Saturday 24 December 2011

Ron Paul: Phase 3 is well and truly underway

As in the oft-repeated Gandhi quote.

His enemies still have nothing on him, bar this one issue with the newsletters, but when the order goes out to roll it 24/7, it could almost look - if you squint with your head at an angle - like a real story. Anything to avoid talking about the issues he's raising. The strategy is to brand him a racist, even though he clearly is not, and also to describe him as insane. He must be marginalised, discredited and destroyed as soon as possible, and the weight of the establishment is now swinging round against him.

This should surprise no one. Ron Paul represents a clear and present danger to the powers that be in Washington. He exposes the Republican High Command for what it is; a party of big government, deficit-spending and intervention in the economy, diametrically opposed to the liberties set forth in the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, and the limitations placed on the federal government by the Constitution. Ron Paul shows them up by their own purported values. How can they masquerade as small-government, low taxation conservatives as long as Ron Paul is hanging around?

This time the other candidates are at least prepared to nod in his direction when it comes to cutting spending and auditing the Fed. They don't mean it, of course, but they recognise a large proportion of their voters like to hear this kind of stuff, and if they can get him out of the race, then they can relax back into the conservative rhetoric, safe in the knowledge that the one man who will call them on the gulf between what they say on the campaign trail and what they have done in Washington will be out of the picture.

But he's not out of the picture. He's sticking around. He's got the money to continue his run and he has a support base that no other GOP candidate can hope for, and it's not bought and paid for by big contributors, but rather from a great many small donations.

We should take heart. They still have nothing on him, but this non-issue of the newsletters. We might as well get used to it, because they will be running with it as long as he stays in the race. Every moment the pundits can be talking about the newsletters is a moment they don't have to talk about ending the war on drugs, bringing the troops back home, balancing the budget and switching off the Fed's Mandrake money machine.

This first wave of attacks tell us all we need to know about the fake conservatives who dominate the GOP and the right side of the establishment media. They will never support Ron Paul. In the event of him winning the nomination, they will be supporting Obama against him. They will close ranks, not with the conservative, constitutionalist libertarian in their own party, but with the big government, anti-liberty statists in the other one.

Whatever Ron Paul has achieved, it has been done in spite of the media and political establishment. Expect no change there. This is going to be a long and dirty fight, and it's no time for summer souldiers.

Thomas Jefferson
Ask yourself: who would he support?

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