Libertarian Girl

TIME has come out with an interesting article today on the adjoining Des Moines headquarters of the Ron Paul and Mike Huckabee campaigns. As usual, the reporter gets it completely wrong, yet my prediction is that she will continute to pull a paycheck from a once-prestigious news magazine, possibly with a nice bonus for these gossipy lies she’s handed in.

I’ve been working out of the Paul headquarters at the Des Moines Building. This article makes it seem like Huckabee’s supporters are Southern belles who talk BS about other candidates all day because they have nothing better to do, which is accurate from what I’ve seen of them. They certainly seem to have nothing better to do (every time I see them, the 2-3 Huckabee-ites seem to be chatting away rather than working for their candidate).

Honestly, I laughed when I first saw Huckabee’s headquarters last Friday night. A grand total of two supporters (one male, one female) were talking on phones. Huckabee’s office seemed to consist of one room, mostly filled by Christmas decorations. I went next door to the Ron Paul office, where a sign said to enter five doors down. Five loooooong rooms down I finally got to the entrance to the office, where at least 50 people were working hard at 7pm on a Friday. Honestly, Ron Paul’s people were probably too hard at work to give the TIME reporter the gossip she wanted them to make up (and Huckabee’s people were apparently only too happy to oblige).

First of all, I’d say that while Ron Paul’s operations is majority male, there are plenty of liberty-loving females there, some of them the hardest workers of all. To characterize the show as “all-male” is 1.) a lie, and 2.) discrediting to the women and girls who have been working hard for liberty in the Ron Paul office while Huckabee’s Arkansas transplants have been chatting away on their cell phones in front of the Arkansas flag next door.

I had heard that Ron Paul’s office was bigger than Huckabee’s, but even with a warning I was surprised at the vast difference in size. Ron Paul’s operation really does dwarf Huckabee’s.

“Indeed, thanks to the millions that have poured in over the internet, it has expanded to quadruple its original size, practically swallowing Huckabee’s headquarters — though Huckabee has snagged some additional space a few floors above the storefront. “We’ve got them surrounded,” says Paul’s Iowa communications director, John Zambenini.

I’d also disagree with the implication that the two “sides” don’t have anything to do with each other. If anything, this has more to do with the fact that Huckabee has so few workers in there, working so few hours, than anything else. I’ve seen a few of them on the way to the bathrooms in the basement, and I’ve smiled at them in a “sorry that you’ve picked the wrong candidate, better luck with that next time” sort of way, as have they.

Finally, for the caboose on the Karen Tumulty disinformation train. “…New Year’s Eve. After Huckabee was forced to abruptly end his press conference at which he announced that he would not air a negative ad attacking Mitt Romney but showed it to the assembled media, he left the room in the Des Moines Marriott to do a drop-by visit of his campaign headquarters across the street. He was met there by a gaggle of Paul supporters and peace protesters who surrounded the office and heckled the candidate for his support for the war in Iraq. MSNBC reported that three were arrested.”

What BS. The only reason the Paul supporters were there was because there were many of them at his headquarters, mostly students, and they were curious what the already-existing ruckus was outside. I wasn’t there for the festivities, but when I reported back to the group that CNN was spinning the story as “Ron Paul supporters don’t allow Huckabee into his campaign HQ,” they were genuinely shocked. They didn’t realize how the media would spin it, and they’d stood across the street to watch the goings-on while holding Ron Paul signs. Dumb idea in hindsight knowing what we do about the old media and their lack of journalistic ethics or desire for the facts, but what can I say, they’re students and must have been optimistic that journalists might want the real story.

The anti-war protesters with the “What Would Jesus Bomb” sign were some other group completely, which should have been obvious to any media outlet covering the incident (but of course, that wouldn’t be as sensational a story). In fact, one of the Ron Paul supporters said that he started to tell an anti-war protester about RP, and the person asked what Ron Paul’s stance on the Iraq War is. Not only were they anti-war protesters, they were dumb ones who didn’t realize that a Republican candidate exists who is against the war. They didn’t even know who Ron Paul was. Yet, this gets spun into practically saying that three Ron Paul supporters were arrested. I do like their sign, though… What Would Jesus Bomb? It’s an excellent question, and since Huckabee presents himself as an expert on all things Biblical, why not take the opportunity to ask it?

Finally, the fact that a “rival GOP campaign” (allowed to remain anonymous, of course, no journalistic ethics in sight here for Karen Tumulty) was quoted as saying that the “scruffy” Ron Paul volunteers “probably bathe in there” is just taking it too far. I’m going to tell you this. I’m a heterosexual female, so I don’t go for that type of thing, but if you like beautiful women, you should head on over to the Ron Paul headquarters in Des Moines, IA, and you will not be disappointed. Our women are hotter than any GOP candidates’ campaign, including Huckabee’s two female volunteers, I absolutely guarantee, and we have more of them.

The name of the reporter who wrote all these lies is Karen Tumulty. Saying that Ron Paul supporters are “scruffy,” “probably bathe in there,” and had anything to do with the Huckabee WWJB? debacle is akin to me just completely making things up about someone that I don’t know, like a reporter from TIME magazine.

(By the way, an anonymous source from a rival newsmagazine has provided me with some, shall we say, very interesting tidbits about Karen Tumulty…. but that will have to wait for a future blog post. Stay tuned.)

UPDATE: Tuesday night, New Year’s Day… Huckabee has reached a weeklong high of five supporters in his campaign office, three men and two women. Eve Fairbanks of The New Republic has written an article which more accurately depicts the volunteers at the Des Moines headquarters. Many of them are from the Boone student camp.

Tags: Ron Paul Mike Huckabee, Mike Huckabee Ron Paul, Huckabee Paul, Huckabee Paul Des Moines headquarters, Des Moines Building, Karen Tumulty TIME

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 1st, 2008 at 2:40 pm and is filed under 2008 presidential election, Media, Republican Party, Ron Paul. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.