Run Ron Paul
7:07 PM - Public
Ron Paul backers’ plan: Transform the GOP »Arlington, Virginia (CNN) — Ron Paul supporters have a plan. As they doggedly work the Republican system from the ground up, electing more of their team as delegates to the Republican National Convent...
Arlington, Virginia (CNN) — Ron Paul supporters have a plan.As they doggedly work the Republican system from the ground up, electing more of their team as delegates to the Republican National Convention, they have a heavyweight plan that’s markedly different from the rumors of convention subterfuge and the guess of simply getting their candidate to the podium.
“We want to change the Republican Party,” said Chris Stearns, the Virginia state director for the Ron Paul campaign. “We are making sure our people get in positions of leadership — in the nation, in their state, in their county and city, all the way down to the grass roots level.”
Libertarians such as Stearns aspire to nothing less than the kind of bottom-to-top takeover that proved so successful for the religious right and anti-abortion forces in the 1980s. Many of the men and women who swept into local party office then inhabit top rungs of the GOP now. And similar to that movement, Ron Paul and his campaigners for liberty are looking down the road.
“This is not just for this term,” Stearns told CNN Radio from the southern end of the state, “but four, six or eight years from now.”
Nearly 200 miles away, in northern Virginia, a separate Ron Paul supporter is similarly forward looking.
“Four years, eight years, 12 years, we are here for the long haul,” said Patrick Bailey, a 26-year-old who moved from New York to Washington specifically to get involved in electoral politics.
He plunged in on Saturday as one of three Paul supporters running for delegate to the national convention from Virginia’s 8th Congressional District.
Battle in the grass roots
That kind of local party election is often ignored by headlines and pundits, but it’s where Ron Paulians are waging their most furious battle …
Add a comment...
