Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Ben Swann/Reality Check Puzzled by RP Announcement

Benn Swann writes:
What is going on with the Ron Paul Campaign?

The national media got the story wrong about Paul "dropping out" but then comes an email from Jesse Benton to supporters. I have been forwarded this email and asked to explain it. Frankly, I cannot.

I will continue to look into the issue but the bottomline is that the delegate fight IS going to Paul, so why back down? Staying humble and keeping your head down during the fight makes sense. Sending your supporters a note to say, "We aren't going to win but keep sending us money!" That doesn't compute.

Also, why would Jesse Benton be using the AP delegate count? I don't have any insider information, but I will start digging. If you have insider knowledge.. hit me up bswann@fox19.com
to be clear, this looks to me like odd doings by people around Ron Paul rather than anything Ron Paul himself is doing.
(htJM)

13 comments:

  1. It was only a matter of time before Dr Paul received the call....
    "Dr Paul. Here's how it's going to go. You're going to drop out. We wouldn't want anything to happen to those beautiful grandchildren you have, would we?"

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  2. It was a wonderful fantasy to believe that a reputable, honest man with the public's interest at heart could ride into the White House on his white steed, legalizing drugs, busting up the Fed and dismantling the military industrial complex.
    It is important to wake up from this fantasy. There are TRILLIONS of dollars at stake. Legalize cocaine and it drops in price from $100 a gram to $2 a lb. Legalize marijuana and it drops from $3000 a lb to $10 a lb. Dismantle the military industrial complex and 10,000 companies take a major hit to their bottom line. Bust up the Fed and trillions disappear from their pockets.

    The money power will not go gracefully. The American people, no, the world's people, have a very powerful, extremely dangerous, mafia-like parasite feasting on their productive activity. It will do anything possible, including use violence, to maintain its place on its hosts' body.

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  3. Nice to see a real journalist doing work. Thanks Ben Swann.

    As for the campaign, I'd bet huge sums that the grand plan is honorable, having spent decades learning from Mises & Rothbard and making himself a marginalised and much mocked figure in the defense of liberty RP embodies the Misean principle "tu ne cede Malik's..." so I'm sure RP isn't selling out - unless there was threats made towards his grandchildren perhaps???

    Definitely seems that Jesse Benton is trying to sabotage the campaign though, funnily enough a top Google suggestion for his name is "Jesse Benton should be fired."

    The Paulians have long been suspicious of Benton.

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    1. Is it true that Benton is RP grandson-in-law? If so, this may be a stumble, or some kind of fake out, or the death throws of the campaign. I think it is important that people actually read what he has written or what the campaign has announced and keep their heads up and in the game. Persistence is the only thing that counts in this world.

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  4. Anon 7:39am.....brilliant comment and absolutely cuts to the heart of the matter. Eliminating this parasite, without destroying the entire planet, will be the most difficult task in human history.

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  5. "to be clear, this looks to me like odd doings by people around Ron Paul rather than anything Ron Paul himself is doing."

    Why then Ron Paul did not fire those people?

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    1. Unfortunately, because Jesse Benton is Ron Paul's grandson-in-law. Difficult to fire.

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  6. Benton is a doofus. He gives himself credit for the "delegate" strategy (which is brilliant, but I can't believe it was HIS idea. Probably some unheralded grass roots geek.

    I cringe whenever I hear him speak, or even see his bullet head.

    A few months ago, he viciously dissed Russia Today, saying "who needs THEM?", when RT was the ONLY media outlet that was fair (nay, GENEROUS) to Dr. Paul.

    What a shame that that clown is such a position. Some say he's a plant. I don't know, but by his deeds ye shall know him.

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    1. Reagan did the delegate strategy in 76, and Obama used it in 08 to win states despite Hillary getting the popular vote totals. It was literally the difference between obama and hillary in the 08 campaign and allowed obama to survive the destruction he faced in a number of primary states where Hillary whooped him.

      My point is that the delegate idea is nothing new at all, and I even remember Paul supporters saying they would do this back in the 08 race. There is no way Benton created this idea.

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  7. I wonder if we can glean any information from Lew Rockwell's posts on Political Theater. There have been some pretty scathing personal remarks, especially and including about Romney himself.

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  8. The whole thing is very strange. Maybe Wenzel, or Ben Swann, or Lew Rockwell can get to the bottom of this. There are just far too many weird circumstances surrounding this announcement that really isn't much of a change in policy for the campaign, yet it had to be known this would be spun as dropping out.

    It does not add up -- especially taking place right after several embarrassing defeats for Romney against paul in the delegate battles. Paul has never flip flopped in my life, but I don't know how I would handle him endorsing romney or making a deal with him. I wouldn't mind if he just stays neutral at all, but if he endorses Romney in exchange for a few words in a GOP plank that do not impact anything, it will be a complete blow to the liberty movement Paul has created.

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  9. I was at at the Ames straw poll and the main host for RT (i don't know her name) tried interviewing Ron Paul but Jesse Benton would not let her. I thought this was pretty strange because RT has a pretty libertarian bent and always seemed friendly to Ron. We talked to her later and she said that the Jesse (or the Ron Paul campaign, I don't remember which) has some kind of beef with RT but she did not go into details.

    I have been around Jesse a number of times and I always thought he was rather rude, I just thought he was protecting Ron from the tin foil hat crowd. Still, it has never set right with me that he would keep energetic people away from Ron.

    I had no idea that he was Ron Paul's campaign manager until recently. I was told that he was Ron's bulldog. I just thought he was a security guard or something, I did not think he was running the campaign. It was when I saw Tom Woods in liberty chat saying something like "I would not have Jesse in a thousand miles of my campaign" was when I started getting suspicious. Tom also said that the campaign staff (I think referring to Jesse) declined his help in campaigning. It seemed that Woods was a little ticked off about that.

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    1. I have seen Woods state that he would not be allowed on the Ron Paul campaign, so it finally makes sense on why that is the case. Woods had offered all sorts of free advice from talking points that Paul eventually embraced much later on in the debate schedule where it was nowhere near as effective, to tv ad strategy, etc. Woods would have done ten times better than Benton at developing campaign strategy, and we would have seen paul perform even better.

      The question is why did Benton block russia today and tom woods from Paul's campaign when they could only help him? Is benton just a moron, or is it something more sinister? How much influence does benton have on Paul as far as endorsing romney? Let's hope not much.

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