By Dr. