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.

The Republican Primary: Good Talk!

We have officially crossed the 365-day threshold in the countdown to the 2012 Presidential Election. What a lot of people don’t realize is that this election officially began the instant Barack Obama won in 2008. Sadly, that is what it has come to in this country – the 24-hour news cycle, the Internet, a generation of individuals walking around with smart phones that have instant access to all kinds of valuable “information” while on the go… it all has created a gargantuan gap that needs to be filled with the spectacle, petty disagreements, and controversy that only an election can provide. Why focus on how we can fix our problems when we can focus on who gets the chance to ravage us further in a few years?

If you’re like me, you just can’t wait to vote in the Republican primary. If you’re not like me, you probably have no clue who to vote for. Allow me to help. There have been a slew of Republican candidates that in the previous few months have risen (and fallen) to claim their right to challenge Obama for the presidency. The analysis from political pundits has been covered on the networks to the point of saturation for all those willing to watch. They are giving you waaaaaaaaaaay too much information. Here is all that you need to know about the Republican “candidates.”

Michele Bachmann – Representative from Minnesota

Representative Bachamann won the “vaunted” Ames, Iowa Straw Poll. This poll is a prestigious and important event – important in that if it were never held, no one would have ever heard of Ames, Iowa. This dramatic 129-vote destruction of runner-up Ron Paul thrust Bachmann into the national spotlight, and a share of the lead in the Republican polls. Then people listened to the words that came out of her mouth. Her platform consists of repealing Obamacare, erasing unemployment by repealing Obamacare, fixing the housing market by repealing Obamacare, and ending the threat of Sharia law in this nation by repealing Obamacare. The only problem in this country she would need to fix with a different remedy is gay marriage (which she can just pray away). She will say anything to get elected – Obama is a socialist bent on ruining the country, the HPV vaccine causes mental retardation, and that the hurricane and earthquake were messages from God telling us to reign in government spending. She has absolutely no chance of getting the nomination. None.

Newt Gingrich – Former Speaker of the House from Georgia

Speaker of the House Gingrich is the fourth and current leader in the polls for the Grand Ole Party. He last was relevant while lobbying hard for the impeachment of then-President Clinton for his various moral indiscretions. He was of course, at the same time, cheating on his second wife with his current third wife (which he managed to somehow publicly blame on his deep love of… America. Seriously). He has performed exceptionally well in debates due to his grasp of domestic issues and his ability to give these things called detailed answers. He also adds an insult to the mainstream liberal media with every answer, further increasing his standing in the polls. Regardless of all of this, his personal life will destroy his campaign for the same reason he worked to remove Clinton from the Presidency. He has a 1% chance of getting the nomination.

Rick Santorum – Former Senator from Pennsylvania

This man should be running for local evangelist, not President. He has a 0% chance of getting the nomination. For more information, see here:

Rick Santorum Has No Chance.

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Ron Paul – Representative from Texas

He says exactly what he means. He is honest. He is intelligent. He would actually try to do everything he says he would do. He can’t be bought by lobbyists. He will never get the Republican nomination. So much for honesty being the best policy. Our teachers lied to us. He has a 0% chance.

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Herman Cain – Chairman of Godfather Pizza

Herman Cain has a slogan you need to get used to. It’s easy – it goes “9-9-9.” It is his answer to almost every question, and it is exactly why his fans love him. He was the third Republican front runner, but has faded in the last 10 days due to allegations of sexual harassment from his days atop the National Restaurant Association and his recent discovery of China as a nuclear power. His “9-9-9” plan involves a 9% business transaction tax, a 9% personal income tax, and a 9% national sales tax. He would erase the entire current tax code. Like Ron Paul, he says what he wants to do – it’s just that he doesn’t know what else he wants to do besides “9-9-9.” His lack of foreign policy experience, personal life, and tendency to refer to himself in the third person lead me to give him a 0.5% chance that he gets the nomination.

Jon Huntsman – Former Ambassador to China and Governor of Utah

This is the individual who SHOULD get the Republican nomination, if things like common sense, principals, experience, and a chance to win the freaking election actually mattered. He is rationale, coherent, well-spoken and actually thinks for himself. He is a conservative on some issues and moderate on others. He believes science isn’t perpetrating a massive hoax on humanity in the form of global warming, which is downright shocking in a field of science-deniers. His ideas on foreign policy… wait for it… make sense. If the race holds its current pattern, Gingrich will be out of the lead in the polls within a month… Huntsman could do well in early primary states in the first months of 2012 and sneak his way into the nomination. He is my dark horse candidate. People unfairly compare him to Mitt Romney because he is a Mormon and a former governor. The difference is that Huntsman does not have a record of changing his position for political expediency. He has a 5% chance.

