I’m starting to get worried.
Let me start off saying I’m a huge Ron Paul supporter. This is intended not to be negative criticism but to be constructive criticism. Over the last several debates I’ve noticed Ron Paul’s performance slowly declining. He is struggling to get his point across as compared to the first few debates several months ago. I’ve probably seen almost every Ron Paul video available, listened to countless interviews and speeches and have read countless articles about Ron Paul. He has my vote. What he needs to focus on is gaining new support from people who might not know who he is or might still be on the fence about him.
I’ll focus on the PBS debate last night for a minute. Ron Paul had a huge chance to destroy his opponents in that debate. To leave those people behind and propel himself to the front. He was the “headliner” but failed to turn the opportunity to his advantage. Before I go any further I would like to say that, despite of the shortcomings, I felt that he still did a fairly decent job overall but no one can argue that he could have done much better. Instead of simply answering the question with those responses that we’ve grown to love and what has gained him so much support, he tends to go off on mini-tantrums, sounding angry, changing this thoughts mid-sentence and attempting to squeeze too much information into a single answer. One problem that Ron Paul has had for awhile is that he has a hard time getting his point across in one minute. If he was given a few extra minutes to answer each question, this post wouldn’t even exist. He is trying to push too much information into a single answer and the consequence is that people might have a hard time figuring out where he stands on a certain issue.
I’m worried that he isn’t accomplishing what we all want which is to appeal to people who don’t support him or know of him yet. Every answer last night was followed with the loudest cheering and at the end of the debate Ron Paul supporters were chanting his name. The question I raise is that out of all those people cheering, were any of them people thinking “Wow, I really like this Ron Paul guy, I think I’m going to cheer for him” or was it simply the large group of supporters cheering for him while not gaining any new support.
In the last two debates especially, I felt that Dr. Paul has come off as a grumpy and angry instead of being that candidate we saw several months ago during the MSNBC debate. I’m sure the pressure has built up for Dr. Paul. He isn’t that long shot candidate anymore who has nothing to lose. I’m reminded of a quote from the Smoking Man on the X-Files.
The fiercest enemy is the man who has nothing left to lose.
Dr. Paul now has a lot more to lose. He has millions of dollars for his campaign. He has a huge fan base on the internet which has bled over into real life organization and rallies. He needs to go back to how he handled himself when he first started campaigning. Answering the questions and showing off how intelligent he actually is. If he doesn’t have one already, I hope that they hire someone to help him work on his image or it might be a long uphill battle to gain more voters.
I have to say that i disagree with you. Public speaking has never been his strong point, nor debate (in my opinion).
I watched most of the debate and I think he finally had a chance to speak his mind in a professional manner. It was a breath of fresh air to hear him speak without Guilana going 2 year old on the mic, or people spewing the word honor ad nasuea.
I was also very intrigued by his answer regarding death penalty.