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I have not really been looking forward to the coming 08 Presidential election, as a true conservative from an economic stand point, quite liberal from a social stand point (in other words do what you want, just don’t ask me to pay for it) and a believer in the US Constitution there has not been a lot to get excited about.  It has honestly already been narrowed down to a 4 Horse race, with Clinton and Obama on one side and Rudy and Romney on the other.  In essence most Americans will once again have to choose the “lesser of two evils” when November 2008 comes around.

Then something happened, I was on YouTube and found this video of Congressman Ron Paul speaking about liberty, constitutional government and a noninterventionist foreign policy.  I had heard of Ron before but always with a sort of angle that made him seem a bit wacky.  Well, I should have known when both the left and right don’t like you it usually means you speak the truth.  Yet I don’t want to turn this post into an “elect Ron Paul” commercial I want to really demonstrate what to date is the best organized Web 2.0 Marketing campaign I have ever seen. 

The only reason I really have to give you the initial background on Ron Paul is so you can understand the “perfect storm” that is really making his online efforts blow away everyone including the top candidates.So what is this “perfect storm” and why may we never see a single individual dominate something to this level again.  I am going to demonstrate a bit of “political opinion” here but it is necessary to understand the entire phenomenon and by the way I do not agree with all of the points below, I just understand their impact on the 2008 campaign.  

Condition One – Total dissatisfaction with the government as a whole.  While many democratic pundits and candidates are making a big deal that Bushes latest approval rating is 30% from the latest  CBS/New York Times Poll run on July 20-22nd they leave out the fact that Congress as a whole now has a worse rating of 26%.  In short people are totally unhappy with the whole mess right now and Paul is definitely a change from both “sides of the isle”

Condition Two – The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  It seems no matter which side of this issue you are on most agree it is not being handled correctly.  People either want us out or want the war prosecuted fully.  No one wants our troops on a radio asking for permission to shoot back.  Even most people that want to see this war won would rather end it then fight it under the current conditions.  While Ron is for ending the war he also is on record from the beginning stating that if we were going to go to war, then we should have declared war.  That is a statement that is very hard to argue with as it is backed by both constitutional and international law.

Condition Three – The immigration issue.  By and large over 80% of Americans want to see illegal immigration put to a stop, what Congress tried to give us was “comprehensive immigration reform”.  Now I have never heard one person on the street say they wanted, “comprehensive immigration reform” people say they want illegal immigration stopped.  What has the government done (under both Democrats and Republicans) to actually stop or even slow the issue down?  Nothing and people are not happy, remember when the Immigration Bill was before the Senate, so many people called in against it they actually crashed the senate switch board, that has never happened before.

Condition Four – All the top tier Republican candidates are far more liberal then conservative.  Republicans, (the average Joe and Jane ones) are disgusted, if you watch Mitt Romney debate Ted Kennedy on YouTube you won’t be able to tell who the Liberal is, and Rudy Gulaini enacted almost Nazi like gun control in New York City.   Neither really seems like a great Republican Hope.

Condition Five – Ron Paul has a record that is 100% consistent with what he says.  Now this is different for politics.  See the reality is that agree or disagree with Paul and his views no one can attack his integrity.  Everyone says they won’t raise taxes but Paul has never voted once to raise taxes in close to two decades of service as a Congressman.  He also has never taken a single trip at tax payer expense.  While many can find fault with Ron Paul’s positions, no one can claim he does not have actions that are consistent with his statements.  Can you say that about any other presidential candidate right now?  It is important to understand that this track record goes back to the late 1970s and took that long to have the creditability it has today.

Condition Six – Web 2.0 and Social Media have gained wide spread main stream acceptance.  There is no way a person like Ron Paul could have launched the massive social media success he is having today in 2004, the technology and acceptance of it were not far enough along.  Social Media is still very new and hence the high priced marketing firms (that’s what they are) for the top tier candidates don’t really know how to leverage it yet.  This will change and there will be social media specialists involved in future elections but at this point it is almost impossible for anyone to out do Ron Paul online, he has taken what is known as first mover advantage.

Condition Seven - Ron Paul has a massive technologically savvy fan base which was grown out of attempts to keep him out of main stream debates and main stream media.  Quite simply the efforts of the big Republican candidates to marginalize Paul in the big media have backfired.  Paul supporters were angry about being pushed out of debates and said the hell with it and went online, they made videos, wrote blogs and pushed everything into the social media world.  Now it only takes a hundred votes or so to tip a story on Digg, so with a million or so supporters tying together with the net getting traction is pretty easy.

