Ron Paul Under-Utilizing the Power of the Internet

If you've been on the internet for long in the past couple of months, you've probably noticed that Texas congressman Ron Paul has a pretty devoted following. In fact, the internet has been the most effective tool for furthering his campaign, both in terms of raising funds and raising awareness. Yet for all the publicity the Paul campaign has done little to bring organization to this grassroots movement, and in that they severly under-utilize their greatest resource.

More than 900 meetup.com groups have spontaneously popped up in support of the Ron Paul campaign. These meetups consist of groups of average Americans, as diverse as gun rights coalitions, anti-abortion activists, and free market entrepreneurs, who decided to get together and locally support Ron Paul's campaign. This emergent local support is every candidate's dream! And while the Paul campaign has taken some steps to utilize these groups, it often involves trying to fit this internet phenomena into traditional politics. Merely replacing a telephone call with an email message and a Google map for directions misses out on all of the benefit that this type of support can provide.

I propose that this grass roots organization be taken to the next level. Right now each meetup group is it's own isolated organization. But if there were some way for local meetups to easily coordinate with each other, and the state and national campaign coordinators, the Paul campaign could effectively field a fiercely loyal volunteer force more than 30,000 strong. And it really isn't that complicated.

The leaders of meetup organizations (of a minimum size to avoid spam) would be invited to join. They would be able to send emails to all meetups within a given radius, or perhaps the 5 closest ones. They would also be able to send messages to all of the groups in the state. Further, this would give the campaign an easy way to disseminate information to the groups, and broken down by locality. Leaders could pass along best practices, easy/cheap ways to campaign, and helpful responses to problems they face while campaigning. It wouldn't be too difficult to spider Meetup for Ron Paul groups, and gather the names and email addresses of the group leaders.

During the American Revolution, the patriots of old created the committees of correspondence; effectively a massive letter writing campaign. Riders were dispatched with letters containing news, tactics, and encouragement to pass along to the next town. When one town came up with an effective way to fight the British, in short order the cities up and down the coast were aware of it. This same technique can be used again for this generation of patriots. I have a box I'm willing to use as a server, and I'm willing to pay for webhosting. I need someone with LAMP development experience and possibly a web designer who are willing to make this happen. If anyone is interested in making this happen, email thehyperaspist@gmail.com

This needs to happen quickly; we're less than 100 days away from the first primary, and every day counts.