Rick Perry – Governor of Texas

Perry entered the race with great fanfare. Highly respected amongst the Tea Party, Perry shot to the lead in polls instantly upon declaring his intention to seek the nomination. Democrats didn’t like him because he reminded them of George W. Bush. Republicans liked him because he reminded them of George W. Bush. He has a knack for fundraising, and will openly tell you that giving speeches is not his skill – politicking is. This is what makes him dangerous. His performances in the debates, however, have become the stuff of legend. He regularly mixes up thoughts in mid-sentence, and his 45-second attempt to conjure up the third federal agency he would destroy will be fodder for Saturday Night Live. In New Hampshire, he by all appearances was ripped out of his mind while giving a campaign speech. Regardless of all of this – he has a 10% chance of getting the nomination due to his conservative credentials. At an early debate, the moderator mentioned Perry’s record for executions as governor of Texas – the crowd roared their support for Perry’s tally. That tells you all you need to know – the man has a shot.

Mitt Romney – Former Governor of Massachusetts

Meet your 2012 Republican Nominee for President, Governor Mitt Romney. He talks like a President, acts like a President, and looks like a President. He is intelligent, coherent, and could actually win the election – and a large percentage of Republicans hate him. Despite all of his positives, Romney has never polled above 30% among registered Republicans. They distrust his religion (he’s a Mormon), the fact that he is from Massachusetts, and that he has a habit of changing his positions when he knows it can win him an election (abortion, gay marriage, etc.). What we have here is a man who has Republican principals with the economy, the scope of the government, and in foreign policy… who has Democratic ideals with regards to many social issues (health care, gay rights, abortion). He realized he would only stand a chance on a national stage if he switched positions… so he did. If he would have switched his positions from a desire to have a progressive tax to a flat tax, Republicans would accept him as someone who had seen the light. But because he switched on social issues that many Republicans feel should be been embedded in him from birth, they can’t seem to forgive him. It seems as though many Republicans would rather lose to Obama in 2012 and give Chris Christie a shot at 2016. It’s almost spiteful. Regardless of all of this, I give him an 83% chance at the nomination due to the far right being terrified of a second term for Obama…

Who gets the last 0.5%????? Sarah Palin. Why? Because how could I go an entire blog post without reminding Republicans that they have people in their party who feel Sarah Palin should be President. Good talk.

Rick Santorum Has No Chance.

Since, as of today, former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum officially announced the formation of a presidential exploratory committee, I thought I would give my “expert” pundit’s point of view on his chances to a) secure the Republican nomination and b) win the Presidential election of 2012. Here are your answers:

a) He has no chance.

b) He has no chance.

“This was tried once before in America, when the liberty and happiness rights of the slaveholder were put over the life and liberty rights of the slave. But unlike abortion today, in most states even the slaveholder did not have unlimited right to kill his slave” - Rick Santorum

Thank you for wasting Americans’ time, Rick. Thank you for convincing people to donate their hard earned cash to your campaign, Rick (although I’m sure a lot of it is from lobbyists who know you’ll serve as their mouthpiece). I guess Rick forgot that he got absolutely dominated in his own home state when running for re-election to the United States Senate. He lost by 18% of the vote as an INCUMBENT (incumbents in the United States Congress win re-election when they run traditionally over 90% of the time).

Before anyone gets defensive by saying ridiculous things to me like “Lincoln lost when he ran for the Senate”… understand that I am not saying that is the ONLY reason he has no shot at winning. I’m saying it because he’s…  wait for it… Rick Santorum!

Some of my all-time favorite things that Rick has said (forgive me for paraphrasing, but feel free to use this crazy invention called google to fact check me):
– he openly compared Democratic candidates for Congress in 2006 to the rising storm of the Nazis, and paralleled himself with none other than Winston Churchill coming to the save the day (at least he has no ego). Glenn Beck hadn’t copyrighted the analogy yet.
– he said that if the Supreme Court were to say that consensual gay sex were permissible in the privacy of one’s home, then obviously polygamy, incest, bigamy, etc. would also all be good to go.
– he said the reason we are having economic troubles and that social security is failing is because 33% of all babies that should be being born are actually being aborted… where was the effort on that statistic?! Don’t worry, though – Santorum then said that he and his wife have 7 children, so they were doing their part to fund social security. Seriously. He said that.
– he said that it was no surprise that a lot of the Catholic clergy child abuse cases were in Boston, due to it being a center for liberal thought. So the obvious parallel there that he was trying to create is what exactly?!
– he regularly drums up fear of Islam and the Koran (he’s actually quite good at this, and this scares me because I’m sure lobbyists working for businesses who make weaponry would love to see him take the reins)
– Oh… and he said the crusades were not at all a part of any “Christian aggression” whatsoever – that it was in fact “anti-historical” to suggest that anyone but the Muslims had anything to do with the fighting in the crusades. He said any perception otherwise was due to the “American left who hate Christendom.”

