In his recent article Ames Straw Poll Shows Broken GOP, Booman wrote:
…let’s face it, Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul are not going to be the president of the United States of America. Not to pick on anyone, but this is like suggesting that Dennis Kucinich or Alan Grayson might plausibly win control of the Earth’s most lethal military arsenal some day. It will never happen.
I have a fondness for that tough old bird Ron Paul, myself. And you’re right, Booman. Neither he nor any other true ideologue will win the nomination of either major party this year or any year in the foreseeable future.
Why?
Because the corporate media will isolate them as “quacks” and then (s)elect another semi-empty suit. Just as the CEOs of most major corporations are empty suits, the corporate government requires the same emptiness from its own CEO. Empty suits are easy to control. All you have to do is press them.
Read on.
This is precisely where your “broken GOP”, the equally broken Democratic Party, the broken government and the broken economy of the United States have gone wrong.
Say what you will about our greatest presidents and other sociocultural leaders…they were by and large not empty suits, and they would have been effectively discarded by today’s media before their ideas gained any traction whatsoever. They would be media-painted as quacks, as mavericks, as unelectable or somehow otherwise unreliable and then left as the roadkill of history in favor of people like Mitt Romney and Barack Obama.
Yes, Barack Obama…an intelligent empty suit, a bad negotiator and a congenital compromiser.
The establishment’s controller jury is still out regarding these two willing frontmen and the whole list of other likely RatPub candidates…Perry being the frontrunner of that list at the moment …who will plausibly pledge fealty to the PermaGov. But you can bet the house…if you can still manage to own one, of course…on one absolutely certain thing.
Come November 2012 the two major party presidential nominees will not be ideologues, they will be obedient creatures of the corporate world and thus ultimately controllable by that corporate world. And as you say…there is no way (short of the possibility of a major social, environmental and/or economic breakdown) that this situation will change over the next year and a quarter or so. No way on earth.
Meanwhile…check out this vid and the crowd’s reactions to what Ron Paul has to say and the way that he says it.
That is a series of visceral reactions to his spiel. It is not the polite applause that Michelle Bachmann gets and it is not the starfucker adulation that is given to that media-created sideshow Sarah Palin either. It’s the real deal.
Now travel on over to Google News…the CNN/USA Today of the of the internet, bet on it…and check out who’s getting coverage and who is not.
As of 11:15 AM EDT, a search for the word “Paul” on the Google News front page brings up one hit…A National Review article titled Ron Paul’s Moment in Iowa.
Think for a moment about that title. “Ron Paul’s Moment In Iowa.” That says it all. Nothing about the astounding narrowness of his loss to Michelle Bachman in her home fucking state. (She was born in Waterloo, Iowa, about 90 miles as the pig flies from Ames.) It was his “moment,” nothing more.
Ron Paul, to nobody’s great surprise, capitalized on his organizational depth and the unique enthusiasm of his followers to finish second — a close second — in the Ames Straw Poll. “People ask me if I’ve moved to the mainstream,” he says. “What has happened is that the mainstream has come in our direction. It’s not necessarily momentum for me personally, but for the philosophy of freedom.”
But in an important sense, the Paul movement is about Ron Paul personally, which is critical to his showing in the Ames Straw Poll but less helpful in the wider campaign. Mitt Romney’s advocates have second and third choices. Pawlenty and Cain supporters might get poached by Perry or Bachmann. Ron Paul’s followers don’t have a No. 2 choice — not Gary Johnson, not any other Republican. Give them liberty or give them… not death, but an incentive to stay home on Election Day. Ron Paul supporters aren’t really in the Republican party; they’re in the Ron Paul party.
—snip—
This may be Ron Paul’s last campaign, but one thing that became clear over the past few days is that the Ron Paul party is also the Rand Paul party, in a deeper sense than has always been obvious in light of the younger Paul’s sometimes wary handling of his father’s ideologically maximalist positions. The senator from Kentucky was hailed from the stage by his father’s Iowa chairman as a future presidential contender himself.
Much more polished and thoughtful than his father, Senator Paul seemed very much like the man in charge on Team Paul. With Paul pere retiring from the House and his chances of being elected president remote, there was the sense of a torch being passed between generations.
But not just yet. For the moment, Camp Liberty is content to celebrate Paul’s showing in Iowa. They almost certainly are reading more into the day’s events than is warranted, and Paul’s high-grade libertarianism remains a distinctly minority disposition in American politics. But it is not an inconsequential minority, and it is not one that Republicans can afford to ignore in 2012, regardless of who the nominee is.
Translation:
He’s an outsider. He’s a loner. He can’t win. “Regardless of who the nominee is,” it ain’t gonna be Ron Paul. Bet on it. Maybe someday Rand Paul might win…if he toes the corporate line better than does his old man, of course…but crusty ol’ Dr. Ron? No way.
And there it is.
He was the only person on that stage with an “idea.” Everybody else was simply on the hustle. He cannot be allowed to come to power because he thinks independently.
Do not mistake my own position here…I am not a “Ron Paul supporter” any more than I am a “Hillary Clinton supporter” no matter how many people here try to brand me as such. I do not agree with much of what he says…that whole “The Creator gave us liberty” schtick is demonstrably full of shit unless one believes that “The Creator” created only those who live under a so-called democratic system and thus does not give two shits about the other trillions of human beings who have lived and died in servitude to other systems throughout the history of the world…and I am in no way happy with many of Hillary Clinton’s positions either.
