01/03/08 – Jim Ostrowski – The Scott Horton Show

All right, my friends, welcome back to Anti-War Radio and Chaos 95.9 in Austin, Texas.
And now welcoming back to the show, Jim Ostrowski, who writes for LewRockwell.com.
He's the author of Political Class Dismissed.
And I'm sorry, Jim, what's the name of your blog?
I got a bunch of them.
Free New York.
Lew Rockwell, Free New York blog at freenewyork.org, and I got my personal blog at jimostrowski.com.
So I'm all over the place.
All right.
And the reason I brought you on the show today, today's the big day of the Iowa caucuses.
And not only have you revealed yourself to be an expert on matters of electoral politics, rubber meets the road, delegates here, vote counts there, donor to poll ratios and all these crazy things, but also you've shown yourself on the Lew Rockwell blog particularly to be one of the most optimistic supporters of Dr. Paul.
So I was hoping that you could come on the show today and explain to us exactly where you think Ron Paul sits, particularly in Iowa right now, and then looking ahead into the rest of the caucuses and primaries.
Sure.
Iowa.
I don't have a firm prediction.
What I did is on the Free New York blog, I predicted that he would get 18 to 20% of the vote.
And basically I just said, look, he's at about 7.5 in the polls.
We know that Ron's support is understated in the polls.
Then you factor in a caucus factor where intensity of support is absolutely critical.
Obviously, Ron has that edge.
That's why he's done well in these straw polls around the country, because that's based on intensity of support.
People actually showing up for an extended period of time instead of just going and voting for one minute.
And then add the fact that he's trending upward, according to Zogby, and finally Romney and Huckabee are killing each other, and Ron is running a lot of positive ads and positive messages.
He's got kind of a clear field.
So yeah, I would say I'm optimistic about Iowa.
I'm not really going to predict as a prognosticator where he's going to finish, but I'm looking for about 18 to 20%.
And that 18 mark is pretty significant, because that's what George Bush Sr. got on his road to the White House.
He came in third with 18%.
And the critical factor is beating McCain.
It's very important that Ron beats McCain.
I think his campaign can go on without that, but that's what I think a lot of people are looking for.
If we can top McCain in Iowa, then it's a tremendous performance.
Okay, now tell me about these polls.
How understated do you think Ron's support is compared to these polls?
Because I look at some of these line graphs and I just get depressed, Jim.
You know, nationally his numbers aren't that good, but that's kind of not important, because he's not campaigning nationally.
He's campaigning in certain states.
If you look at the early states, you know, he's pushing about 10% in a number of these states.
South Carolina, New Hampshire, Iowa, he's doing pretty well in Michigan, and he's creeping up in the early states.
I'm not that upset with the poll numbers.
Again, as I said, George Bush got 18%.
John Kerry was at 3% in December of 2003.
You know, so the numbers aren't that bad.
I just legitimately believe that his support is understated in these polls, and the polls don't measure intensity of support.
They say they do, but I personally don't think they do.
So we'll find out tonight, if he gets 18% and comes in third and beats McCain, he's a contender.
He's an absolute contender for the nomination, and nobody can dispute that.
Yeah, well, he's certainly going to beat Fred Thompson and Rudy Giuliani in Iowa today, you think?
Well, you know, Giuliani, yes.
Fred Thompson, now I made my little prediction about Thompson and McCain.
And a lot of people were writing them off a couple months ago on Lew's site.
I said, I don't think you can write them off.
I think they're still alive.
McCain is absolutely, you know, dusting himself off and doing well in New Hampshire.
But Thompson took his last couple hundred bucks, bought some gas and a bus, and went around.
He's got a folksy kind of manner to him.
I know his style's been criticized.
I get a kick out of the guy myself.
I really enjoy watching him.
He's a little different from the other candidates.
But he's slightly rising in Iowa, so you've got to watch out for him, and hopefully Ron will surpass him as well.
But don't count him out before he's absolutely cooked.
Now, what about financially?
I mean, McCain and some of these other guys have had a lot of real problems.
Are they going to be able to last through February 5th?
I think the money's going to be...with Iowa and New Hampshire being relatively small states, you don't need all that much money.
