Ron Paul just addressed a crowd of regular reporters and the bloggers on blog roll in the Senate Room.
Comparing his upswelling of online advocates to those of the leading contenders for the GOP presidential nomination, Paul noted that his 950 meet-up groups and network of Ron Paul bloggers came about spontaneously and without the help of hired online political operatives.
Paul is an opponent of NCLB (“No Child Left Behind”). He wants to return “responsibility to the schools, and hopefully more people would be able to opt out of the schools through vouchers or tax credits. Sending education money to Washington and then returning it with strings attached to school districts is not a good idea.”
Law of the Sea treaty? “No, I wouldn’t be interested in that. I’m interested in national sovereignty. I’m not looking for another level of government and when I see some of these treaties and international agreements it’s just another level of government. I’m not much interested in those.”
A blogger asks, “Why would a pro-Iraq war conservative support you?
Paul: “For fiscal reasons, if he can’t be persuaded that that [presumably, staying out of foreign entanglements] was our traditional conservative position. [The war] is flat out is going to break us. All great nations that spread themselves too thinly around the world go bankrupt. This is what happened to the Soviet empire.”
The professional journalists here tend to ask horse-race questions. One of them says, “Does Giuliani think he has this thing won?”
Paul: “There are signs of that.”
Up next: Sam Brownback and Mike Huckabee.
