The Media Boycott of Ron Paul

By James Donahue

If there is one Republican presidential candidate that is speaking with any degree of clarity this year it is Texas Congressman Ron Paul. Yet Paul, who is making his third run for the nation’s top job and last week scored second in the Iowa Republican straw poll, is being literally ignored by the national media as a serious contender.

The strange news blackout was made public by comedian Jon Stewart who showed a variety of television news clips by commentators who listed poll frontrunner Michele Bachmann and lesser poll contenders like Mitt Romney and Rick Perry, but failed to mention Ron Paul’s second place position.

Paul, who is an outspoken libertarian holding office under the G.O.P. banner, might just be the closest thing this nation can generate as a third party candidate in 2012. And many disillusioned voters, after over two years of watching a total debacle occurring in Washington, may be seriously searching for someone like Paul who offers a different approach to solving the nation’s problems.

As Stewart quipped: “He’s the one guy in the field, agree with him or don’t agree with him, who doesn’t just regurgitate talking points or change what he believes to fit the audience in front of him.”

So why is the media pretending Paul isn’t there when they report the Republican candidates? Some say they have concluded that Paul has virtually no chance to win the nomination and they are not taking him seriously. But if they were playing fair, and giving this man an equal place in daily media coverage, Paul’s supporters believe he could be a viable candidate . . . one that might just give President Barack Obama a run for his money in 2012.

We suspect that Paul’s Libertarian views may be challenging the massive industrial military complex now feeding at the taxpayer’s trough, which has a lot to do with the unwillingness of the media to give him news space. Paul makes no bones about his belief that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been unwarranted and a total waste of lives and money. Neither war has had anything to do with national defense. Neither war has much to do with what happened on 9-11.

Paul’s plan for repairing the nation’s economic crisis is to demand a balanced federal budget, establish a permanent debt ceiling so politicians can no longer spend recklessly, call for a full audit and shut-down of the Federal Reserve, and end the corporate stranglehold on Washington.

His energy plan would call for removal of restrictions on off-shore and on-shore drilling to increase oil production at home, repeal the federal tax on gasoline, lift government roadblocks for the use of coal and nuclear power, offer tax credits for purchase and production of alternative fuel technologies, and eliminate the Environmental Protection Agency, which Paul believes in ineffective.

A medical doctor by profession, Paul’s health care plan would include a repeal of ObamaCare and its mandate that all Americans must buy government approved health insurance, allow competitive health insurance purchases across state lines, provide tax credits for all medical expenses, maintain Medicare and Medicaid and insure that the money taken from taxpayers for these services is not raided for other purposes, and stop the Food and Drug Administration and Federal Trade Commission from blocking public knowledge of and access to dietary supplements and alternative treatments.

Paul also calls for what he calls a “Liberty Amendment to the Constitution” that would abolish the income tax and capital gains taxes. He says he would like to “turn off the lights at the IRS for good.”

Some say Paul’s views are wild and unworkable in today’s government. While we don’t agree with everything he advocates, and we understand that getting a reluctant Congress to go along with such a plan may be next to impossible, we believe that Paul has the right to have equal time in the national media spotlight. He offers what may be a viable plan which, in the long run, might just work for the benefit of most Americans.