Kelly Clarkson sales spike after Ron Paul endorsement
By James O'Toole @CNNMoney December 30, 2011: 6:35 PM ET
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- A word of advice to prospective American Idol contestants: vote libertarian.
One day after she announced her support for Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul on Twitter, sales of pop singer Kelly Clarkson's most recent album were surging Friday on Amazon.com.
Sales of Clarkson's album Stronger shot up 442% between Thursday and Friday afternoon on Amazon (AMZN, Fortune 500), moving the album from #38 to #7 on Amazon's sales list.
While there's no way to tell whether her support for Paul was the only reason for this jump, the endorsement clearly made a difference for some fans.
"I must admit I have not really followed you but your recent stance on Ron Paul made me check you out," one fan wrote Friday in a review of the album on Amazon. "If you are smart enough to support Ron Paul then you are probably talented too."
"JUST DISCOVERED YOU...BECAUSE OF RON PAUL!" another wrote. "The energy of these songs would be great as Ron Paul event background music."
On Thursday, Clarkson wrote on Twitter that if the libertarian candidate "wins the nomination for the Republican party in 2012 he's got my vote."
"I love Ron Paul. I liked him a lot during the last republican nomination and no one gave him a chance," she wrote in an extended tweet.
Although she identified herself as a Republican, the former American Idol champ said she "voted Democrat last election." And this go-round, "Out of all of the Republican nominees, he's my favorite," she said.
The Paul campaign thanked Clarkson for her "kind words" in a tweet on Thursday.
News of Clarkson's Amazon sales was picked up Friday by the Hollywood Reporter. Her album sat at #39 on the Billboard album charts as of Friday afternoon, though it was up to #13 on Apple's iTunes charts.
http://money.cnn.com/2011/12/30/news/kelly_clarkson_ron_paul/
its sort of hypocritical to oppose liberals on the basis of rejecting lesser evils and then rejecting ron paul for similar reasons
babyfinland posted:
the presidential office is primarily a foreign policy position anyways and thats where hes good
i think it is more likely that a ron paul president would just devastate domestic policy. he could just start doing things like refusing to sign over medicaid money because it is unconstitutional or something. the majority of the republican caucus would have to defect to get through a budget that didn't basically eliminate the entire social welfare system. also it is vastly more easy for paul to get republicans to agree to deep welfare cuts than it would be to fast-track deep military cuts.
i also think paul is more likely to get a "you can't do that" speech from the joint chiefs or something. like scaling down a global military is a huge task that would take like a decade to do, but paul wants huge savings day one. so if he ever came close to winning they'd sit him down and be like baby ron can't always get what he wants. this is a real world with bad people in it. sure we can go lean for you but we can't change fundamentally within a few years. and your homeland defence doctrine doesn't make any sense to us. let's talk realistically, rumsfeld wanted to move from two-front to one-front-plus, let's do that. and we can shut down a few more bases and cut support staff and scale down in afghanistan. but that's it.
which is fine i guess but it doesn't like change anything of note other than costs, at the expense of the remnants of social welfare.
vote Paul/Acceleration in '12
getfiscal posted:babyfinland posted:
the presidential office is primarily a foreign policy position anyways and thats where hes goodi think it is more likely that a ron paul president would just devastate domestic policy. he could just start doing things like refusing to sign over medicaid money because it is unconstitutional or something. the majority of the republican caucus would have to defect to get through a budget that didn't basically eliminate the entire social welfare system. also it is vastly more easy for paul to get republicans to agree to deep welfare cuts than it would be to fast-track deep military cuts.
i also think paul is more likely to get a "you can't do that" speech from the joint chiefs or something. like scaling down a global military is a huge task that would take like a decade to do, but paul wants huge savings day one. so if he ever came close to winning they'd sit him down and be like baby ron can't always get what he wants. this is a real world with bad people in it. sure we can go lean for you but we can't change fundamentally within a few years. and your homeland defence doctrine doesn't make any sense to us. let's talk realistically, rumsfeld wanted to move from two-front to one-front-plus, let's do that. and we can shut down a few more bases and cut support staff and scale down in afghanistan. but that's it.
which is fine i guess but it doesn't like change anything of note other than costs, at the expense of the remnants of social welfare.
yeah i know but its worth a shot innit
only in make believe land did he ever have a shot at winning
babyfinland posted:
yeah i know but its worth a shot innit
no.
getfiscal posted:
actually there are significant policy differences between candidates and social pressures and voting can often determine the character of a society. sorry for your lots.
except when its obama vs romney lol
babyfinland posted:
except when its obama vs romney lol
as presidents with republican congresses they are about the same. if obama had a democratic congress then he'd probably push through some modest tax increases.
gyrofry posted:
is voting more or less rational than buying a powerball ticket, assuming the cost of gas to get to the polling place is equal to the cost of walking to the corner store and purchasing the ticket
voting is less rational because even if you win you dont get to become president.
gyrofry posted:
is voting more or less rational than buying a powerball ticket, assuming the cost of gas to get to the polling place is equal to the cost of walking to the corner store and purchasing the ticket
voting is a ritual of affirmation more than anything else. it's like okay i think i should support this sort of governing style. in that i think it is fine. also like you sorta need governments so like we need to deal with it.
getfiscal posted:babyfinland posted:
except when its obama vs romney lolas presidents with republican congresses they are about the same. if obama had a democratic congress then he'd probably push through some modest tax increases.
i.e. vote romney to maximize keynesian stimulus
getfiscal posted:gyrofry posted:
is voting more or less rational than buying a powerball ticket, assuming the cost of gas to get to the polling place is equal to the cost of walking to the corner store and purchasing the ticketvoting is a ritual of affirmation more than anything else. it's like okay i think i should support this sort of governing style. in that i think it is fine. also like you sorta need governments so like we need to deal with it.
lol
that is some Death Flowers ish
getfiscal posted:
basically how much control would one random citizen have over a country of 300 million people even if like after noam chomsky were dictator for a century.
voting is a ritual of affirmation more than anything else. it's like okay i think i should support this sort of governing style. in that i think it is fine. also like you sorta need governments so like we need to deal with it.
getfiscal posted:
if obama had a democratic congress then he'd probably push through some modest tax increases.
The issue is he won't and wouldn't.
He will not do that.
If you want to vote for him (and I do) you may as well know what you are voting for and it is not a policy where he hurts the rich (himself).