Condition Eight – Long term marathon like domination of social media is only possible with genuine support.  Sure you can buy some Diggs for a story from an Indian company and push it up to the top of Digg, you can hire a snazzy firm to make cool viral videos and you can do all sorts of cool jazzy Web 2.0 stuff with a big budget.  Yet you can’t buy genuine enthusiasm at all levels of society.  Simply put Ron Paul,s supporters take the time to rate videos, email stories, vote on Digg, etc.  While many far left Democrats or far right Republicans will do this for their parties, those groups don’t get much action from the every day supporter that makes up the majority of Americans.  The Paul message has touched off something in the “every day American” that none of the big players have been able to reach regardless of party or how much money they spend.

Condition Nine – Americans are primed to vote “for something”.  Think about this, how many times have you heard, “I voted for the lesser of two evils” or similar statements about an election?  When you voted in 2004 did you vote “for Bush” or “for Kerry” or is it more accurate to say you voted “against Bush” or “against Kerry”?  People seem to want to vote “for Ron Paul”, while most political discussion about the top candidates is going like this, “Who is more likely to beat Hillary, Gulaini or Romney” or “would we have a better change to win in November with Barock or Clinton”?  This is not opinion listen to talk shows and left or right leaning you will hear this type of discussion going on.  No one is really talking about who would be better for America, only how much money they have raised, how good their marketing is and which is the stronger candidate for the general election.  I think many Americans are tired of voting against someone.

Condition Ten – Ron Paul’s campaign has 100% embraced the Internet.  While Hillary wants to “chat” by video in her campaign announcement and some hot girl has a “Crush on Obama” it is clear they are 100% commercial in nature, one to sell Hillary an the other to sell T-Shirts.  Contrast that with Paul, who also has a lot of very well put together videos by his staff yet still enjoys massive numbers of user created videos by people that simply want to be part of the campaign.  Further the Paul campaign is doing everything with an online angle, using the net to boost support at straw poles, solicit people to make phone calls or send letters along with every other activity common to a political campaign.  It is this integration that Paul’s people have used to create the massive success in the Social Media space.

So what does this mean?  Can the dark horse Ron Paul campaign actually pull out a victory?  Only time will tell and any honest person will tell you the odds are long.  Many would point out that Paul has only polled so far at 1-2% at best among the other GOP hopefuls.  While Paul supporters would point out two very interesting things, first that with the massive buzz on the internet around Paul that this number is clearly far to low and none of them have gotten a call to answer on of these polls yet.  Second that about this time in the election cycle Bill Clinton also had only 2% of the polls and Jimmy Carter had less then 1%.

To me the phenomenon we see in the Social Media space for Ron Paul is genuine and as real as any.  The why behind it is pretty easy to understand though, with just a few thousand “fans” in various parts of social media it is very easy for one competitor to dominate others.  Many would point out that Gulaini, Romney, Thompson, Clinton and Obama all have far more “fans” out there so why don’t they enjoy the same prominence in the Web 2.0 world?

The answer to this is also quite simple to understand.  The top candidates are having their voices heard on television and radio.  The Republicans have almost every talk radio station and Fox News in their pockets and the Democrats have Air America on the radio and on television they have every channel other then Fox news equally sewn up.  In all of these arenas Paul has gotten very little room to voice his opinion and when he does either side rolls out the pundits to detract from the Paul message and explain around the positive response to his message.

So what choice is there for Paul’s supporters to make?  The only avenue open to them is to turn to the one medium today that is not censored or controlled, the Internet.  Fortunately for Paul, his supporter and America there has never been a better time, the ten factors I mentioned above have converged to create a Perfect Web 2.0 Storm the only question is how far can the storm carry him?

To me the biggest impact thus far is the creation of belief in his supporters that Ron Paul can win.  To be honest I think even a few months ago the most ardent supporters only were supporting Paul to make a point and help a new voice be heard, none including Paul himself believed he could win.  Yet now with millions of view on YouTube, thousands upon thousands of Diggs and tens of thousands of “friends” and “connections” across a myriad of web services something quite inspiring is happening among both new and old supporters of the Paul campaign and that is belief.  Supporters are starting to believe that Ron Paul can actually win as can be seen in Ron's Recent Visit to Google.

To me it doesn’t matter if that belief is well founded or not, the reality is for any chance to exist, belief must come first.  It is belief that creates excitement, belief that raises contributions and belief that encourages active participation.  The real success thus far of the Social Media explosion for Ron Paul is the creation of this belief and what that will do is make Ron Paul a bigger factor in the primary elections then anyone believed was possible at the beginning of 2007 and indeed with out the Internet, Social Media and Web 2.0 it never could have happened.

~ Jack Spirko

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