Flush with millions in new campaign cash, Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul told CNBC’s Larry Kudlow in an interview that he’ll use the money as it was intended – for his campaign. He’ll be hiring more staff, and running more ads.
“Sometimes it’s bewildering, because we didn’t organize it, it’s spontaneous,” Rep. Paul said of his recent rake. “It’s a real grassroots effort. Some individual in Florida who I have not met nor have I talked to – I surely need to thank him – who has never been in politics in his life, read what I stood for and said he needed to help me and he organized it himself on the Internet … He was disappointed he didn’t raise more.”
What happened, exactly?
Well, on Nov. 5th, 1605, Guy Fawkes tried to assassinate King James I by blowing up British Parliament. On Nov. 5th, 2007, Trevor Lyman of Miami Beach, tried to do the same thing to the presidential race. Sort of.
The 37-year-old music promoter started a Web site last month called ThisNovember5th.com and began soliciting contributions for Paul’s campaign, trying to get 100,000 people to each donate $100 all on the same day, according to Politico.com.
Paul spokesman Jesse Burton said Lyman didn’t coordinate with the campaign, but Lyman told Politico he did “contact the campaign to sound the alert for an influx of contributions.”
The Nov. 5th tally? Over $4 million dollars donated from more than 35,000 contributors.
Paul said the huge one-day effort “means that people are very unhappy, very disgruntled, and we’ve tapped into this uneasiness with a message of freedom, the constitution and sound money, a balanced budget and also a foreign policy that makes a lot more sense than what we have.”
Kudlow asked the Texas congressman , “In your new ads, what would your central message be?”
“The message is freedom, the constitution, limited government, free markets, free trade, less taxes,” Paul replied. “I want to get rid of the income tax. I want to let young people out of social security and the kids on campuses applaud loudly for that.
“I would do something about our American empire because it’s not being run very well. We’re wasting a lot of money and we should be taking care of our people here at home,” Paul said.
Kudlow interviewed Paul mainly because the Texas congressman took Fed chairman Ben Bernanke to the woodshed earlier in the day, sternly telling him, “There’s a dollar crisis out there, and people’s money is being stolen! People who have saved, they’re being robbed! If you have a devaluation of the dollar 10 percent, people have been robbed of 10 percent. It’s going to lead to higher interest rates and a weaker economy.”
Kudlow said admiringly, “Seldom have I seen such a licking applied to a Fed chief!”
Paul said his major problem with the Fed is that it creates too much easy credit, although Paul admits that Bernanke is between a rock and a hard place and that whatever he does will essentially be wrong and could destroy the value of the dollar.
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