But after New Hampshire, the money's going to be a factor.
And McCain doesn't have any money, so he kind of needs a bump.
Thompson doesn't have any money.
He needs a bump.
Rudy...
I have a weird prediction about Rudy that he might run out of money, because he's already tapped out all the fat cats for $2,300, he's spending lavishly, and he's sinking in the polls like a lead weight.
And so if you're one of these people who just wants to buy influence in the White House, you're looking for somebody who's leading the polls.
How many people are donated to Rudy these days?
I wouldn't like to be his treasurer.
So I think they're all sort of running out of money.
And an important thing there is that even a lot of Ron Paul supporters get caught up into this, there's so many tickets out of New Hampshire and so on, that stuff's all nonsense.
Ron doesn't need a ticket.
Ron's got money, and he's got troops all over the place.
And he has the Internet, he doesn't need the mainstream media, although his coverage is improving on the mainstream media.
So Ron doesn't need any tickets, Ron can run a 50-state campaign, and why shouldn't he?
But the other candidates, except for Romney, who's a super-rich and dissent-a-millionaire, they may run out of money unless they do well, and that's going to be a factor, absolutely.
Well, I mean, at the end of the day, though, what he really needs is a pile of delegates, and he's got to win states in order to get delegates second and third place aren't going to cut it, right?
Yeah, the, you know, somebody, I think at National Review, before Rudy started to implode, they did an analysis of how Rudy gets to a majority, and they couldn't figure it out.
I'm of the opinion that we may have a brokered convention, first time since Eisenhower.
I think the goal for Ron has to be to get more delegates than anybody else, and sure, you've got to win states to come in second, or in California, which is a winner-take-all by district, target certain districts, and win those districts, but, you know, that'll take care of itself.
If he comes in first, second, or third in various states, he should get the delegates.
Now, in New York, it's winner-take-all, so our goal appears to be Rudy.
A lot of people think that's impossible.
I do not.
I think Rudy is thinking fast, and even in his home state, has a lot of opposition.
Yeah, it seems like people up there would know more about him than the rest of us and like him even less.
Yeah, actually, the reporter for the Buffalo News, Jerry Zarensky, Washington Report, he just did a thing on Giuliani, which you can read online, I think, still free, and he went down in New York.
He couldn't believe how unpopular Rudy was.
Rudy's actually strongest in the New York suburbs, but not in the city and not upstate, so I think he can be taken.
He was at 52 points, now he's at 35.
Ron was at zero, now he's at five.
So at some point, those two might meet in the middle, and I think New York is in play.
I've been telling everybody that for months.
Well, can you explain to me the rise of Mike Huckabee?
This is something that really shocked me.
This is one of the things I missed this year.
I kind of dismissed him, and I still dismiss him.
I don't understand.
I just heard Rush bash him today, which is good, I suppose.
I don't understand the guy.
To me, he's like a stand-up comic.
I love watching him.
I think he's funnier than Jay Leno, maybe.
I think he would make an excellent stand-up comic, or maybe he could do...
I got an idea of my brother's in the entertainment industry, maybe like a sitcom series, where he's in the White House or something, or just running for office all the time.
I mean, this guy is a very entertaining man.
I don't get it.
I don't even know what his ideology is.
Is he a populist, a conservative, not a libertarian?
He's a compassionate conservative.
Yeah, I think you would say he's a populist in the sense that he favors...
Everything.
...an intervention into the economy and into your personal life, and overseas, too.
So he's kind of the opposite of a libertarian.
I think he's the kind of guy that you get tired of after he's overexposed, and his poll numbers are dropping.
If you look at the national numbers on RealClearPolitics, which is a pretty good site, Rudy's dropping, but not meeting Huckabee, because Huckabee's also dropping.
It's kind of funny to watch the two lines chase each other to the bottom.
I don't understand Huckabee.
I don't get it.
Obviously, he's strong in Iowa, because they have a strong evangelical situation there, but other than South Carolina, after that, I don't know where this guy goes.
I'm not seeing him as the nominee, by any means.
I can understand how people would think, well, he seems like somewhat of a decent guy.
If he was a used car salesman, I might buy a used car from him.
