Posted by
Charles Lewis on Thursday, September 06, 2007 10:47:49 PM
Second ranked talk show host acts out his state of denial on Ron Paul
by Charles Lewis
Don't get me wrong. While I've always agreed with Ron Paul on the vast majority of issues, I haven't jumped on the bandwagon - far from it.
In fact, my favorite moment of last night's New Hampshire GOP debate was when someone from Fox finally called Paul on his "one of the reasons - according to Osama - that he attacked us on 9/11 was because we have troops in Saudi Arabia" mantra, drawing the rational inference that Paul was saying we should let bin Laden call the tune on our foreign policy. I reiterate: if we've been doing something that ticks Osama off, we need to do more of it, not less.
And I still more than half believe that the proverbial (and very real) forces of darkness put Paul up to announcing, unexpectedly, his candidacy (suddenly just a day or so after Tom Tancredo's long forecast entry) specifically to derail Tom's chances - and with them, America's.
But right is right and the truth is the truth. And the truth is that Paul is running away with rank and file GOP opinion in this pre-primary cycle. The "mainstream" (and thus agenda-driven and thus not credible) polls notwithstanding, Paul has won every Internet post-debate poll and received the most rousing (not to mention consistent) ovations during each of the debates.
Doubtless, Paul's appeal stems from this suicidal administration's cover-ups and downplaying of everything from the huge amounts of WMD finds in Iraq (you read that right - read my piece "True Nature of the Lies" {http://elusivetruth.townhall.com/g/06a63265-e0ae-4ef5-b836-b7363ac1a854}) to the intimate Iraqi involvement in the Oklahoma City attack (read Jayna Davis's The Third Terrorist, which this constituent-stabbing administration squelched). The natural reaction from anyone unaware of the "true nature of the lies" is that the Bushites are a bunch of excuse-inventing war-for-oil mongering neocons.
Dubya and company have artfully turned approximately half of the conservatives into virtual "neolibs" (their true objective, in my view, and I've been holding court on this point since early '03 or earlier). Paul feeds into this state of confusion, and capitalizes off it grandly - to the tune of mostly votes siphoned off Tancredo, tragically.
But that's beside the central point of this piece. Ron Paul is the sensation of the Republican presidential field. There is no doubt; it's overwhelming. This should not be surprising. He's eclipsed Tancredo, for one, with a combination of feistiness, stage presence, and anti-heroism.
John McCain, on the other hand, is no competition. I don't know if Fox News packed the New Hampshire greasy spoon that served as a proxy for the rest of us periodically during the debate, but I'll eat my blue plate special if McCain won the thing. And another thing - it's nonsense that (according to the crowd there) this was a poor debate; it was by far the best - the most lively, the most engaged, the one where they took the gloves off, and SanctuaRudy's dirty hands were fully exposed.
I do not believe these two impostors, along with Mitt (anti-gun, pro-gay-marriage, kowtow to the legislating judiciary) Romney (who felt Congress - which played at holding Terri Schiavo-murdering Judge Greer's feet to the fire, then shrank away when he ignored it - went too far in that sordid affair) are the front runners. The conservative Republican base is nothing if not chastened by 8 years of mostly liberalism from a president it could only pray was the "conservative" he pretended to be. No way this base could wish to be burned by candidates with all the red (as in Red) flags sprouting from the likes of "McCainnedy," Rudy, Romney, and, yes, Fred Thompson.
What we're witnessing, as far as I can see, is a wave of fabrications by a polling establishment as corrupt as the pols it pushes. The idea was for Paul to dilute Tancredo's support to the point where they were both irrelevant. Then the Paul juggernaut picked up enough momentum to get far, far out of hand. The only thing to do was "lie with statistcs." And the media, as usual, is complicit.
Sean Hannity's overtly feigned obliviousness to the Paul phenomenon is particularly odious. His offhand, totally unsupported comments about Paul's people voting multiple times (in online debate after online debate poll?) is repeatedly belied by the almost hysterical idol worship exhibited after practically everything that's come out of his mouth in all of the debates so far.
The naked disingenuousness of Hannity's dismissive manner vis a vis the Paul presence is so egregious that it's becoming as painful to watch as a political diatribe by a government-"educated" beauty contestant. Don't confuse Sean with the facts; at this point, his lack of credibility makes him virtual dead weight for the conservative movement. He should be jettisoned
There remain two questions:
1 Does the falsification in the opinion polls have a corollary in the real polls? Answer: Don't attempt to knock me over with any feathers if this turns out to be the case (though, frankly, how will we know if it does?).
2 On the off chance that the Paul phenomenon will get an even shot in the voting booth, and somehow he gets the nod, what do we get with Paul?
That's more complicated, but (assuming he's for real, that's a big assumption) there's a lot to be said for him:
- He's a constitutionalist, who'll do his darndest to reverse the 150 years of trashing of the Bill of Rights (especially the second and tenth amendments),
- He'll have no truck with eminent domain tyranny, property rights violations, federal intervention in education, or UN intervention into our lives in general,
- He'd be capable of abolishing the federal income tax and the Federal Reserve,
- His stand against Bush's mandatory universal mental health screening set the tone for action in numerous states against this outrage,
- A Paul presidency, it would stand to reason, would sound the death knell for the North American Union, and his position on borders (while by no means a centerpiece of his campaign, and while he's been essentially silent on the issue of border guardians qua political prisoners) is probably third only to those of Tancredo and Hunter (himself an increasingly viable candidate, by the way, if his 44% "landslide plurality" in a recent Texas straw poll is an indication),
- Most recently (actually, currently), he is leading the charge against the FDA-UN-Big Pharma scheme to make verboten natural vitamins, minerals, and herbs (an absolutely imperative fight, if you value your health).
Who am I to determine if Paul would remain forthright on these issues and similar ones, or if he'll do what most apparent "real things" in my lifetime, once they set up shop in the interior of the Capital Beltway, have done? In any event, it is not surprising that the dual establishment (liberal and pseudo-conservative) doesn't want to contribute to the momentum of a candidate with the above credentials, even if he is a fraud.