IS RON PAUL FINISHED ON THE NATIONAL STAGE?
by Jon Rappoport
June 11, 2012
Last week, Ron Paul announced he had lost his battle for the nomination. He urged his troops not to disrupt the Republican Party machinery in Tampa at the convention. In a coordinated declaration, his son, Senator Rand Paul, endorsed Obama’s twin, Romney, for president.
This has caused an explosion in the ranks of Ron’s supporters, Tea Parties, other Constitutionalists, and people who prize individual freedom and also vote. That’s a lot of people.
But was Ron ever intending to re-shape the Republican Party? Was that his proactive goal? Was he campaigning to win the nomination and become the titular head of the Republican Party and call the shots? Was he truly working to become the next president? Was he striving all-out to clean out corruption in Washington? Those are all heavy objectives.
Most importantly, when it surfaced there was the possibility he had actually won the Primaries in the first several states and had been robbed by his own Party; and when, much later, his campaign workers were going into states where delegates weren’t legally bound to vote for the announced Primary winner and grabbing off those delegates, did Ron come out and say, YES, LET’S DO IT, LET’S RECLAIM THE STATES THAT ARE OURS AND LET’S UPSET THE WHOLE APPLECART? DID HE? DID HE STAGE AN ALL-OUT REVOLT? DID HE SAY THE MAJOR POLITICAL PARTIES ARE ONE BODY WITH TWO HEADS? DID HE LEAD THE CHARGE FOR A PALACE REVOLUTION?
Was that his goal?
We saw no real evidence of it.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GT0TQSZhwfM&w=415&h=241]
Unless Ron comes out now and makes a tremendously convincing speech that explains his current position and reaffirms his underlying values, his political career on the national stage is finished. And if he imagines his son, Rand, who has just sold out by endorsing Romney, can take up the sword of the father in the future, he’s delusional. In one day, Ron has ditched his own political career and his familial legacy.
By 2008, Ron Paul had enough cache to start a run at the presidency on his own terms as an Independent, but he didn’t do it. He would have blown apart his status as a (barely) mainstream voice, but so what? Was there ever a chance the GOP establishment and its media allies would have permitted him to gain the Party’s nomination for president?
Running as an Independent is a different game. You’re no longer “a lone voice in the wilderness” of the two-Party system, because you have stepped outside the system. Something more is required of you. In this day and age of Internet access, you need to reach out for every inch and minute of space and time you can get online. You are supposed to stand strong and establish your beachhead and state your claim to, yes, power. The power to make real, not phony change happen.
Is this Ron Paul? Or has Ron decided that he has to shape his son’s future within the framework of the Republican Party?
Is Ron ready, as an Independent, to take the slings and arrows that would be shot his way by those who claim he’d be handing the presidency over to Obama by splitting his own Party’s vote?
The Republicans now have their ducks in a row for the convention. There are no candidates who are holding out. (Ron’s supporters could make some serious noise at the convention on their own, of course.) But the GOP has taken out its last symbol of opposition.
Think about this. Ron and Rand could have kept their mouths shut between now and Romney’s nomination. They could thus have given the impression of being “beautiful losers” and retained their base. But something intervened. Was that something Rand’s political future? Were the Pauls, father and son, told by GOP operatives that Rand would be blackballed and shut out of the Party forever if he didn’t climb on board and prove that he was a good Party man? Was that it?
Is membership in the Club now the overriding factor for Rand? And, therefore, for his father?
Months ago, someone from the Ron Paul camp gave (and/or sold) the very valuable and large list of its supporters to the GOP, a list that is worth millions of dollars. Whether Ron knew it at the time, he certainly found out. Did he come forward and speak up and fire people? Did he publicly say this was a betrayal of his campaign? No.
If Ron Paul wants his voice to mean something from this point on, he would need to leave his Party and run as an Independent. So far, there is no inkling that is in the cards.
I know a little about electoral politics. In 1994, I ran for a seat in the US Congress, from the 29th District of California, which was overwhelmingly Democrat and had elected Henry Waxman to the seat for 20 years. I decided I had no chance as an Independent or a Republican. My only shot was to go up against Waxman in the Democratic Primary. As a Democrat.
That was a mistake. The true path would have been as an Independent.
It always is, in this landscape.
Aside from the obvious insanity of trying to convince Democrats that, for example, the 2nd Amendment is a key and vital fact of life, running within the two-Party framework allows voters to think, in their sleeping state, that you somehow represent interests and ideas that fall within the mainstream, you believe answers lie within the fundamentally corrupt framework of the One Party With Two Heads, you are in the same space and time Democrats and Republicans occupy.
Which is not true, if you are really an Independent.
