Ron Paul Comes to Rock Hill!

Ron Paul came to Rock Hill and signed my shirt.

He spoke at the Freedom Center in downtown Rock Hill. The crowd is estimated to have been around 600.

He was scheduled to arrive at 11 AM, but I heard from a fellow Paul supporter that people were expected to start showing up at 10, which meant that I had to be there at that time.

As I drove past in search of parking, there were already a bit over a dozen supporters on corners of the block waving signs and cheering at cars passing by. Supporters would hand out campaign literature to all who dared to stop.

The event contained people of all walks of life (except minorities, oddly, despite Paul being the most popular Republican among black voters, but they were probably on their way to Columbia for the Oprah/Obama rally), from college students with Mohawks, to the elderly.

Interesting thing to note. If you do a Google News search for "Ron Paul + Rock Hill", you will find a few news articles about the rally held yesterday. In every one of those that I read, it mentioned the college student with a Mohawk. The neat thing about this is that my friend, Jared Philips (mentioned in my very first blog post), was the only person with a Mohawk. As a result, he had dozens of photos taken of him (go to Flickr.com, search "Ron Paul + Rock Hill", and enjoy), and was quoted in the Star-Telegram.

Besides the picture of me in the crowd (my face oddly the only one blurred), the only other pictures of me at the rally so far are of the back of my head while talking to Ron Paul. The campaign said no personal pictures because of time, but that the event photos would end up on the campaign's flickr.com page, but as of this writing they aren't there.

To fulfill my journalistic duty, I asked Ron Paul one question. It went as follows:

Me: "Congressman Paul, recently the wife of Congressman Kucinich said that he would 'absolutely consider' choosing you as his running mate. My question to you is, when you receive the nomination, would you consider choosing Congressman Kucinich as your running mate?"

Paul: (Paraphrased) "Right now I'm concentrating on winning the primaries and haven't given it much though. However, Dennis is a good man and I've spoken to him a couple of times. I can't think that far in the future however."

With that, he signed my shirt, I shook his hand, I got a group photo with him (not posted yet), and was off. It was magical.

Paul places third in Iowa Independent survey

The question was asked "If the Iowa Caucuses were held tonight, what would be their results?"

Granted, the poll is unscientific and is based on some individual's assessment of how candidates would do based on the current political environment in the state, the campaigns themselves, amount of support, how active the support is, etc.

It had this to say about Paul, who placed third:

Ron Paul -- The more we think about it, the more we conclude that none of the remaining candidates on this list have a strong base of support the way Rep. Paul does. His unlikely coalition of supporters does not include many typical caucus-goers, but they are devoted. And to top it all off, the campaign appears to be fairly well organized here, with paid calls, visibility (television, radio, billboards), and direct outreach efforts. Much about the Paul campaign will remain up in the air until caucus night, but a third place finish would certainly raise some eyebrows heading into New Hampshire.

Victory is surely on the way in Iowa, and then onward to New Hampshire.

Ron Paul Straw Poll results

To follow up the post about Romney rigging the straw vote, I thought I'd point out that Ron Paul has done fairly well in all other straw polls.

Of the 47 straw polls, Ron Paul has come in first place 24 times. He has come in the top 3 80% of the time, which seems pretty ridiculous and I'm questioning my math. But after looking at it for a bit I've confirmed that I'm making perfect sense.

If anyone has followed past elections they would know that normally the MSM and Presidential candidates talk about straw poll results all of the time. Since Paul is winning them all, no one seems interested. Well, scratch that. You hear a lot about the Iowa straw poll in which Mike Huckabee came in first and Paul didn't do so hot. That, however, is about the only one they can talk about.

Romney supporters cheat at Florida straw poll

After the CNN/Youtube debate, Florida held a straw poll. Hundreds of Ron Paul supporters came in on buses and the like (paid for by supporters, not by the campaign) to vote in the poll, and "dominated the crowd of 1000 or more guests" at the event.

In the video posted on here from Youtube, and the other 2 youtube videos that you can search, we see Romney supporters cheating by voting multiple times.



In another video, a woman who voiced her complaint with the Pinellas County GOP chairman and straw poll organizer Tony DiMatteo claimed that he threatened to harm her.

"Tony's exact words on the phone to me was, 'If you make a big deal out of this, you will get hurt,'" Sofie Lefebvre said in the video. "And I was shocked. At that point, I realized that there was a lot more corruption going on than we even realized before."

In the end, Romney won the straw poll with 893 votes, with Paul in second with 534. The closest third place contender was Giuliani with a paltry 39 votes, but at least his supporters only voted once!