I think the simple and obvious answer to this will be found in the demographics of the military. Our military forces are primarily composed of people under 25 years of age. I suspect that if officers and senior NCO's were broken out separately from the huge numbers of young enlisted personnel, their support of Paul would be no more than it is in the general population for that age. I bet the generals are not in support of Paul. It's the same reason that students are so big for Paul. Most students are under 25. It's political spin to suggest that these numbers represent increased support by the US military. Paul would cut back on the military and that will not be popular with professional soldiers. What these numbers represent are support from young people employed by the military.
This is an assumption correct? What if 50% of the money was from veterans? Obama has more young support than Paul so do we single them out also. I could careless if you are a general or not b/c your vote still counts the same. Hell look at old ass McCain. A terrible conservative. Would I take his words on foreign policy either. No way. Just because he is old doesn't make his opinion correct, and just because he "thinks" he is the soldiers best friend doesn't make it true. And to say Paul will cut the military is not true. He want to cut the frivolous spending.
That yahoo link goes to a press release put together by Ron Paul's campaign, claiming they are #1 in military donations. Even if their research was solid: 1) they only claimed to get just over 1,000 donations, that's not a whole lot from the millions of uniformed active-duty personnel in the U.S. military (1.4 million in 2004). 2) all it really shows is that not a lot of people in the military care about giving donations to candidates at this time. I imagine military donations will pick up substantially as the election buzz starts heating up as we get closer to Nov.
I haven't seen one other candidate refute the facts. 1. So your saying what? That as of right now Paul has more donations. And what does that say? 2. Apparently they do if they give Paul more than any other combined. Still noone is answering the question but trying to rebut the facts at hand.
What question? You wanted to know our opinions on why Paul is getting military donations and you got them. Rebutting ambiguous "facts" is inherent in that. The numbers don't suggest the same thing to me as they seem to do with you. I think Paul gets a lot of military donations because there are mostly young people in the military, most of whom are in for one enlistment. You seem to think it means that career professional soldiers also support Paul and your data doesn't support that.
Exactly my point. Why are you favoring those that want "job security" rather than the guys down in the trench? By your comment I would have to assume that you think those career professional soldiers are more worthy of opinion. And those that are in one enlistment are not career not professional soldiers. How about we do a breakdown of the 3,000+ deaths and see who really has "laid" their life on the line.
I'm not favoring anybody, you miss the point. I'm just pointing out that these donations do not show military support for Paul, simply support among the young. ALL groups primarily composed of young people will show big support for Paul. The military is among them. Universities are also big Paul supporters because of the preponderence of young people. It does not mean that academia supports Paul.
No sir, it is not an assumption. You are assuming that Paul's supporters are a representative sample of the military. Here is the latest year that the Army demographics are available: Army Profile 2005 The army is 17% officers and 83% enlisted men. 68% of enlisted men are under the age of 30. 52% of officers are under age 30. 64% of the Army is under age 30. The numbers are similar in the Navy and Air Force. Our military is composed primarily of young people.
The reason you haven't see one other candidate refute this, is because this a non-issue. Let say it is true that 1,200 to 1,300 of the 1.4 million (2004) uniformed active-duty personnel in the U.S. military gave a donation to Ron Paul, and that Ron Paul got the most donations of anybody so far. All that shows is that less than 0.0001 % of the military has given a donation to a candidate yet. To me, that is not surprising, being that it is pragmatic to wait until the legit Presidential candidates emerge before thinking about giving donations to one of them (unless you have hundreds of thousands of dollars on hand to donate). Wait until this election starts heating up as we get closer to Nov., wait until we get to know who the legit candidates are, wait until we get to know them better, and then go look at what candidate is getting the most donations from the military. I seriously doubt it will be Ron Paul. In other words, you are reading too much into all this. Altschuler cautioned against reading too much into the early contributions, particularly in such small amounts. "These figures could look very different in a few months." http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=3601542 He was right. At the time that article was written, Senator Obama had the most donations from the military. Overall, these donations are miniscule: Obama got 44 contributions worth about $27,000 and Paul 23 for about $19,300. Republican John McCain, an Iraq war supporter and Vietnam prisoner of war, was third with about $18,500 from 32 donors. http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=3601542
