Why Everyone Hates Ron Paul.

Some of you, sadly, know little to nothing about Republican Presidential candidate Ron Paul. The fact that he is a Congressman from Texas, a doctor, a former Air Force medical officer during the Vietnam War, and a one-time Libertarian Presidential candidate from the 1980s is probably completely unknown to the vast majority of Americans. There is a reason we hear next to nothing positive about him, but we’ll get to that in a bit…

Now… I must admit… following the GOP Presidential Primary is not a top priority for a lot of Americans. It is football season, after all (unless you’re an Eagles fan, in which case you’re already focusing on your 2013 Super Bowl run). To catch everyone up to speed, what follows is a brief summary of the entire Republican field and the polling data associated with it up unto today.

The first thing you need to know is that the candidate who has consistently polled at the top of the field is Mitt Romney. He struggles, however, to motivate the far right of the Republican base due to his inconsistent positions on bread and butter conservative issues like health care and abortion. He has and will continue to receive a large portion of media attention. He looks, talks, and acts Presidential – if you were making a “Ken doll” of an American president, it would look like Mitt.

Besides the former governor of Massachusetts, a number of GOP politicians has risen (and fallen) dramatically in the polls. First, there was Michelle Bachman. She skyrocketed in the polls due to her street-cred with the Tea Party and her “momentous” victory in the Iowa friggin’ straw poll. She is now out of the race. Then there was Rick Perry, who also jumped to the top of the polls due to his status as governor of Texas, his consistent positions on conservative issues, and his regular willingness to cite Christianity as a reason to support him. Then he opened his mouth in debates… “oops.” He is now out of the race. Enter Herman Cain. His turn at the top of the polls came predominantly because of his status as a Washington outsider, and his plain spoken views on fixing the government tax codes with “9-9-9.” Allegations of extramarital affairs and a moronic answer on our policy in Libya doomed his campaign (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WW_nDFKAmCo&ob=av3e) and he is now out of the race. Now, Rick Santorum (yes, Rick Santorum) and Newt Gingrich get a lot of the media attention as the conservative alternatives to Mitt Romney, with Gingrich getting more than Santorum. As we head towards the South Carolina primary, those three names are the ones garnering the lion’s share of the focus from ALL media organizations (the left with MSNBC, the middle with CNN, and the right with Fox News).

So, one would assume from that explanation that there is good reason to give little to no attention to Ron Paul… unless you actually look at polling data and these things called RESULTS from the straw poll, the Iowa caucus, and the New Hampshire primary.

The Iowa Straw Poll that catapulted Bachman to national acclaim and a plethora of media attention was by no means a blowout victory. She defeated the runner-up by a whopping 0.9% of the vote… that runner-up was Ron Paul, who most networks refused to mention in the results. By comparison, New Gingrich got 2.3% of the vote, total, in that contest.

Fast forward to the Iowa Caucus, won by the duo of Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney (the Iowa GOP proclaimed the contest a tie). Current media darling Newt Gingrich lost that race by around 13,000 votes. Where did Ron Paul finish? Third – losing by approximately 3,000 votes. So, in two “important” contests that proclaim to show a candidate’s electability and standing within the party, only Ron Paul was consistent. But given that both contests were in the state of Iowa, perhaps Ron Paul didn’t get media coverage due to the nature of the state – a midwest bastion of ultraconservative thought… that could be the case, if not for the results from the more independent-leaning northern state of New Hampshire.

In New Hampshire’s “first-in-the-nation” primary, dominated by New Englander Mitt Romney, Ron Paul finished second – losing by 30,000 votes. Where did the media attention-grabbers Santorum and Gingrich finish? Fourth and fifth place, respectively, each losing by around 75,000 votes… while, by the way, assailing the media for their coverage of them. At least they get coverage.

Even now in the polls in the state of South Carolina, Ron Paul is polling third, AHEAD of Rick Santorum – a conservative Christian who clearly should be wondering why a Mormon (Romney) could be polling ahead of him in the south, of all places (don’t take it personally, Mississippi).

Ron Paul has been the most consistent candidate in the polls. He has the most consistent actual results in the various elections. He has the most consistent positions. He is the candidate that, above all, is honest about his beliefs and refuses to pander to his base to get votes. And he has shown an ability to connect with voters in a variety of states.

So why is he being ignored by the media? Why is he even, in some situations, been subject to scathing attacks from members of his own party? Why is Rush Limbaugh calling him a “joke”? Why is Glenn Beck comparing him to Osama Bin Laden? Why do the power brokers in D.C. say that Santorum, Gingrich, and Romney are the only people with a chance to defeat Obama?

The answer is simple – they are scared of what he would do should he actually become President of the United States of America.

Let me state for the record that I do not agree with all that Ron Paul stands for, especially with regards to his domestic policies. But if we were being honest with ourselves, no President really impacts many of those issues anyways – Congress does. Look at the Obama jobs plan. There you have a plan that has the approval of a majority of Americans, yet nothing is being done to pass it. The President can’t just wake up and declare something to be law, nor can a President just cancel a current law (sorry, Romney – a stroke of the pen won’t outlaw Obamacare, something only Paul has consistently been saying).  No President can overturn Roe v. Wade. No President can just eliminate many facets of the federal government without Congressional approval. On a lot of these issues, he was similar in beliefs to Rick Perry and Michelle Bachman – so clearly these are not the reasons he is ignored by many or chastised by those actually giving him attention. It’s what he actually COULD do as President that scares the corporate interests and the media in this nation.

Perhaps the most powerful part of a President’s power is their power to decide the course of our nation’s foreign policy. This is an area where Ron Paul is an outspoken critic of our past decisions, and one in which he firmly states his opposition to fighting wars for oil, nation building, and overall American entanglement in foreign affairs. He doesn’t want to just give Israel a blanket endorsement for all that they do in the Middle East. He is not an isolationist, as pundits sometimes claim when they attempt to paint him as an extremist. He is not bent on destroying trade pacts with other nations – he merely has the insane notion that the military industrial complex drives many of the decisions made with regards to foreign policy by members of this government, and that this is inherently wrong.

Every candidate, media organization, or talking-head on the TV/radio/Internet has the same sponsors or donors. These sponsors are wealthy. These sponsors in many situations have ties to the armaments industry, which, if you’ve read my past rantings, controls a lot of the political power in this nation. How deep these ties go we will probably never know, but you can be sure the rabbit hole is not a small one.

If you’ve been paying attention to the political discourse and the actual action in the debates, you will notice that Ron Paul has had his words deliberately twisted against him (even by the moderators and those reporting on the debates) to portray him as someone who is dangerous to the very future of this country. His fellow candidates unite in referring to him and his ideas as “dangerous,” “extremist,” “naive,” and ignorant. Perry, Bachman, and Santorum have referred to the appeasement policy of England in the 1930s with Nazi Germany as a parallel to what would happen with a President Paul.

So… to answer the original question succinctly – why does the media ignore Ron Paul? Because if they gave him sufficient air time, people would realize that he is right on foreign policy and that Americans have been needlessly sacrificing their children and their money for invalid reasons. And why do the candidates bash Paul in debates? Because they realize people are watching – and they can’t have you thinking he is anything but dangerous.

He is dangerous – to the military industrial complex.