NEWS YOU WON'T FIND ON CNN

The Media’s Plan to Ambush Ron Paul

By Mike Whitney

11/07/07 "ICH" --- - First we stop the killing, and then we restore the Constitution. These are our two main priorities. And that’s why I’m voting for Ron Paul. He is the only candidate (with a chance to win) who’s promising to do either. And he’ll keep his word. That makes him the only truly American candidate running for president.

Paul is serious about withdrawing US troops from Iraq. He knows that the war was a mistake and believes that the American occupation must end. He has promised to stop the ongoing slaughter of Iraqi civilians. That should be the primary moral consideration for anyone casting a ballot on November 3.

Will you vote to stop the killing or not? It’s as simple as that.

Paul has also promised to restore the rule of law---to repeal the Patriot Act and the Military Commissions Act; to reinstate Posse Comitatus, due process, habeas corpus, and the “presumption of innocence”. He’ll make sure that US prisoners—whether they are American citizens or foreign nationals---are treated in way that complies with our treaty obligations, the Geneva Conventions, the Bill of Rights, and the basic tenets of human decency.

Under Paul, the torture will stop. Period.

What other candidate will stop the torture of US prisoners? What other candidate will stop the government’s spying on the American people? What other candidate will challenge Bush’s claim that the president can arbitrarily cast an American citizen in prison and keep him there as long as he chooses without charging him with a crime?

Bush has abolished the basic safeguards which protect the citizen from the long-arm of the state. The legal system needs be purged of his executive signing statements and presidential decrees. Only Paul promises to restore the Constitution. There is no second choice.

Paul is the only candidate who grasps the economic problems facing the nation from our massive deficit spending, the destruction of our manufacturing base, and the falling dollar. He may not be able to pull us back from the brink, but he will rebuild confidence in our currency, our markets, and our trade policies. That’s the best we can hope for given the mess that Bush has created.

On November 5, Guy Fawkes Day, the Paul campaign raised over $4.07 million in one day mostly from private citizens. He surpassed all the other candidates except Hilary Clinton and has raised more than $6.84 million in the first five weeks of this quarter alone. Paul’s “purely” grassroots movement is energized by working class Americans who see his candidacy as a last-ditch effort to end the war in Iraq, reestablish fiscal sanity, and restore civil liberties.

Despite the fact that Paul has a strong personal approval ratings and polls well against his competitors; the media has deliberately---and very successfully---kept him out of the public eye. That will be more difficult to do now that his campaign war-chest is packed with contributions and his base of support is expanding across the country.

We expect the media to ditch its failed strategy of simply ignoring Paul and take the more aggressive approach of attacking him outright. Now that Paul has established himself as a credible threat to the warmongering, autocratic corporate elite; he will have to be discredited through a coordinated media-blitz which will target his voting record, his character, and any other trivial foible which may incite public scorn.

He’s got a bull’s-eye on his back.

We’ve seen it all before, haven’t we? The politics of personal destruction organized and directed from the penthouse suites of the media’s corporate offices?

Perhaps, it will be a repeat of the “Dean Scream”, where the voice of antiwar candidate Howard Dean was isolated from the crowd noise-- and played on the mainstream media over 900 times in 48 hours---making Dean look like a maniac and torpedoing whatever chance he may have had of winning the Democratic nomination.

Or maybe it will be like John McCain’s “rumored” out-of-wedlock black baby in the North Carolina primary? Or the “Swift-boating” of John Kerry in the 2004 election? Or the attacks on Dan Rather following his report that the president was a slacker who vamoosed from the “Champagne Unit” of the Texas National Guard during wartime?

Whatever the plan may be, we should know by now that the media will continue to act as the chief adversary of the American people and the cause of freedom. That won’t change until the 5 corporate media-giants are brought to account and busted up into a thousand little pieces.

But don’t expect the Paul supporters to throw in the towel like the weak-kneed Dean throng. These guys are stubborn and resolute. And they won’t budge on matters of principle. They’re not taken in by the media’s cheesy smear-campaigns and they won’t jump off the bandwagon at the first sign of trouble.

The Paul crowd has some heavy artillery of their own, too---and they’re wheeling it into place right now. Their ranks are gradually swelling, the money is pouring in, and they are not going to give up their country without a fight.

This election is shaping up to be a clash of ideals between the people who still believe in freedom and those who don’t. It’s going hand-to-hand combat and it’ll probably crack the country in two.

Good. Let the battle begin. As Thomas Jefferson said, “Every generation needs a new revolution.”

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