Iowa // Current TV

Ron Paul Supporters Are Just Getting Started

DES MOINES, Iowa — Ron Paul is exiting the political stage, but his legions of followers insist they are only getting started.

Libertarian-leaning loyalists of the two-time Republican presidential candidate have quietly taken over key-state GOP organizations, ensuring future fights with the GOP's establishment and laying the groundwork for a future presidential candidate.

Their new relevance, especially in early caucus states Iowa and Nevada, could clear the way for such a candidate, perhaps Paul's son, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul. It's the next step in the group's ongoing development, from rambunctious malcontents of just a few years ago into more serious party activists bent on reshaping a party they say has drifted from its conservative roots.

"It's the maturation of the movement," said Matt Strawn, a former Iowa Republican Party chairman not affiliated with Paul. "If you're going to keep the franchise going, you need a candidate."

Iowa's state Republican governing body this month voted to re-elect as chairman and vice chairman two of Paul's top 2012 Iowa caucus campaign aides. Last year, Nevada Republicans similarly elected top Paul supporters to its two spots on the Republican National Committee.

All this despite Paul having lost Nevada's presidential caucuses last year to Mitt Romney, and finished third in Iowa's behind Romney and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum.

Paul backers also have made inroads into Colorado, Florida, Louisiana, Maine, Minnesota, Missouri, in part vestiges of his 2012 presidential campaign.

Indeed, across the country, thousands of Paul's followers, many disillusioned after fighting in vain for his failed bid of 2008, regrouped in 2012 and dove head-first into the behind-the-scenes Republican Party delegate elections, fighting tooth and nail with old-guard GOP establishment activists for national convention seats.

And while Paul retired from Congress this month, his disciples picked up House seats in Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Michigan and Texas last year.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/15/ron-paul_n_2481069.htmlDES MOINES, Iowa — Ron Paul is exiting the political stage, but his legions of... more

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Today President Barack Obama will return to Iowa for an official “grassroots event” at the Iowa State Fair in an effort to fire up his base in the state where he unexpectedly won the first in the nation caucus in 2008, launching him on the road to the White House. Right now, Iowa is considered a crucial battleground state and one of the 12 that six months from the election is too close to call. The doors at the event open in the next few hours, but President Obama isn’t scheduled to appear until 7 pm.

Even though Obama’s campaign stop in Iowa may seem routine, for many Iowans, especially family farmers, environmentalists, animal welfare advocates and rural residents, the location of the visit, at the Paul R. Knapp Animal Learning Center is certain to cause real alarm.

While the name of the building on the Iowa state fairgrounds sounds fairly innocuous, during the famous state fair, the building is transformed into a major propaganda set piece for industrial agriculture, complete with life-size gestation crates, full of sows with newborn baby pigs, dioramas of factory farms and posters full of factory farm PR platitudes. See the slideshow below for the real story of where Obama will speak to voters today in Iowa.
Ironically, President Obama’s visit to the factory farm propaganda site comes at a time when major food companies such as Burger King, McDonalds, Wendy’s, Denny’s and Safeway are responding to consumer pressure to dump gestation crates. Now it seems that the practices of locking sows in cages for much of their adult life as advocated by Iowa’s factory farm pork producers and the Big Ag money behind this nasty effort to whitewash the factory farm industry, will get what they paid for - the Presidential seal of approval. The Paul R. Knapp building is also sponsored by Christensen Farms, a Minnesota-based factory farm operation that boasts on its website as being “one of the top three producers in the United States”. Last year, Christensen Farms featured banners with the soft porn feel-good-themed motto: “Farming Feels Good”.Guess they’ve never asked a sow in a gestation crate for her opinion.

For many family farmers and rural Iowans, who helped pushed Obama to a first place finish during the 2008 caucus, Obama’s appearance in this building is an outrage and a major misstep by the campaign. Four years ago, such a mistake would have likely cost Obama the Iowa caucus and thus the election. And many, including myself, have written that a similar gaff by Hillary Clinton, cost her more than first place in 2008. While factory farms may seem to be an odd issue to outsiders, the ungodly stench of pig shit from factory hog confinements and the political collusion in Iowa’s state capital have been leading hot button issues during state and presidential campaigns since the mid 1990s.

The issue was so important for progressive farmers, environmentalists and rural residents that John Edwards paraded a cart with hogs in it through Des Moines and onto the state fairgrounds that said, Edwards for Local Control and Hogs for Edwards. Not to be outdone, then Senator Barack Obama challenged Edward’s commitment on factory farms in front of an audience of Iowa farmers and rural advocates who knew the issue best. On November 10, 2007, speaking at the Food and Family Farm Presidential Summit, an event that I organized where 5 of the 6 Democratic presidential candidates spoke, Obama boasted about his record on factory farms or CAFOs (confined animal feeding operations).

Said Obama: “So when I hear other candidates say they’ll stand up to the special interests on the issues that matter to you – like CAFO’s – I’m reminded that the test of leadership isn’t what you say, it’s what you do. Voting records matter. And unlike other candidates who have changed their position on CAFO’s, I look at this issue as a matter of principle, not politics. That’s why I have always stood for tougher environmental regulations and local control over whether a CAFO can be built in your neighborhood, and that’s why we need to limit EQIP funding to giant CAFO’s so they are forced to pay for their own pollution. And that’s what I’ll do as President.” Clearly President Obama’s advance staff this time around is either so clueless about the state’s farm, environmental and rural issues or so arrogant that they just don’t care to get it right.

To the more than 22,000 family hog farmers that have been forced out of business in Iowa in the past 15 years and the tens of thousands of rural Iowans who have seen their property value drop precipitously and their quality of life ruined by the stench of nearby factory hog confinements, the appearance by the Obama campaign is just another sign of how far his administration has moved away from the progressive, family farm agenda that helped him win the 2008 Iowa caucus.

In the past nearly four years, Obama’s family farm and rural supporters have watched as his administration has caved on nearly every major campaign promise he made in his now famous shrinking rural agenda. While President Obama planted a garden on the White House lawn and his wife launched a major healthy food initiative called Let’s Move, the Obama USDA, FDA and EPA have gone out of their way to favor agribusiness in their rule making and review processes, including the failure to ban subtherapeutic antibiotics for livestock used for treatment of human diseases, the White House’s caving to agribusiness on GIPSA (or fair market livestock reforms for family farmers) to their rampant approval of genetically engineered crops and Obama’s failure to follow through on his campaign promise to label GMOs.

At the same time, President Obama and his administration is failing on even his most basic campaign promises, the factory farm fight in Iowa is heating once up once again, with more new factory farms being proposed as the spring planting finishes. Last week, the application for a 5,000 hog confinement facility was withdrawn by the farmer after public outcry.

More at the link

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How is this different from what Mitt Romney would do? Politics is bs.Today President Barack Obama will return to Iowa for an official “grassroots... more