Kyle Varner’s Blog

posted by Kyle on Aug 12

This morning I got up at 5:30 and was at the Ron Paul tent at 6:30 in the morning.   My first task was to go to the parking lot and greet voters getting off of the Mitt Romney buses.  We were there a little early, which was actually great because we got to watch Ron Paul supporters arrive in droves.  Every third car or so had a Ron Paul sign on it.  We started off the day with a lot of energy, and the Ron Paul cars would honk and we would cheer.  It was really great.  Our energy and enthusiasm grew.

At around 9:00 AM I headed back to the tent to hear Ron Paul speak.  Unfortunately, he was not there.  I learned that Mrs. Paul had heart problems and he was with her at the hospital.  I headed out to pass out “Gun Owners for Ron Paul” fliers, and when I got back I received the news that Mrs. Paul was recovering well and that she had told Ron to stop babying her and get over to the straw poll.  At 11:00 AM I heard him give his first speech.

The Mitt Romney people were a nasty bunch.  One of them called me a “pinko” for supporting immediate withdrawal from Iraq.  I got lots of dirty looks from them, and I never once said or did anything mean to them.  I smiled at them, said hi, and handed them literature if they wanted it.  Almost every Ron Paul volunteer with whom I spoke agreed that the Mitt Romney people were really nasty.  But hey, socialism is a nasty ideology.

At around 12:00, we had a big march through the grounds of the straw poll.  The group was so large that from the front I couldn’t see the back.  We chanted “Ron Paul” very loudly for a good half an hour.  I went into the Hilton Coliseum along with 149 other Ron Paul volunteers, and we filled the “mosh pit”.  We cheered loudly for Dr. No, and we made a huge impression.  A senior campaign staffer told me that Ron Paul was very very thrilled with our enthusiasm.

Later I handed out more literature, chatted with reporters and other volunteers, and had a great time.

Around 6:45 PM we all headed to the Hilton Coliseum to hear the results.  Some voting machine screw up delayed the announcement for a long time, but we kept cheering and chanting for Ron Paul for almost the whole time we waited.

I had hoped that we would get higher than 5th place, but I am certainly not disappointed with our showing.  The polls showed us at 2%, and we got 10%.  We worked hard, and we got our message out.  We got noticed.  We still have a lot of work ahead of us, but we’re making progress.

I have slept maybe 6 hours in the last two days.  Both of my feet have blisters on them.  I have a sunburn.  It is all worth it.  We’re going to keep working hard, keep fighting hard, and we’re going to advance the agenda of the freedom movement!

Tomorrow I will get in the car and head back to Spokane and start working on my Ron Paul fund raiser on the 20th.  We’re going to have a great time, and we’re going to raise a lot of money.  Vive La rEVOLution!

posted by Kyle on Aug 11

I attended RonStock tonight, which was an amazingly fun time.  The venue was over packed, and I was very, very happy about that.  Ron Paul showed up, gave a speech, his wife said a few words and he signed a ton of autographs and posed for pictures.  My buddy Jesda has the pictures on his camera, so I can’t upload them here now.  It was a great time.

In the hotel lobby where I am staying I sat down with several other Ron Paul supporters (there are a ton of us here).  We chatted with a John Cox staffer.  The guy didn’t know what John Cox stood for.  It was sad.

We are going to kick ass tomorrow!  I’m getting up at 5:30 in the morning to get to the straw poll and work all day.  I am also going to send in my resume and see if the campaign wants to hire me.  This is exciting and very important!!!!

Our support is HUGE, and this is just the tip of the iceberg!

posted by Kyle on Aug 10

I just got the following email from the Ron Paul campaign. It was regarding statistics for the mail Iowa program. I sent 100 handwritten letters to Iowa voters in the Des Moines area. The campaign sent me the addresses. The total number of voters in the Des Moines area who got the handwritten letters: 91,886!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This is amazingly awesome. Here is the email:

Hello friends of Ron Paul,

I’ve had a lot of interest expressed regarding the statistics of the Mail Iowa program and I’m very excited to announce that you all have exceeded the initial goal! Great job and congratulations!! There were 91,886 names and addresses that were sent out to approximately 1395 requests by volunteers! Ron Paul supporters are awesome!

Due to the focus on the Straw Poll at this time there has been no discussion about continuing the Mail Iowa program. I think it has been a huge success and a great idea that should be continued.

I am confident this will be continued and I have some ideas to improve the process and hopefully make it more user friendly. Your cooperation and understanding is greatly appreciated.

Thanks again.

