I get what you’re saying but I still have a problem regarding what you say below:

“The idea for number 20 though is to compare the candidates on their ability to either equal or surpass what media attention Ron Paul did get. So the starting point is Ron Paul (for the media he did get) earns a 5, can a current candidate equal that? Perhaps this should be explained more fully in the description.”

By assigning RP a 5 for his ability to get media attention and at the same time making 5 the highest rating possible there is no way for anyone to give a rating “surpassing” RP in the media dept. which I think Bob Barr will do.

But I like your overall idea for a Paul-o-meter.

Thanks for your time and prompt reply.

Yes, the rating “system” is not perfect. Number 20 is very important (perhaps even more important than 50% as you suggest). Ron Paul received a good amount of media attention. He was on all of the main talk shows and news outlets. He was never reported on daily by any of the main stream media which would have been fantastic. And he never really made it on the network nightly news except for a handful of times in reports, never in person for an interview.

The idea for number 20 though is to compare the candidates on their ability to either equal or surpass what media attention Ron Paul did get. So the starting point is Ron Paul (for the media he did get) earns a 5, can a current candidate equal that? Perhaps this should be explained more fully in the description.

Another key to number 20 is that a candidate must actually have a liberty msg to share. As in the case of McCain or Obama, no, but in the case of Barr or Baldwin, yes.

-Marc

As we all know from Ron Paul’s campaign his near “blackout” level MSM coverage greatly affected his polling numbers so I believe most of us would agree that MSM coverage is probably the single most important factor determining the success of a campaign.

Therefore even if a candidate’s platform is rated to be almost identical to Ron Paul’s if the candidate does not score high enough to predict he will gain significant exposure via MSM coverage the public will never know about him or his issues.

So, since a candidate’s ability to gain MSM coverage is critical to the success of getting the liberty message out it should be weighted much more heavily than the 5% assigned to each of the issues.

What relative weight should be assigned to this factor? That’s, of course, a judgement call, but in my opinion if you have the ability to get good MSM coverage that’s at least half the battle right there.

So I would say the candidate’s issues all together should be weighted as 50% and the person’s ability to get good MSM coverage as the other 50%.

So we have two factors here: how close a candidates message is to Ron Paul’s and the candidate’s ability to get MSM coverage. And the two together are related to the “electibility” of the candidate. (There are other factors that affect electibility such as the candidates ability to articulate his message during interviews and debates and whether the public agrees with the message.)

If we were to look back and evaluate RP’s ability to get MSM coverage we would have to rate him low. Using your 1 to 5 scale I would give him a 1. So giving him a 5 rating for his message and a 1 or 2 rating for the MSM coverage factor he would get a total score of 6-7.

Therefore, it would be possible for a candidate to have a 3 to 4 rating on the issues and a 3 or 4 for MSM coverage and come out with a overall rating that is *higher* than RP’s. For example in the case of Bob Barr I would give him a 3 or 4 on his issues and 3 or 4 for the MSM coverage factor which gives him a total rating of 6-8 compared to RP’s 6-7.