Wow...

CNN/Opinion Research - National Poll
8/24 - 8/25

Perry 27
Romney 14
Palin 10
Bachmann 9
Giuliani 9
Paul 6
Gingrich 6
Cain 2
Johnson 2
Santorum 1
Huntsman 1

Bad news for Paul
Good news for Johnson

lol Cain though?

Rick Perry is taking Ron Paul's votes..

Agree, because he's parroting what Ron Paul has been saying for 30 years.

a few thoughts on polling:

- people here seem to think if certain candidates weren't in the race, RP would be doing so much better. I mostly disagree because much more of RP's fanbase is diehard than others'. that being said Perry is taking a lot of his but it is only one poll. said another way, a very small percentage of voters think RP is the second best.

- most of these polls seem to include only registered voters. my theory is that the % of non registered republican voters who will vote for RP is much much higher than other candidates. no?

liberty and libertarian ideas just aren't that popular in America. it's still worth pursuing in my mind. but, there's no doubt in my mind that it's an uphill struggle.

It's gaining traction though. Ron Paul has done much to spread the ideals and is very appealing to many people, the Libertarian party is the 3rd largest party and fastest growing, so we're getting there imo.

yeah, I agree. especially with the left now and the naked entanglements between the government and the corporations. it sucks ron paul has to go for the republican nomination, because he's far more likely to win a general election than to get the republican nomination.

Is this fake or are people just ignoring it?

yeah, I can't say that I know. Ron Paul doesn't believe in no god. he believes in less god. he doesn't believe in no gov't. he believes in less gov't.

are they any more popular elsewhere? its hard for some freedoms to even enter peoples' minds. like every country has a central bank for example.

i know little about foreign politics but it does seem like the conservatives in New Zealand and much of Europe are less religious. in that sense they are more libertarian but not by much. correct me if im wrong.

this is one of maybe two things i disagree with him on. so yea, guess what he isn't perfect nor a true libertarian.

to answer your question, im choosing to accept it.

that's a good point. I don't know if there's anywhere that libertarianism is popular. I'd speculate that America is more libertarian than Europe in general. I wonder how strong the libertarian movement is in Ireland.

not that poplar, yes. his supporters more than doubled in size in 4 years, yes.

time takes time.

THe funny part about this is that the Paulisms Perry has chosen to parrot are the ones that most often get RP labeled "bat**** insane". I mean, look at that hit piece on RP by O'Reilly and Dickhead Morris, focusing on RP's monetary policy. But Perry implies Bernanke is a traitor, and it's "tough, sensible talk".

RP talks about the 10th amendment or leaving things to the states and he's smeared as itching to bring back Jim Crow. Yet Perry chants "state's rights" and has practically advocated secession and he's the establishment's chosen one.

Surprising? Not really.

Whats the problem with it? He sees the fetus as a human with constitutional rights.

Yeah, clearly the next thing we'll see is Rick Perry advocating for ending the federal war on drugs and the media will say what a fresh change he is.

The media is pretty ****ing sickening.

When I was in New Zealand I was surprised how libertarian they were. I came to a few conclusions.

- something about them being isolated makes them more "old fashioned" in politics

- they have almost no military

- they are less religious

- because of their small size there is more patriotism and less "sticking it to the man" in their policies

But actually, they aren't really more libertarian just closer to a republican in the tradition sense of the word.

Basically I realize that the more powerful a country, the more chances it has to become less libertarian/free. The political personality of the people change.

that is the problem with it. it'd be better if there was a wall between church and state. but, nobody's perfect and he still does mention seperation between church and state from time to time and favors leaving it up the local states via the 10th amendment.

+1

age old story, power corrupts.

I do agree with you, and disagree with Ron Paul regarding the separation of church and state, and I further disagree with him when he says we have no state religion. I believe we do have a semi state religion at least. But I do not believe his pro life stance comes from, or mainly from his religion. I believe it comes from him being a physician and having delivered thousands of babies, and having witnessed illegal abortions. He makes the very great point regarding abortion that if he as a physician were to negligently injure a fetus, he could be held legally liable, and in the same token, if a driver negligently causes an accident and the victim was a pregnant woman and the fetus were injured, the negligent driver could be held legally liable.

In all the videos of him regarding abortion, and in Liberty Defined, he does not mention religion regarding the source of his pro life stance.

I heard it was a good book. maybe it'll change some minds.

It's a great book.

Also, I forgot to mention that he sees abortion as force against the fetus, so this is a libertarian basis. As a matter of fact, he uses this to rebute libertarian claims of the mothers right to choose abortion.

It just struck me that this is what's wrong with having a (mostly) consistent philosophy in politics. Any critic can bring up an issue that Ron Paul isn't running on, that wouldn't be on his radar giving the finite term of the presidency, that no other media critics is even bringing up in normal political discussion, but one where you can easily follow a consistent philosophy towards and turn around to roast him for it.

Other politicians don't have this problem because they don't run on their consistent philosophy. Therefore they get to run on the issues they actually want to do something about and nobody thinks to bring up other random shiz that nobody cares about and won't change.

Romney, Perry, and Obama get to answer questions on things they've done, things they want to do, or things that large numbers of people are pushing for them to take care of. Ron Paul supports smaller government, so he gets to go on cable to defend the idea of private roads and Mad Max anarchy.

Messed up incentives to obscure any underlying philosophy.

Ron Paul is running for president, not dictator for life. He can't single handedly get us all the way down the road to his libertarian utopia. Likely as president he would be so anti pork from both sides of the aisle that he couldn't get anything passed through Congress. SS and Medicare are fairly safe because they require bills to change. Wars against foreigners and drugs could on the other hand be scaled down tremendously by a president all out on an island.