” He had his regular group of undecided voters. He’s very good at apparently manipulating the crowd. Who thinks Thompson won? Oh yeah yeah he won. Who think Paul did the worst? Oh yeah he did the worst. I was very happy to see that not all of them raised their hands and even shook their heads no when he asked if Paul lost the debate and at the end when he asked if Paul should be allowed in the Republican debates just about everyone said yes and you could tell Luntz wasn’t exactly expecting that and passed it off to Hannity & Colmes without commenting on it.
• Oddly Paul was not interviewed afterwards like the rest of them. I’d like to know why and hope it was because of Paul and not Fox ignoring him. (Update: He had something else to do and declined.)
• By the time I shut off the TV Paul was winning the cell phone poll at 32% with Thompson at 21%. Text R4 to 36288.

UPDATE:

The NYTimes “Live Blogging the G.O.P. Debate“:

9:36 p.m. | Paul and Iraq Ron Paul does not seem to like being asked about the view of many of his supporters, that 9/11 was an inside job. He says he can’t tell his supporters what to do. In so doing, he passes up a chance to guide or lead them.

What a bunch of bullshit. Paul doesn’t want to lead them. He doesn’t agree with them, he would prefer them not associate him with those beliefs, but he’s not going to tell them to bugger off. He’s not going to tell them to change their opinion. These pundits simply don’t get it. They don’t see that this question has nothing to do with Paul. They don’t see or they agree with the implications in the question. As if these hundreds of thousands of supporters are all truthers. Then you have:

Mr. Paul goes on a tear, suggesting his rivals want to start World War III over Iran. Brit Hume, one of the moderators, points out that all of the rivals have said they would react passively, to which Mr. Paul replies, “I’m very sorry, I can’t hear a word you said.” Mr. Romney takes a slap at Mr. Paul, drawing boos from the audience.

Brit Hume is retarded and didn’t actually listen to the candidates answers. Nor did this blogger. They all said clearly: “No, I think the captain did the right thing, but if they mess with us again we’ll make them see their god real quick.” In some cases they were more aggressive than that. Paul was pointing out that they are making a mountain out of a mole hill. The administration and Fox News especially. I would have preferred Paul to say: “Well, if they make an aggressive move against the United States than absolutely we would retaliate. However, in this case, I do not believe any true threat was posed and to get all worked up over a half dozen speed boats is silly. I’m getting the impression from the administration that they are just looking for a reason to start something with Iran.”

And as for who was being booed. Romney was definitely the one being booed after making the remark about Ahmadinejad.

I have to say that many of the comments are entertainingly ignorant. This is the typical NYT reader?

UPDATE2:

You can find what appears to be the whole debate here.

• 8:16 - Ron Paul’s first question. Makes clear his position that marriage is not something government should be involved with. It’s a private, religious institution and the government aught not be dictating who can or can not associate.
• 8:30 - Paul finally gets a healthcare question but doesn’t get the chance to really go into detail.
• 8:57 - Paul mentions tha 70%+ of the public wish to get out of Iraq which brings a round of booing. However, he receives applause after continuing with his normal speech about our interventionist foreign policy.
• 9:06 - Paul is the only candidate who mentions offering people to actually opt completely out of Social Security and receives a decent round of applause.
• 9:20 - Guiliani claims we need to increase military spending to show our enemies and possible enemies that we are not to be messed with.
• 9:23 - Paul again receives boos for bringing up the need for non-interventionist foreign policies.

It was an all around crappy debate. No one really did all that well. The ‘front-runners’ spent more time bashing Clinton and cracking jokes than talking about their platforms. Paul was particularly disappointing. He was given again few questions and he didn’t take full advantage I felt of his time. The crowd however was extremely hostel to his views on foreign policy and he was booed at least twice. The group of people Fox had rounded up seemed pretty far to right. One guy called Paul ‘certifiably crazy’ and several outright called Hillary socialist and/or communist. Paul came away winning the cell phone texting poll with 34%. Huckabee in 2nd with 27% and Giuliani 3rd with 11%. Sean Hannity again accused Paul supporters of ’stacking the deck’ or otherwise mischievous behavior but stopped short of again accusing them of ‘hacking’ the system. He was far nicer to Dr. Paul in the post interview than times before which was refreshing and while he wasn’t the liveliest during the debate he seemed to have woken up a bit. Interestingly he made a comment on the number of tickets received to give to supporters. He seemed to imply that other candidates got more when Hannity brought up that he was booed. Saying that if given twice as many tickets he could have packed the house.

Overall it was probably the worst debate so far. I’m not familiar with Florida politics but the crowd seemed very neo-conish and hostel to Paul’s platform. The same statements in other debates got him large applauses got him a hardy round of booing. It interesting given Florida is 14th in per capita donations and 3rd in total contributions in the nation to the Paul campaign (including DC.)

USA Daily has a good summary of the event.

• Debate started at approximately 9:00PM EST
• Ron Paul, the only doctor on the stage, was ignored when the question of abortion came up
• At 9:32PM Ron Paul is given his first real question after all other candidates were given a question and some more. The question about his comment on how letting the passengers on the 9/11 flights to have guns may have prevented the hijacking.
• 9:45PM 2nd Ron Paul question: about the war in Iraq
• 9:47: Paul mentions taking marching orders from the Constitution which receives a round of heavy booing mixed with applause. The booing while talking about following the Constitution was unnerving.
• 9:51PM still on the Iraq war question Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul go back and forth in the most entergetic moment in some time in any debate. Huckabee says regardless of whether invading was a mistake we must keep our honor and see it through which receives a large applause as does Paul’s reply that it’s just trying to save face and we need to correct the mistake.
• 10:02PM: Romney talking about bugging mosques. “Some people say, but wait, we have civil liberties” and goes on to imply that those liberties aren’t as important as the one he expects the government to protect most and that being life. The second unnerving moment. Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. –Benjamin Franklin
• 10:13PM: Giulani, talking about why he hasn’t and won’t sign the pledge that he won’t raise taxes like 6 others running have, says the only pledge that matters is the one about supporting the Constitution. Article 2, Section 1: I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. Funny, I heard all kinds of unconstitutional things coming from his mouth.
• 10:18PM Paul gets 3rd question: Talks about getting rid of government programs/bloat. Getting rid of the IRS while Huckabee just advocated the Fair Tax. Approximately adjusted for inflation. We could have the same budget we had in 2000 and completely eliminate the private income tax. At about $1.1T in private income tax subtracted from the nearly $3T for next year’s federal budget with the 2000 budget at $1.8T. It’s definitely the case if we go back to 1995. So while a consumption tax would be better (though the 23% quoted for FairTax is misleading) it’s not as good as a complete removal of the private income tax.
• 10:26PM: 4th Paul question on Iran. Big applause.
• 10:32PM: Huckabee makes similar comment about supporting the Constitution.
• After Debate on H&C: Rudy Guilani makes a smartass comment about Ron Paul not belonging on the stage and how a Paul vs. Gravel debate would be entertaining to watch. “Lots of boos”
• Hannity makes several complaints about Ron Paul’s score in the text message poll Fox is running. Says that the Paulites must be voting multiple times. This however is a lie. You can only vote one per phone and this was confirmed personally. While it is possible Paul supporters could have multiple phones… so could any other candidate supporter and I find it unlikely that people would be hording other’s phones to do this.
• Ron Paul won the text poll with 33% of the votes.