Ron Paul's 1%

Attention Ron Paul supporters. You are the 1%.

To be honest, you are the less than 1%. I don’t mean you are wealthy beyond imagination. I mean that when we honestly look at the numbers, the Ron Paul Revolution consists of less than 1% of the population.

I am going to give you some cold hard numbers. I’ll attempt to give you my opinion on them, however, numbers are just numbers. They don’t bend to the passion of those who wish they were different. Delusions of grandeur never helped any revolution and our movement is no different. As a fellow die-hard liberty activist such as yourself, please believe me when I tell you that it gives me no pleasure to peel back this façade. The only comfort I have in this is my own interpretation of these numbers and how they relate to some of the less popular decisions the Paul campaign has made.

First of all, there are over 300 million Americans in this country. Even if voter fraud was massive in this primary season, Ron Paul will have received at best, 3 million votes. If the voter fraud was not massive, or non-existent, and he received fewer, either way, the number of Americans who felt enough outrage over our system to get involved for liberty was still less than 1% of the population. 1% does not a revolution make.

Humbling as that may be, the more damaging evidence is that only around 1% of those 3 million voters actually involved themselves in local and state conventions. Imagine if 3 million Ron Paul supporters took the extra step to try to become state delegates, alternates, and local precinct committeemen. If every one of those 3 million citizens was as involved as they could be, there would be no way for the establishment to keep the nomination from Ron Paul. However, not every Paul supporter took that step. No disrespect to any of them, but simply put, the movement isn’t as large as we think it is, and the most passionate among us are fewer than we think they are.

The reason I bring this up is because a campaign with millions of our dollars to spend on polling and statistical analysis surely knows this. When Ron sees that only tens of thousands of supporters are taking the steps to win in Tampa, out of 300 million Americans, you can rest assured that he knows that even as the message has grown, and the numbers have grown, 76 year old Ron Paul will not live to see the changes he has worked 40 years to achieve, unless the movement becomes mainstream. 3 million primary voters is not mainstream.

Another cold hard truth, which I’m sure you already know, is that our democratic republic isn’t run by the majority. It is run by the majority who show up. Even as that may be good for our movement, consider the numbers from 2008. While only 30% of the nation actually voted for Barack Obama, less than 10% actually voted in the primaries. This means that every 4 years, the majority of voters will vote blindly for one of the two candidates handed to them by the minority who decide the primaries. It will take around 63 million votes to win a general election. Considering the best case scenario that Ron Paul has 3 million primary voters, this means that for a Ron Paul victory, or a liberty candidate in general, 60 million uninformed Americans are going to need to vote for “our” candidate.

Think about this carefully. Right now, the R3VOLUTION consists of 3 million people at best. We need 63 million. The sad truth is that we will not get to that number through this Revolution alone. The saving grace is that Ron has known this for quite some time, and this is the reason he runs as a Republican. You and I both know that this year, tens of millions of voters will vote for Mitt Romney without really knowing anything about him. As sad as that is, this is our current system. Even sadder still, if the liberty movement is going to take the White House, we will need 10’s of millions of uninformed voters to voter for our candidate.

It has been a once in a life time privilege to support a candidate with a perfect voting record and absolutely nothing on his resume which we need to “explain away”. Unfortunately, the reason Ron Paul is in such a position is also the reason that we cannot currently get the 10’s of millions of “drone” voters to vote for him in November. With that said, the path to the changes we demand is currently through the Republican Party, but it will also require an evolution from what Ron has done.

It is a dirty path. It’s an ugly path. It is a path that may involve some disheartening pseudo-endorsements. However, if we did not believe that the democratic process, and the presidency in particular were the paths to the changes we demand, we wouldn’t be making such a huge deal about Ron Paul’s candidacy, and we wouldn’t be making such a huge deal about Rand Paul’s half-hearted endorsement of Mitt Romney. In addition, if we continue to believe that we can win the presidency with 50 thousand hardcore activists, and at most, 3 million luke warm voters, then we will remain the extremely loud minority who pats themselves on the back for trying, yet failing to achieve the changes our leader has worked decades for.

To put it bluntly, my opinion is that Rand Paul is doing what his father told him to do. My opinion is that in 2016, tens of millions of Americans will vote for Rand even though they don’t understand liberty, and this will be because of Ron’s genius. Although the most passionate among us will disavow Rand forever, what is not my opinion is that the most passionate among us are the minority within a group that is already a minority. If those perfectionists abandon Rand in 2016, well…..a few thousand voters isn’t going to be the difference. The numbers don’t lie. Ron knows this, and if Rand were going to be Ron II, then our movement would continue to be nothing more than the 1%