Jerry Schnoebelen
Volunteer, Mail Iowa
Ron Paul 2008 Presidential Campaign Committee

I am more optimistic than ever that we’re going to make an excellent showing. I also got another email informing me that the Iowa GOP expects there to be way more undecided voters than originally estimated. This bodes very, very, very well for the Ron Paul campaign, because it probably means that those voters don’t like any of the choices that they know about. The media hasn’t exactly covered Ron Paul, so when they really get a chance to hear from him and learn about his message of individual liberty, they will be very likely to vote for Ron Paul!

posted by Kyle on Aug 10

The drive to Iowa was a long one, and I drank way too much coffee.  So, now I can’t fall asleep.  I took a trazodone, so hopefully that will kick in soon.

I decided to take a walk in the parking lot of my hotel and look at the bumper stickers of the various cars.  I saw one for Huckabee, with a license plate from Oklahoma.  I can’t understand why anyone would decide to drive all that way just because they admire someone for losing a lot of weight.  I can’t think of anything else that is unique about Huckabee.

There was also a sticker for John Cox with a license plate from Illinois.  I saw someone in the lobby with a John Cox shirt on.  She saw my Ron Paul shirt and gave me a dirty look.  I got a few other dirty looks as well.  It seems like some people are bitter that these spammers are crashing their jingoistic “party”.

The good news:  I saw TWO cars with Ron Paul rEVOLution bumper stickers!!!!!!  That is in addition to mine, which only has a sign taped to the window because it is a rental and putting a bumper sticker on a rental is a big no-no.

That is all for now.

posted by Kyle on Aug 10

I am in my hotel room, and I am very, very exhausted.

I will sleep in tomorrow and when I wake up I’ll attend the “RonStock” event.  I’ll update here as I can.

Here is an email I sent to the Ron Paul meetup group before I left.  It is mainly regarding the fund raiser at my house on the 20th of August.

Dear Fellow Patriots,

This is the last call for a ride to Iowa.  My friend Jesda and I will be leaving tomorrow around 12:00 Noon.  We will have room in the car for up to three other people.  If you want to go, please let me know.

Since I won’t be back until around the 14th, and I’m going to have my house party on the 20th, I really need people to help out to make it a success.  Rob and Chad have kindly agreed to help cook, which is wonderful.  Here is the other help that I need so that we can make this a success:

1)  I need someone to coordinate tickets or whatever.  Rather than set a mandatory donation, I’d rather have a suggested donation.  Remember, I am paying for all of the food out of pocket, so anything donated just goes straight to the campaign.  I will have a couple of computers set up so people can donate at the RonPaul2008.com website if they’d rather not write a check.  A way that usually packs these events is to get group members to commit to “selling” a certain number of tickets.  So, if you’d like to coordinate this, please claim the job.  If you’d like to commit to bringing a certain number of people, also please let me know.

2)  Silent Auction Coordinator:  Yoko has been kind enough to donate some t-shirts that we can sell, but I need someone to organize donations of items for a silent auction.  We only need four or five items, preferably having something to do with freedom.  Items I have seen at previous silent auctions benefiting the freedom movement are:  books, dvds, guns, framed copies of the constitution, declaration of independence, magna carta etc.  If someone owns a business and wants to donate a gift certificate, that is cool as well.

3)  If you have some kind of a special dish that you like to make, please feel free to bring it and let me know.

4) Entertainment:  I’d like it if someone can burn some DVDs of Ron Paul speaking and stuff like that so that we can put them on the TV.

5)  If anyone would like to volunteer to help set up and/or clean up, please also let me know.

6)  Campaign Materials:  It would be great to have campaign materials to give to people who attend so that they can take them out and coordinate them.

I’ll be keeping up with email as much as I can while I’m on the road and at the straw poll. I’m going to be focusing on reaching out to undecided voters and those who are confused and thus considering doing a bad thing ( i.e. voting for one of the statists).

Thank you all for your help!

Kyle

posted by Kyle on Aug 6

Two pretty awesome things happened today:

1)  I put up a LOT of signs and banners.  I was putting up a banner on a chain link fence on a very busy road.  Someone drove by, honked, and yelled, “Yeah Ron Paul!”.  This made me smile.

2)  On the way to a shooting range about 1/2 mile south of town, I saw a Ron Paul sign.  The only thing was, that this particular Ron Paul sign looked nothing like the Ron Paul signs from the Spokane Ron Paul meetup.  So….someone else is out there supporting him on their own!  This revolution is a powerful, growing organic thing.

Oh yeah, and this morning I watched the totally lame ABC presidential candidates debate at a bar with a couple of cool guys from the Ron Paul meetup.

It was a good day.  I will see what kind of Ron Paul agitating I can do tomorrow.

Vive La rEVOLution! 

posted by Kyle on Aug 6

I sent this message to the Spokane, Washington meetup group email list. The various invitations apply to all lovers of liberty. Vive La rEVOLution!

