Ron Paul Most Popular Candidate On YouTube

Parapundit -

Republican Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX) is the most consistent opponent of taxes and most consistent advocate of personal liberty in Congress. This makes him a fringe figure in the mainstream liberal media and the traditional gatekeeper editors in big media organizations If the next US Presidential election was fought on YouTube then Ron Paul wold win.

On Technorati, which offers a real-time glimpse of the blogosphere, the most frequently searched term this week was "YouTube."

Then comes "Ron Paul."

The presence of the obscure Republican congressman from Texas on a list that includes terms such as "Sopranos," "Paris Hilton" and "iPhone" is a sign of the online buzz building around the long-shot Republican presidential hopeful -- even as mainstream political pundits have written him off.

Paul is solidly libertarian and yet he's opposed to open borders and wants immigration laws enforced. Tom Tancredo seems too supportive of the Republican status quo outside of immigration. Paul is a refreshing alternative. However, I'd take either of them over any other Republican currently in the 2008 US Presidential race.

Libertarians are probably online far out of proportion to their numbers in the general population. So Paul's popularity online might be a reflection of number of libertarians on the web.

Rep. Ron Paul is more popular on Facebook than Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). He's got more friends on MySpace than former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. His MeetUp groups, with 11,924 members in 279 cities, are the biggest in the Republican field. And his official YouTube videos, including clips of his three debate appearances, have been viewed nearly 1.1 million times -- more than those of any other candidate, Republican or Democrat, except Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.).

No one's more surprised at this robust Web presence than Paul himself, a self-described "old-school," "pen-and-paper guy" who's serving his 10th congressional term and was the Libertarian Party's nominee for president in 1988.

The proliferation of web logs, social networking sites, and other methods of mass communication usable by the masses weakens the influence of the establishment media organizations. Views which the mainstream could marginalize in the past are harder to shut out today. You don't need to get a degree in journalism, impress gatekeepers in a job interview, and spend years writing at their direction in order to get your views heard.

The lowering of barriers to publication increases competition and serves up talented writers and insightful analysts who in previous eras would have gone unheard. Thought police are less effective. Writers who earn their livelihoods in other occupations can more easily express their views without fear of punishment.

The on-going battle over the Senate immigration amnesty bill S.1348 demonstrates that when a measure is favored by elites and organized in secrecy that the masses can organize to stop it. When the measure is strongly opposed by the majority we can organize electronically and put up a lot of resistance to elite machinations. Elites try to project a sense of inevitability to their plans in order to sew the feeling of defeat and weaken opposition. Online communities need to develop greater feelings of independence from elites. If they reduce their respect to elites they'll become more immune to elite psychological games.