Nevertheless, I am partial to fighters with ideals. We haven’t had one in the White House since Harry Truman got the position by accident when FDR died. Not a one with the possible exception of JFK, and he fucked with the wrong people at the wrong time and got himself…and his brother…offed as a result.
As the great poker philosopher Doyle Brunson often states, “Sometimes you have to do the wrong thing at the right time in order to win.” Yup. And if you do the right thing at the wrong time? You lose. So it goes.
The rest?
As the power of the media has progressed, the “fight” quotient in our presidents has regressed at exactly the same rate as the media has taken over. Nixon had some fight in him, but he was also demonstrably loon-level crazy and he was taken down in the first media-driven coup in history.
After that?
Straight downhill in the fight department.
Howard Dean showed some fight. What did that get him?
“ARRRRRGH!!!”
Several scant weeks later? Over and out.
A media assassination. Nothing more and nothing less.
Ross Perot…the original Ron Paul in many respects…showed some fight too. Here’s how the establishment handled him.
1992 presidential candidacy
Main article: Ross Perot presidential campaign, 1992
On February 20, 1992, he appeared on CNN’s Larry King Live and announced his intention to run as an independent if his supporters could get his name on the ballot in all fifty states. With such declared policies as balancing the federal budget, a firm pro-choice stance on abortion, expansion of the war on drugs, ending outsourcing of jobs, opposition togun control, belief in protectionism on trade, advocating the Environmental Protection Agency and enacting electronic direct democracy via “electronic town halls,” he became a potential candidate and soon polled roughly even with the two major party candidates.[18]
Perot’s candidacy received increasing media attention when the competitive phase of the primary season ended for the two major parties. With the insurgent candidacies of Republican Pat Buchanan and Democrat Jerry Brown winding down, Perot was the natural beneficiary of populist resentment toward establishment politicians. On May 25, 1992 he was featured on the cover of Time Magazine with the title “Waiting for Perot,” an allusion to Samuel Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot.[19]
Several months before the Democratic and Republican conventions, Perot filled the vacuum of election news, as his supporters began petition drives to get him on the ballot in all fifty states. This sense of momentum was reinforced when Perot employed two savvy campaign managers in Democrat Hamilton Jordan and Republican Ed Rollins.[citation needed] In July, while Perot was pondering whether to run for office, his supporters established a campaign organization United We Stand America. Perot was late in making formal policy proposals, but most of what he did call for were intended to reduce the deficit. He wanted a gasoline tax increase and some cutbacks of Social Security.[citation needed]
By the summer Perot commanded a lead in the presidential race with thirty-nine percent of the vote.[20] By mid-July, the Washington Post reported that Perot’s campaign managers were becoming increasingly disillusioned by his unwillingness to follow their advice[21] to be more specific on issues, and his need to be in full control of operations[21] with such tactics as forcing volunteers to sign loyalty oaths.[22] Perot’s poll numbers began to slip to 25%, and his advisers warned that if he continued to ignore them, he would fall into single digits. Co-manager Hamilton Jordan threatened to quit, and on July 15, Ed Rollins resigned after Perot fired advertisement specialist Hal Riney, who worked with Rollins on theReagan campaign. Rollins would later claim that a member of the campaign accused him of being a Bush plant with ties to the CIA.[23] Amidst the chaos, Perot’s support fell to 20%.[24]
The next day, Perot announced on Larry King Live that he would not seek the presidency. He explained that he did not want the House of Representatives to decide the election if the result caused the electoral college to be split. Perot eventually stated the reason was that he received threats that digitally altered photographs would be released by the Bush campaign to sabotage his daughter’s wedding.[25]
Regardless of the reasons for withdrawing, his reputation was badly damaged. Many of his supporters felt betrayed and public opinion polls would subsequently show a large negative view of Perot that was absent prior to his decision to end the campaign.[26]
In September he qualified for all fifty state ballots. On October 1, he announced his intention to reenter the presidential race. He said that Republican operatives had wanted to reveal compromising photographs of his daughter, which would disrupt her wedding, and he wanted to spare her from embarrassment. Scott Barnes, a private investigator and security consultant who had testified to that effect, later recanted his story. He revealed in 1997 that he had deceived Perot about the existence of the photographs, and that he had created the hoax with others who were not involved with any political campaign. Barnes was a Bush supporter, and believed that if it were revealed that Republicans were involved in dirty tricks, it would harm Bush’s candidacy.[27]<
Again…my point is not that I am or was a “Perot supporter,” I am simply trying to wake people up to the way that things work here. Way back in 1992 the media machine was neither as powerful or as monolithically owned as it is today, so old-fashioned dirty tricks were employed to remove this particular ideologue…initially a much more serious threat to the PermaGov than have have been any other relatively free thinkers before or since.
By the summer [before the election] Perot commanded a lead in the presidential race with thirty-nine percent of the vote.
Thirty-nine percent? That’s a hefty lead, folks. For an independent? That is a hefty lead. Bet on it. So the PermaGov deployed the spooks and with the cooperation of the media they took him down. In a matter of weeks.
I expect no change in this situation this time around. It’ll be empty suit vs. empty suit, and may the best tailored empty suit win.
But…provided we survive another 4 years of EmptySuitocracy…there is always hope.
As Thomas Naylor so eloquently says…
Rebél!!!
Later…
AG