So, I won’t be in the states much longer, and I want to do everything I can while I am here for Ron Paul. So, here it is:

1) I placed maybe 75 signs and 10 banners or so, I lost count but I filled up my car at Yoko’s three times today. Tens of thousands of people driving to work tomorrow will wonder, “Who is Ron Paul?”. If they work for the government, they will probably proceed to log onto their work computer and Google him and spend the next four hours watching Ron Paul YouTube videos. If they work in the private sector they might have to wait until their scheduled break time.

As far as upkeep on the signs goes, there will probably need to be a lot, but it may not be as hard as I first thought. If we take new placards with us we might just be able to take off the old, curled up and/or illegible ones off and staple new ones on right on the spot. More on stapling placards in a moment.

2) I will be hosting a Fund Raiser Barbecue on August 20th, from 6:30 PM to 9:30 PM. I don’t have many more details, but I would really love it if some of you would help me coordinate it. I am a horrible cook, so I really, really, really need someone who can man the barbecue! Everything that is raised goes straight to the campaign, I will pay for all of the food and booze out of pocket. July 20th is Ron Paul’s birthday, and there are going to be lots of fund raisers for him all over the country. It is important for us to remember that the moronic media doesn’t think that someone is worth paying attention to unless they have a lot of money. If we can quadruple our fund raising this quarter, like we did last quarter, we would take in close to 10 Million. That would put us in the top tier. If showing the numbers to the media was the only thing that our fund raising would do it would still be worth it. But we’re going to have a TOUGH fight in the early states, which we have to win to be a contender for the big stack of primaries that will take place soon after. Ron Paul needs money for ads, organization and who knows what else. Plus, he needs money to fight in the later states after making a huge push in the early states. Let’s do our best to give it to him!

3) Guerrilla Warfare: Putting up these signs gave me an idea. The placards on the signs are the perfect size to staple on telephone polls. There are wooden telephone polls all over the city, and it wouldn’t take much time for a few people to go and plaster entire areas with Ron Paul signs. Density gets noticed, and if every telephone poll on street X has 3 Ron Paul placards on it, everyone stopped in traffic will have their attention drawn to them. If we can get more placards from the same place the ones we used for the signs, that is great, but if not I will still try to figure something out.

When I was out today, putting up signs and banners, I felt like every time I put a sign or banner up I was shouting at someone, making them stop ignoring the freedom message. We are getting past the ignoring part, which is good. We need to let all of Spokane know that the rEVOLution is underway. Anyone want in on this? I’m a night owl and would love to do an all night thing. Please let me know if you’d like to help with this!

Kyle

PS: A friend and I are considering driving to Iowa for the straw poll. Would anyone here like to tag along and split the gas and motel? I hear Mitt Romney is going to be serving Iowa’s best BBQ!

posted by Kyle on Aug 3

It is about damn time, too! You can find the article here. Jere is a screenshot of the article appearing on the front page of Yahoo!:

The article starts off in a very positive way:

AUSTIN, Texas - Ron Paul may be the political butterfly of the 2008 presidential campaign. An obscure congressman from Southeast Texas for most of his political career, Paul has metamorphosed into the favorite of those looking for a candidate outside the political mainstream

Legions of die-hard fans formed across the country after Republican candidate debates and Internet blogs exposed his contrarian views.

The article goes on to talk extensively about how Ron Paul hasn’t received traction in the national polls. Duh! Only a small fraction of the Nascar watching public has heard about him…so far. Once people hear about him, they support him. It is that simple.

This article was distributed on the AP wires, so hopefully lots of newspapers around the country pick it up. Press coverage of Ron Paul is only going to increase!

posted by Kyle on Aug 3

I got a few emails yesterday telling me what am moron I am for thinking that a bunch of spammers are going to make any sort of impact at the Iowa Straw Poll. They are wrong. We are going to spam the Straw Poll, and then we are going to go on and spam the primaries, and then we’re going to spam the general election. After that, we might spam the supreme court with judges who’ve heard of an obscure document called the constitution. Then we’ll go on to spam future congressional elections. Yeah, we’re just a few filthy spammers.

Here is a video of 1,300 of us. 1,300 Ron Paul spammers whose voices can’t be ignored for much longer!

If you haven’t already done so, you should upload your photograph to www.rally.ronpaulplanet.org

There are 1,300 of us with our photos on there, and our statements about why we support Ron Paul. Add your face! Show your support! The freedom movement is not going to be ignored for long!

Such enthusiasm for the freedom movement didn’t seem possible 9 years ago when I first got involved. We have a long way to go, but we’re going there, and we’re going there fast! Watch out, corrupt statists, because your days in power are as limited as your intellectual faculties!

posted by Kyle on Aug 2

Ron Paul has posted a new video on YouTube where he discusses civil liberties, specifically the national ID card. The whole notion that we might have to carry around papers to somehow prove that we’re not an illegal or a terrorist is frightening. That gives far too much power to the government and is simply dangerous. Here is what Ron Paul has to say about it: