September 05, 2008

If only Ron Paul supporters had a brain (Adam Kokesh stunt at John McCain speech)

During his GOP convention speech, John McCain was interrupted by a protester named Adam Kokesh, someone who's a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War, a Ron Paul supporter, and a future Bob Barr voter. Kokesh held up a sign (per this interview with him) reading "McCain Votes Against Vets" and yelled "Ask him why he votes against vets!"

That's a good question: why didn't Kokesh ask McCain a specific question along those lines at a designated Q&A session, get it on video, and then upload it to Youtube?

The answer is simple: Ron Paul supporters don't have a single brain between them. In fact, stunts like this are right in line with their previous stunts, such as flying a blimp or conducting parades in period costumes. The conclusion is inescapable: RP's supporters don't have the ability to figure out how counter-productive such things are and they don't have the ability to figure out how to do things that would be effective.

Gosh knows I've tried to tell them. I made a video telling RP's supporters how to succeed almost a year ago. I posted some tips for Ronstock to a couple RP forums. I've left several comments at Digg on this topic, and most have been dugg down despite being the only ones that would help their cause.

It's extremely unlikely, but if there's even just one RP supporter who's able to think things through, ask McCain or his surrogates tough questions about his policies or his associates (or this guy) on video tape and then upload their answers to Youtube.

11/13/08 UPDATE: There are some questions for Obama or his surrogates linked from here. That was posted on October 1, and none of the bloggers listed (except for one guest blogger one time) helped push that plan; if Instapundit et al had pushed that plan hundreds of thousands of people would have seen it and, if someone had been able to ask him a tough question he might not have been elected.

And, asking questions does work, but it all depends on the quality of the questions. See the Joe the Plumber case for an example, but imagine what would have happened if he'd stumped Obama as I did with someone much less famous a few years ago. One blogger did ask a Representative a gaffe-producing question. A TV reporter asked Biden some inflammatory questions which made him look bad; very good questions would have helped discredit him.

Note also the (leftwing) protest against the NAFTA Superhighway which didn't have much of an impact; as pointed out at the link asking discrediting questions would have a far greater impact. I offered similar advice about a protest in Portland. The We Are Change group is one of the few willing to ask questions, but the problem is that their questions are so bad and sometimes so despicable that end up discrediting themselves; they might as well be working for those they pretend to oppose.

And, asking questions isn't something that should just be limited to politicians. For instance, here are three questions for the ACLU.

Posted to Politics at September 5, 2008 11:29 AM