It could be worse, kind of thing, but when it comes to policy, this guy really has no idea, and it's really scary.
He was just down at the Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, kissing up to John Hagee, and apparently buys into this, we've got to hurry up and make Jesus come back version of Christianity.
I don't get that.
I'm a Catholic myself, and we're not into that whole thing, but I never understood how you have to make a prophecy come true.
I mean, if it's a prophecy, and you believe it, sit back and enjoy the show, but if you have to go out and make it come true, I don't know, it kind of seems like you don't really believe it's a prophecy.
I don't understand that thing, and the evangelicals, God love them all, a certain segment of them gave us George Bush twice, and I'm thinking, can you people just give us a break?
Let us pick the next president?
It's not like Ron Paul is some big atheist, he's a devout Christian, he goes to Baptist services.
I mean, what don't these people like about Ron?
I guess it's the foreign policy thing.
Yeah, I guess it must be, because I think for most of them, Jesus and George Washington are basically interchangeable, and Ron Paul's dedication to the legacy of the founding fathers ought to be right up there with Sunday services to them, it seems like.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
You know, as far as religion and politics, it's a whole complicated can of worms, but I've never been able to figure out what Jesus said the government should do, anyway.
He talked a lot about what people should do, he didn't say much about the government at all, so I always wonder what the people who think that bring Christianity into politics in some big, specific way, I really have to wonder what they're smoking.
And you know, I'm not really a religious guy, either way, myself, but I tend to look at it from the other way around, too, like, who wants the state muddying the waters of their religious beliefs?
These are things, it seems like, you know, religion is all about the pure good and that kind of thing, you don't want to bring the state into that.
Absolutely, and as I said, you know, I'm not, you know, Catholics, we kind of listen to the priests and the nuns, and the Protestants know the Bible better, but I've never been able to have anybody explain to me where Jesus talked about politics that much, or the government that much, or, you know, he was talking to the individual and talking about personal morality, as far as I could see, and not, you know, go to the government and use the government guns to impose your morality on others.
I missed that passage, somebody can email it to me if they think I'm wrong.
Well, you know, speaking of that, there's been a ton of articles on LewRockwell.com, in fact, I think today there's one by Bill Barnwell, right?
An open letter to evangelical Christians, right?
An open letter to pastors and church leaders from Bill Barnwell.
You know, I missed that, but there have been several of that nature.
And there's another one, an open letter to Jews from Jose Cohen, and there's been a ton of these, right?
An open letter to blacks, an open letter to Jews, an open letter to atheists, an open letter to Koreans, and everybody else on LewRockwell.com.
Well, there's a really funny video posted on the blog by George Smith, who's a professional atheist, who writes books about atheism, and so on, and about how he started giving a qualified endorsement to Ron Paul.
It's actually quite funny, he's got a bit with a dog, and Cook County, Chicago voting habits.
You've got to see it.
It's on LewRockwell.com.
It is funny.
This is my dog Herbert, Herbert Spencer.
Yeah, and I'm sure Herbert Spencer would endorse Ron Paul, too, if he were around.
He's a pretty good libertarian in his day.
Now, I don't know if you saw this this morning, but I got an email from Media Matters for America, it turns out Daniel Pipes is calling Barack Obama a Muslim, and apparently referring to already old and debunked newspaper articles to try to back up his point.
I just wondered if you have any comment about that, the idea that a presidential candidate being a Muslim is a smear against him, that needs refuting.
You know, I haven't thought much about that.
I understand he went to some school in Indonesia, I don't get too concerned about that.
What bothers me about Barack Obama is that his rhetoric is phony.
He talks about change and bringing people together, and then when you look for the details, it's like 1960s Great Society liberalism.
It's like, how's that going to bring everybody together?
I mean, if you want to bring together the far left of the Democratic Party, great, but what about the rest of us?
What about, what's he offering the libertarians, other than getting out of Iraq?
When I look at Obama, and also at Huckabee, I see people who are basically really good at rhetoric, and the one-liner, more Huckabee, but then Barack Obama's sort of extended rhetoric, but when you look at it, it's all air and smoke, and there's no substance to it.
So that's what bothers me about Barack.
He says he's a Christian church, and I don't think you should get into that too much.
