Just got an email from a friend in Texas who heard a Ron Paul ad on CNN radio over XM this morning. He couldn’t tell if it was a normal CNN radio spot or a satellite-radio-only ad, but it still jumped out at him enough to pass along the word. A quick search turns up evidence of Paul’s new spending spree, and the article has lots of good details about his campaign’s relative frugality to this point — even before the November 5th fundraising frenzy, he still had over $5 million on-hand. Clearly, based on the CNN radio ad, he’s at least experimenting with national media in addition to the primary-state ads that the article discusses. Maybe a massive advertising blitz will be enough to break through and convince the mainstream media that he’s a serious candidate, but probably not — he doesn’t fit the official script of how the campaign is supposed to go….
Not that I’m predicting a Paul presidency; the same factors I talked about back in June still apply (for instance, I can’t see the majority of Americans voting for a guy who’d do his best to get rid of Social Security, Medicare and most of the rest of the government benefits and protections average citizens enjoy). But, how about covering the guy as something other than an oddity and letting his ideas stand on their own? Why does every presidential race have to boil down to two or three frontrunners and everyone else, and with the “everyone else” part written off long before a single vote is cast? Not an original thought, I know, but still something that utterly mystifies me about the American political process.
– cpd