TFL: Your group has been pushing hard for today. But isn’t it all over yet? I mean, McCain is the presumptive nominee. Why are you still working so hard for Ron Paul?
SH: Because when there’s still a chance to get someone elected who would be such a good leader, we don’t want to give up hope, and if we can get our delegates elected here in Pennsylvania, and they can join other delegates that have been elected in all the other states in the United States, we can converge on St Paul in September, and things could change – just as they did with Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford in the 1980ies, when Gerald Ford was the presumptive Republican presidential nominee and Ronald Reagan got that nomination. So it’s not over yet.
TFL: OK, but how realistic is that. I mean, when it comes to the numbers, Ron Paul got on average something like 5 to 10 % in the primaries [in some of the caucuses he of course did better].
SH: But it’s not only the primaries. He won a lot of straw polls. There is a lot of voter fraud documented in New Hampshire, right where it started. This issue with the Diebold machines… We’re committed. None of us is getting paid.
TFL: I’m not sure how much a role voter fraud played. In my opinion, this was definitely not the reason why Ron Paul didn’t win.
SH: Well, combine that with lack of media attention and lack of coverage. When you look at the numbers on the Internet… when you google Ron Paul you get 117.000 unique people where John Mc Cain had quite a few less. He raised more money than any [Republican] presidential candidate. But if the MSM refuses to do any stories, refuses to report any of these issues, then naturally the citizens who aren’t well informed are gonna go with whatever they are told. And if they don’t hear anything from Ron Paul and all they hear is McCain, McCain, McCain, well, then that’s what we are gonna get.
TFL: I think that many people don’t even know that Ron Paul is still in the race. Has that been a problem for your group?
SH: Absolutely. Yes, yes [he laughs].
TFL: Can you elaborate a bit on that?
SH: Because of the media misinterpreting a video statement that Dr Paul put out, the headlines in the newspapers were reading – while they didn’t report anything else – that Ron Paul had dropped out. When the TV media starts telling you that Ron Paul dropped out, when he never said that, and people believe what they hear on the TV. We’ve had billboards up. We had six billboards in Lancaster. That’s not enough. We raised money. That’s not enough. We have people participating. That certainly helped, but it may not be enough. So Ron Paul doesn’t win. He doesn’t win but the revolution isn’t just about Ron Paul. This is the Freedom Revolution. And so we continue onward.
TFL: OK, so what’s the long term perspective of your group in particular and of what you call the Freedom Revolution?
SH: We have a lot of diversity in our group. So the thought is to become a liberty caucus, a caucus where people get together. They get together and they discuss. They continue to educate, they make the voters aware of the National ID, and they make them aware of the erosion of the sovereignty of our nation, and we speak out against the unconstitutional wars, and the unjust acts that our government has perpetuated on other countries, and we bring this to the forefront, and continue to educate those consumers through the Internet, through video, through major media. We have activities and then come election time we find candidates that are liberty minded, that are constitutionally minded, that are conservative when it comes to govern, and we run candidates. We have a PAC, a political action committee, the Central Pennsylvania Liberty PAC, and we use that money to fund activities and to support candidates, whether they are Democrat or Republican, because there is really no difference between Republicans and Democrats. We’ve seen that today where people will change party affiliation just like that… They are all free agents, just like the sports teams. There is no party allegiance anymore…
TFL: Many people in the Ron Paul movement say, let’s change the Republican Party, take the party over, bring it back to its roots, fiscal conservatism, noninterventionism etc. Others think that to work from within a third party would be a better strategy. What’s your take on this?
SH: I’ve done that. I’ve been involved with the third parties. And it’s very biased. We see with Ron Paul as a registered Republican how he is being marginalized and basically stifled. And they do the exact same thing with the third parties. If we ran someone as auditor general as a Republican we need a thousand signatures of registered Republicans. If we run somebody as a Third Party candidate such as the Libertarians we need twenty three thousand signatures. So we have to spend hours, and thousands of hours getting valid signatures to then have them challenged by lawyers in the Democrat and Republican parties, and if we can’t defend them we get fined, a financial fine as a party. If we get our candidates on the ballot, and the Libertarians have done it for twenty five years, they still don’t include them in the debates. So they still don’t include them in the chance of the soapbox to spread the word to the masses about why they are running as a particular candidate. And people in this country are so ingrained with Republicanism and the Democrats that they automatically pull the party lever across the board one way or the other. Now I see, as I’m getting older, some wisdom to working within the Republican Party to change it. The Republican Party can’t even get people to run as committee people. So this is where we need to go if we are serious to work within the Republican Party But even those who’ve joined the Republican Party to support a Republican candidate have been stifled, have been not allowed to participate. They have been disqualified. Delegates that have been elected as Republican delegates to represent Ron Paul have been purposely targeted and removed. So, we’ve heard in the past, and it’s probably still true, that the Republican will tell you one thing but they will cut you off at the knees when it’s time to get something done… We’ve got to do something, and right now I feeling to keep my voter registration as a Republican and my party affiliation as a member of the Libertarian Party.
TFL: So, for you as a group, do you have any plans to become more active in the local Republican Party? Let’s say, people running as committee persons?
SH: Exactly.
TFL: People are doing that right now?
SH: That’s what Lisa [another very active member of the group] was talking about last night for needing ten people to write in someone to become a committee person. So we are trying to do that, and we have folks in our group that are already elected Republican committee people.
TFL: How much of a minority do these represent within the Republican Party, here on the local level... And are there any tensions with the more mainstream Republicans?
SH: I’m not really sure. I honestly don’t know. There might be, because, we as registered Republicans, have not gotten behind John McCain. So that could be a sign of tension, that we have not supported the endorsed candidate and that we are running our own delegates to get elected. So there could be tension that I am not aware of…
TFL: The Ron Paul crowd and your Meetup group as well, is a very diverse group of people, people with all kinds of backgrounds. How do all these people get along with one another?
SH: Well they do and they don’t. Some people haven’t participated because some people were too hard on them. But it’s a matter of a leader to keep the group focused on what the purpose is, and to make sure there is tolerance… We have a wonderful microcosm of the world right here in Lancaster County with religious diversity where people are left alone such as the Amish or the Mennonite. And maybe it’s reflective of our group because we could have easily the Amish involved in our group if they participated, but they don’t participate.
[… ]
TFL: When talking about the future of your group you mentioned having a liberty caucus. What should that be like?
SH: Well, continue a gathering of people that are defenders of liberty, supporters of liberty, and wanted educate people about liberty, freedom and responsibility. And so, instead of just saying we gonna start a Republican caucus, we gonna let Republicans, and Democrats, and Libertarians, and independent people getting involved as long as they are committed to the principals of the Constitution, limited government, self-responsibility, no entangling alliances, things that Ron Paul helped define, which he had just taken from the Founding Fathers but helped define in today’s age, as strong currency, an understanding of Austrian economics, things of that nature. So the group that I envision, and others, I believe, do too, would be probably 70 percent education. Because education is the key, since our public school system has failed. And besides education we’re looking at activism, and we are looking at elections.
TFL: So you might also endorse candidates, independent from what party they are running for?
SH: As long as they are fiscally conservative, maybe socially liberal, kind of smaller libertarian… And we can have people that are running for public office. If we don’t have a good Republican, a good Democrat, a good Independent or Libertarian or Green Party that we could support we might encourage people to do none of the above. Or we might encourage people to do write ins. But through our educational effort and outreach we want to influence the vote, influence the powers to be, to be more conservative for our endorsement as an active organisation
Shawn House in front of one of the Ron Paul billboards in Lancaster County.
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