By the end of my campaign in 1994, and about to lose to Waxman and witness what I would decide was vote-count fraud, my position had radicalized to the point where my main ambition—if I won—was to go to Washington and hire large trucks that would circulate the city every day all day. On the sides of these trucks we would place huge posters titled:
CORRUPT CONGRESSMAN OF THE WEEK.
Below the name and photo of the “winner” of the week, we would list his key conflicts of interest, his sources of funding and his votes magically aligned with those monies.
I’m sure we would have thought up even more enjoyable torpedo-efforts.
I had come to the conclusion that the whole political system of the country was terminally rotten, corrupt, deceptive, and sold out, and therefore the duty of any elected official, first and foremost, was to expose that corruption in specific detail.
I had become an Independent.
If you listen to mainstream voices, everything outside the mainstream is impossible. That’s the message. It’s sometimes calculated and sometimes reflexive, but the gist of the message is: stay in the system.
But a lie is lie. A con is a con. A piece of crap is a piece of crap. A delusion is a delusion. It doesn’t matter where it’s sold or who sells it.
In the political arena, one has the option of nurturing the disappointment that comes with watching an idol fall, of cultivating a despair that looks like innocence-lost, until it becomes a pool of ugly misery. There is that option.
Or one can find roads to walk where the fallen do not go.
A little history is instructive here. In 1976 and 1980, Ron Paul supported Ronald Reagan. But after seeing that Reagan’s budget was leaking a huge deficit, Paul criticized Reagan heavily and eventually resigned from the Republican Party and ran for president in 1988 on the Libertarian Party ticket. So he has, in fact, been willing to leave the Republican orbit.
In 2008, after ending his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, Ron refused to endorse John McCain. He told his people to vote for any of the third-party candidates: Cynthia McKinney, Bob Barr, Chuck Baldwin, or Ralph Nader. Eventually, Ron decided to support Chuck Baldwin, the Constitution Party candidate. So Ron has been willing, after dropping out of the Republican presidential race, to withhold support for the eventual Republican nominee.
What about now? Because his senator son Rand has closed ranks with the Republican Party, will Ron refuse to endorse a third-party candidate? Will he simply remain mum on the subject of Romney?
This is 2012. The sheer volume of online communication is far greater than in 2008. There are many more people who are fed up with the perverted de facto political system America is operating under. It’s much harder to remain silent. Ron Paul needs to say something, and soon.
As hard as this may be to swallow, the best option for freedom may be to not vote at all. Every person who values freedom and knows what it is has to ask himself this practical question: are we closer to electing a president who is truly independent, who will go into the White House and lay waste to the criminal insanity that has become American politics, or are we closer to recording new drastic levels of non-participation in the vote for president? Of these two long shots, which is longer? I know my position. It has been the same since 1994. Don’t vote for president. Make the election a farce, if possible, by revealing that we refuse to condone business as usual.
I realize this goes against every impulse to take action for positive change. Abstention is not a strategy I employ in any other area. But when the presidency of the United States is so heavily controlled, vetted, and filtered, when every president who gets access to the Oval Office has had to agree to a philosophy of globalism, with all that it implies, we need to open our eyes and see the truth.
The people of the United States are, as usual, being whipsawed between two ridiculous alternatives. Every four years, this happens by design. Stir up the hatreds and the rancor, make it appear that a new face is the answer, pin hope on Hope, vote for a better day, pick a leader who will take us to the promised land.
This con game has been operating since the dawn of time, wherever and whenever the people have had a choice. Do we need to keep falling for it until the whole planet is structured under one roof, until we’ve sold freedom all the way to the end of the line, because we think we see a Daddy we can believe in?
The only answer to this eternal dilemma is decentralization of power along every possible front.
Update: Infowars is reporting that Jack Hunter has posted a video (entitled: “Why Rand Was Right to Endorse Romney”) on Ron Paul’s campaign site explaining why Rand Paul needs to endorse Romney: if Rand runs for president in 2016, he’ll have zero Republican support if he doesn’t get behind Romney now. This is more delusional thinking. It’s postponement of principle now on behalf of invoking principle later. And it works about as well as wearing a sign on your chest that says: I’M LYING.
“Well, yes, I’m endorsing Romney, even though I don’t support him. I don’t support him at all. I think he’s a miserable excuse for a presidential candidate. But I’m endorsing him, because I want to run for president myself later. I’m sure all you Republican stalwarts will support me later, after my completely disingenuous support of your man Romney now. Right?”
I don’t know whether Ron Paul’s people vetted this Jack Hunter video before posting it, or whether this is really Rand’s strategy, but are Ron and Rand’s operatives trying to commit political suicide? If so, they’re doing a pretty good job.
Jon Rappoport
The author of an explosive new collection, THE MATRIX REVEALED, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world.