Ron Paul Unfairly Kicked Out of Debates

[Dinner]

Nader cost Gore Florida. Hands down, no debate about it. Ross Perot cost Bush 41 his reelection and put Clinton in the White House.

I doubt Republicans want to see Ron Paul play a similar role since he'd mostly siphon votes from Republicans. Libertarians are just more likely to vote Republican then Democratic and their 2%-5% share of the vote could be key in a lot of states given the last two elections tipped on less then 1% of the vote.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
You give Nader too much credit in engineering Gore's defeat. You forget to factor in Gore himself.

Gore was a crap candidate, but won the national vote, and by all subsequent measures would have won the Florida recount. If it hadn't been for Nader, Florida never would have been in question to begin with. But that's old news.

Looking at his national numbers and his hypocrisy, I'll stick with my contention that Oerdin should share.

His national numbers are at 3% of likely GOP primary voters. Let's say he retains half of that in a general election as a 3rd-party candidate. Given the last 2 elections -- one that was decided by 500 votes, the other of which provided the narrowest re-election victory of a president, ever -- I can't imagine the GOP wants to risk seeing 1-1.5 points siphoned off by Paul.

[Ramo]

The current averages show Paul doing better than Giuliani in IA and better than Thompson in NH. I wouldn't be surprised if he finishes third in one of these states. He's also gonna outraise every other Republican this quarter. Arguably, he's a more viable candidate than Thompson. Leaving him out is completely absurd.

[Deity Dude]

Well I just finished sending my emails to Fov News complaining about this obviously biased decision. I hope others here will do the same, whether or not they are Ron Paul supporters.

[MOBIUS]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
You give Nader too much credit in engineering Gore's defeat. You forget to factor in Gore himself.

And you think Oerdin should share HIS drugs...?

[faded glory]

Originally posted by Impaler[WrG]
That could be but this is a STATE debate, using National polling numbers is obscene, the whole point of the early primary states is to test the candidates in a small isolated contest ware people without national recognition can prove themselves.



Wouldn't that make him the Banana option??

exactly

[Barnabas]

I support Giuliani

I think America is ready for its first drag queen president

[DanS]

Originally posted by Deity Dude
Well I just finished sending my emails to Fov News complaining about this obviously biased decision. I hope others here will do the same, whether or not they are Ron Paul supporters.

Why should people who are not Ron Paul supporters carry his water?

[The diplomat]

Ron Paul is much more of a Libertarian than he is a Republican.

[Arrian]

Why should people who are not Ron Paul supporters carry his water?

If one thinks it's unfair or wrong, even if one does not support Ron Paul, maybe?

The debates are crap anyway, so my gives a **** is broken.

-Arrian

[Kuciwalker]

I dunno. Having lived in Iowa during a caucus year, I thought it was great to have small states up front, since it forces candidates to deal with voters in person rather than just buying lots of media time/space. The Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary look way, way, way more like democracy than anything that follows them.

Apart from the fact that the candidates aren't running for President of Iowa.

[LordShiva]

[q=Dogbert]My policy is to give all teh money in teh treasury to Iowans. But I might flip-flop after teh first primary[/q]

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Rufus T. Firefly


I dunno. Having lived in Iowa during a caucus year, I thought it was great to have small states up front, since it forces candidates to deal with voters in person rather than just buying lots of media time/space. The Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary look way, way, way more like democracy than anything that follows them.

That being said, it doesn't always have to be the same two small states up front, although Iowa and NH are both swing states, which makes them especially interesting.

Why does it even have to be small states. You could pick a few counties out of a large state, and get the same kind of retail politics. If some counties, like LA or Brooklyn are too big, you could take selected precincts.


And of course Iowa and NH only became swing states recently, NH historically was solid GOP, and Iowa heavily leaned GOP until the upper Missippi began to lean more Dem.

[Wezil]

Originally posted by Oerdin
Nader cost Gore Florida. Hands down, no debate about it.

I'll debate. Nadar did well b/c the Dems were pathetic. Why does Nadar take the blame for a Dem Party that dems couldn't bring themselves to vote for?

Yes Nadar took "democratic" votes but only b/c the Democrats lost them. Their fault not his.

[Deity Dude]

Originally posted by DanS


Why should people who are not Ron Paul supporters carry his water?

For the same reason that I am 100% opposed to HIllary Clinton but I would still do the same thing if they chose to leave her out of the debate. We don't carry water for people because we agree with them we carry water so as to support a democratic system.