So, here’s to you, Rick Santorum. Congratulations on the formation of your presidential exploratory committee. Enjoy your 15 minutes of fame, because your time is almost up…

Wait… you’re saying Donald Trump is tied in the polls among registered Republicans?! DONALD TRUMP?!!? Maybe Santorum DOES have a chance…

The 2012 Game Plan: Forget the Moderates

Now that Barack Obama has shocked the world by declaring his intention to run for a second term, the campaign strategies from both parties will be fully on display for the next year and a half. Unfortunately, I get the impression from both sides of the political aisle that they are not really interested in reaching out to the moderates. Don’t get me wrong – they’ll say that they are, but this seems to be purely lip service.

We live in a nation that is primarily made up of political moderates. A broad consensus can be reached on a wide variety of even controversial issues – but that is not how the political strategists of the parties believe you win elections. They believe you win elections by catering to your “base”, which often times lies on the outskirts of the political spectrum… and they may be right. Why? The base of the parties is made up of the people who are willing to take to the streets in grassroots efforts to mobilize other like-minded voters, to donate money to campaigns, and to generally be involved. They are so highly motivated because they believe the opposition truly is an evil that they could not possibly tolerate being in power.

On the other hand, I get the impression that most of the moderates I know are more concerned with living their day-to-day lives, not becoming politically active. They don’t live constantly in fear of an oppressive government coming to take their money, their jobs, or their freedoms. They do not feel an overt need to get involved. As a result of this, the campaigns will continue to gravitate towards the base.

The examples of this playing itself out are countless. Look no further than at the words spoken by the party members and the portrayal of policy initiatives and candidates through the various media outlets. When George W. Bush was president, he was painted by those on the far liberal left to be a fascist dictator bent on spreading a new world order and catering to corporate greed. He was a liar guilty of war crimes who was stripping Americans of their freedoms through the Patriot Act. Now that Barack Obama is president, many on the far conservative right portray him as a socialist dictator bent on spreading the wealth and subverting the Constitution. He is an illegitimate leader due to his foreign birth, and he wants the poor to wage metaphorical, if not literal, war on the rich.

The truth is that neither representation is even close to accurate. Both Bush and Obama were far more centrist than either side would allow you to believe. How else can you explain that the Tea Party has ripped Bush for not being a true Republican? How else could you explain that many on the left have already grown tired of Obama and have begun the push for Hillary Clinton to challenge him for the nomination? I have lived my entire adult life during their presidencies, and not once did I ever feel the supposed trampling of my freedoms and liberties that both sides claim have happened. How many of us have had our thoughts and opinions suppressed? Perhaps never before in world history have we been so free to express our opinion. Through blogs, Facebook, Twitter and other social media, Americans now have more freedom of expression than ever before. There is no Sedition Act limiting the press or the public. No one I know (that is a moderate) lives in fear of being oppressed.

Sadly, that is not what will win the election. Motivating the base, even if takes spreading fear, is. There is a reason Rick Santorum was quoted as saying the current economic problems can be traced back to 1/3 of possible American babies are being aborted. Abortion is an issue that motivates the religious right, a bastion of votes for the Republican Party. There is a reason Bush was portrayed as a warmonger in 2004. The anti-war crowd was supposed to boost their efforts to get out the vote. How did Republicans counter the Kerry campaign? By, for example, putting a gay marriage ban on the ballot in the key swing state of Ohio. They knew that gay marriage was an issue that their base felt strongly about and that it would help rally the troops. We could go on – and I haven’t even mentioned Glenn Beck or Michael Moore yet! Convince senior citizens that their health care is going to be stripped from them or that they could face death panels. Convince the poor that the wealthy capitalists are waging class warfare on them. That is how you win elections.

This has served as a repellant to moderates – we get disgusted with politics and the system, and we stay home on Election Day. We refuse to get involved, and so we try to wash our hands of it. And it has also served to ruin any chance America has of progress through compromise – after all, how can one compromise with an opponent that has been vilified so thoroughly? You can’t make a deal with the devil.

It’s time for the moderates to realize what has been happening. It is time for the moderates to be the ones who control the policy and the elections in this country. This new Silent Majority needs to find a voice…