Here We Go Again: The Media and Ron Paul

Note: I know, three posts in a row on Ron Paul. I’ll stop for a bit after this and write on something else. However, being as an election cycle is coming up, and my interests in politics are well known, I suspect you will be seeing more and more political posts here and there between now and November 2012. But it won't be the only thing I write about, so don't disappear entirely!

I've decided to expand my thoughts that started yesterday with the video I posted....

Just like we saw in 2008, the media is trying to tell us who to vote for, and who to dismiss, in the next election cycle. In 2008, every word Obama said was spun into gold. No one could say a bad word against him. He was turned into a sort of deity by the media outlets that are supposed to remain impartial and just report the news.

Now it’s happening again, but in another way. Ron Paul, the surging Texas Congressman and 2012 Republican Presidential Candidate, has been blacked out by the media on both sides of the aisle (liberal and conservative). Why? Well, mostly because he is different, he speaks his mind, and his beliefs are unwavering and never changing. And this kind of commitment to one’s beliefs scares the shit out of the media and the establishment political spectrum.

In a recent article following Paul’s achievement at the Ames Iowa Straw Poll, the Washington Examiner's Timothy P. Carney asked, "Why doesn't Paul get the attention he seems to deserve? Mostly because the mainstream media and the Republican establishment wish he would just go away."

And its true. They don’t want him around. The media doesn’t want him around, and the political establishment doesn’t want him around. Carney goes on to discuss why:

"One reason the bipartisan establishment finds Paul so obnoxious is how much the past four years have proven him correct — on the housing bubble, on the economy, on our foreign misadventures, and on our national debt. In 2002, as President George W. Bush was pushing more subsidies for mortgages and home-buying under the motto of an 'ownership society,' Ron Paul took to the House floor to issue a warning. Through Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Federal Reserve, 'the government increases the likelihood of a painful crash in the housing market.' "

Paul dissented on the Iraq War, being openly skeptical of Bush administration claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and al-Qaeda ties, neither of which Hussein had. Carney noted that Paul was ignored in 2008 because "neither the mainstream media nor the GOP leadership wanted to hear this at the time. Housing was the engine of our growth, and Ron Paul was just being a crank again. So we pumped and pumped, until the inevitable crash.... Again and again Paul has dissented, been laughed at, and been proven correct. That may be one reason he evokes so much scorn in certain corners of the Right."

"Paul similarly foresaw our current debt crisis, warning that cutting taxes and increasing spending was the recipe for disaster: 'Endless borrowing to finance endless demands cannot be sustained,' Paul said eight years before the S&P downgraded U.S. debt."

Basically, Dr. Paul is terrifying to the political establishment because he points out why they have been continuously wrong and this embarrasses them. To most people, this would make Dr. Paul more capable for the presidency. I know that’s what got me about Dr. Paul. I, like most Americans (I’d hope), want a President who can see trouble coming and stop it before it does real damage. But many Americans remain unfamiliar with Paul's accurate predictions, despite a viral effort to spread them through the Internet.

As a result, the media have come out with the constant refrain, "Ron Paul can't win," every time he's mentioned in the media, even though they always fail to provide any reason to back up this premise.

This election cycle, Dr. Paul is more dangerous than ever to establishment political figures, because Paul is running in an entirely different atmosphere in 2011-12. The economic crash has happened. The housing bubble has burst. The wars are unpopular — especially after the death of bin Laden — and being waged by Democrat Barack Obama. And Dr. Paul is the only person who was talking about these scenarios well before they became a reality. He can not be as easily dismissed as a fringe outsider anymore. So the media ignores him instead.

Personally, I’m a big Ron Paul fan, for many of the reasons described above. He seems to really understand how the economy works, and his ideas on the topic, I believe, could help us get back on the right track as a country. I love how he has never changed his beliefs, not once, and has consistently stood firm in the face of everyone calling him a wacko. As said above, I want a president that can see the pitfalls coming, and knows what to do to avoid them, or at least lessen the blow. These are all amazing characteristics for a President to have. I love that he’s not beholden to the Republican Party, and therefore would not feel the need to govern the way the Party tells him to. He could just do what he thinks is best for the country, whether it’s a conservative idea or a liberal idea.

However, these are the exact reasons why the political establishment, and by extension the media, are terrified of him. If he got air time, people might really start getting behind him, and he might actually win. Then the entire political landscape of the country would be changed…which is scary to those making money off of the current political landscape, no matter how fucked up it is.

If the media wanted to really do it's job, they would give ALL the candidates equal, unbiased airtime to present their cases and then let the people decide who was right for the job. But in today's world, the media decides what public opinion should be, and then forces it down our throat. It's sad. Hopefully Ron Paul and his political team have a strategy for getting his message out to the people, because he deserves to be heard.