The Constitution says no religious test, which, strictly speaking, only applies to the government, but I think it's a generally good principle to not get into that issue, because we want to know about policy and what the person's going to do in office, not about their theology.
Yeah.
You know, I forget, I think it was one of the guys from Newsweek sat down with Ron Paul and asked him about Romney's Mormonism, and Ron Paul's answer was, oh, well, that ought to not have anything to do with anything.
I don't care what his religion is at all, other than if I'm president, I want to protect his right to believe in it, but other than that, I could care less, and I think it's terrible that anybody else even cares that people are talking about not voting for him because of his religion.
I think, you know, this is America.
We're not supposed to be like that at all.
I was really proud to hear him talk like that.
It was definitely a from-the-heart, top-of-the-head kind of answer, where he just came right off and said, hey, this is America.
I don't care what religion Mitt Romney is.
Next question.
Yeah, I think he spoke for most of us on that point.
When you have, you know, you can have whatever religion you want, but if you go into politics, you have to translate that into terms that other people can understand and relate to, and, you know, that's just the way it is in a society like ours.
Hey, do you worry about the rising Duncan Hunter, start a war with China movement coming in?
He doesn't seem to be much on the radar screen.
So I didn't want to completely exclude the guy.
It's like one-third of the human race.
China's not another country.
It's like one-third of the planet, basically, is a third of the population, so you've got to get along with the Chinese, and I think free trade is the way to do that.
It's kind of funny to hear Duncan Hunter, even in a Republican debate where people outright boo Ron Paul for saying we've got to stop bombing the Middle East, but Duncan Hunter talks about why we ought to be more confrontational toward China, and the whole place just goes deathly silent, you know, who is this guy?
China, I mean, geez, without China, where would we be?
We don't make anything in the United States anymore.
Who'd pay for a terror war?
When the Chinese find out that these pictures of dead presidents we've been sending over there aren't worth as much as they thought, I'm a little afraid of their reaction about that, but...
Right, yeah, any good supporter of the war on terrorism has got to want to keep a friendly relation with China.
They're our banker.
Yeah, and this notion, by the way, I mention this in my book, and, you know, the notion that China's probably the strongest country on Earth, except for the United States, but this notion that China is some big threat to our national security, I mean, it's like, you know, they don't have any troop ships.
How are they going to get an army out of California?
It's just a ridiculous fantasy, you know, it's like a lot of people on the website say they're always trying to scare us with something to squeeze money out of our pockets.
Hey, people, China's not going to invade the United States in the foreseeable future, that's the next 50 years, so worry about something else today.
Thank you for that.
I appreciate that.
We don't talk about how non-threatening China is on this show nearly enough.
No, seriously, I mean, that's something that's worth driving home.
I hear people...
People might feel like they have a 30 million man army, and that may be true, I don't know, but I think, you know, they don't have any troop ships.
Yeah, how are they going to get them, make them swim over here?
Yeah, and our military has the capacity to put a cruise missile anywhere on Earth within 10 feet of the target, so, you know, worry about something else.
Now, nuclear weapons sure is a huge problem and it needs to be addressed, but as far as this country being under threat from invasions from China, it's totally absurd, and if China can't do it, well, nobody else can either, well, nobody else has an army that big, so forget about it.
Right.
Yeah, hey, that's a very important point.
They asked Ron Paul and he said, you know, they said, who's the most, what's the greatest danger on Earth, which country poses the greatest threat to us, and he said there are none, and he's right.
We're allies with every industrial country in the world, there's no one who can mess with us.
We do, but the government does not offer us any defense against that, so...
Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't hear you.
I mean, we can be nuked, I suppose, by Russia or China, but that's a problem that our federal government was unable to solve, because they can't hit a bullet with a bullet yet, so...
Well, and not only that, if we're ever in a nuclear war with Russia or China, you and I both know it'll be because our national government started it.
Well, you know, the only country that's ever dropped nukes is the United States.
You know, if you want to get into nukes, it's sort of a...
Really I want to get back to the Ron Paul revolution and the money, particularly.
