I have been watching the debates very closely and the tactics from both of the political Parties. It is obvious that neither Party wants to see Ron Paul become a candidate for President and they are determined to see to it that he never makes it past the Primaries. Everything from ignoring him to smearing him has not had any effect on his campaign or his supporters and they remain very much behind him.
There have been allegations that the voting machines are rigged to not accept votes for Ron Paul, or that they are not reliable. These voting machines are a point of contention to many and in my opinion I would rather count hanging chads from now until the Kingdom comes, rather than have a computer controlled by a corporation tallying up the votes with no paper trail.
Many Ron Paul supporters are very much aware the Parties opposition to Ron Paul and how the mainstream media has been complicit with them. However, it is likely that the powers that be may just have their way and squeeze the Texas Congressman out of the running. It is not as if the leaders of the two major political Parties did not see the popularity of Paul growing even in the early days of his campaign, but there was simply nothing that they could do about it until now.
It is my opinion that there has been an orchestrated and well-crafted plan to suppress the actual votes and to keep Ron Paul in the bottom tier. Given the popularity and the grassroots fundraising that Paul’s campaign has generated, there simply seems to be no other explanation. However, those in charge of implementing and carrying out this plan can only do so much and if they cook the numbers too much, it will become too obvious that something fishy is going on.
That is the reason that they could no longer hide Giuliani’s miserable showing as compared to Ron Paul. Unfortunately, for them their favorite candidate was too busy trying to get the public to worship him for being the Mayor of New York during 911, and the public did not buy it. Thompson was basically a wet blanket and was not going to be interesting enough to persuade anybody that he should be President. McCain had serious campaign issues and was losing staffers and donations had dried up.
Just as Paul was starting to gain some momentum in the National polls and the Primaries, suddenly McCain jumps to the third position from out of nowhere. The trouble that the Republican Party was having is that they could not get a candidate that would be able to take Ron Paul out of the top tier so they had to manufacture one, and McCain is that man. Now, we see that MSNBC has limited their debates to only the top three Democratic candidates.
This is exactly what is going to happen to Ron Paul if these guys have their way and there will be nothing anyone can say about it because the precedent was set with the Democratic candidates. To be honest, I would have rather seen Kucinich in the debate than the three status quo candidates offered to the public as agents of change.
It will be very interesting to see if the Ron Paul supporters stand for this or if they will rise up and fight back. I hope it is the latter, because we simply cannot afford to let the same people run the country because they are not acting in our best interest. If you want real substantive change for this country, than let’s have Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich run against each other for President.
Links
CommonDreams.org News Center
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0828-08.htm
Wired.com
http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/2003/10/60563
Salon.com