On November the 5th and December the 16th, they did these money bombs and raised $4 and then $6 million in one day, each of these two days, and totaling $19 million for the fiscal, the last fiscal quarter for the Ron Paul campaign, which is pretty close to rivaling Barack Obama and Rudy Giuliani money, am I right?
Yeah, I think Ron has the most money of any Republican, although Rudy hasn't released his numbers, I wouldn't either.
I just have this gut feeling that the guys are a little short these days.
But the real significance is the fact that, first of all, Ron's donors give him about $100 a pop, and that's an amazing figure, because the other candidates raised money by getting $2,300, $2,300, $2,300 from the wife, and $2,300 from the executive assistant to the bank president, and that kind of thing.
And Ron's making it the hard way, like $100 a pop.
And then when you look at the people giving him the money, they're not special interest people.
They're just average people who are sick of what's going on, and they don't ask...
The only thing they want in return is a better government.
They don't want anything specifically for themselves like a sugar quota or this or that or a government contract.
So the money doesn't even capture the significance of this achievement.
This has never happened before.
I've done a lot of research in campaign finance.
I'm about as familiar with the subject as anybody around, and I know the people who donate and actually did a study on it.
It's mostly people who work for the government or they're government contractors or they want something from the government, and the Ron Paul people do not fit any of those categories.
It's a real revolution in funding a campaign.
And really, a year ago, or I guess almost a year ago, when this campaign first began, my pessimism was, come on, you can't be president if you don't have Lockheed money, you can't run a real campaign if you don't have the rich who are already on the U.S. dole to pay for your campaign to get that kickback.
Just doesn't work.
You can't do it.
And yet, here, I've been proven wrong.
You're right.
It's, what, 20-something thousand new donors in one day, averaging $100 each.
Yeah, it's absolutely amazing, and the second time he did it, the press kind of just yawned.
But both accomplishments were absolutely amazing, and not given the coverage they deserve, or the analysis they deserve, because $1 going to Ron is not like $1 going to Rudy.
I know who's given money to Rudy.
I've looked at his donor list in Buffalo.
I know these people.
One of the people who gave money gave George Bush 50 grand and got an ambassadorship.
These people want something specific for themselves, for the government, but not the people who are supporting Ron.
They just want a, they want to improve the general welfare by all the things that Ron promises to do.
There's a huge distinction there between being a special interest group and being a general interest group looking out for, in other words, lower taxes will benefit everybody, not just me or you or, you know, whatever.
So that's the type of people, those are the motivations of the people supporting Ron, and it's ideological, it's philosophical, and it's not just sort of this special interest greed calculus.
How much money can I get back for the return on my investment?
Yeah.
Well, for those of us who want to make sure that Ron Paul can continue to run a strong campaign through Super Tuesday and the rest of it, do you know if there's another money bomb schedule where everybody's going to get together and donate on the same day like that again?
You know, I've heard a few.
I don't know of any that are scheduled, but they're a lot of fun and that you can sort of watch the charts go up, and I think they're a good idea.
So if you're interested, you can just go search Ron Paul money bomb and, you know, plan to make your donation on that particular day, because you'll see that you're sort of joining your funds with a lot of other people, and it's not just you that's putting yourself on the line.
So it's a good approach to fundraising.
Yeah, yeah.
It really worked well.
It's funny.
In October, I remember thinking, oh, man, you know, this money bomb thing seems to be hurting.
The fundraising toward the end of October is really falling off here, and then, blam, $4 million in a day.
Okay, I'll take it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So overall, it's definitely a master stroke.
Whoever invented the concept, there's a big medal.
Those names are out there, but I don't want to say who they are, because I might be screwing it up.
Well, Jim Ostrowski, I really appreciate you coming on the show, and I really appreciate all the work you do on the Lew Rockwell blog to keep us informed and to keep our perspective informed for understanding what exactly is at play and at stake in this campaign season, this Ron Paul revolution.
I really appreciate it.
Yeah, it's always a pleasure.
I've been a self-appointed cheerleader of the campaign.
I've had a lot of fun in that role.
Well, you keep it up.
It ain't over yet.
Okay, very good.
Thanks a lot.
All right, thanks a lot, everybody.
Jim Ostrowski, LewRockwell.com, and FreeNewYork.com.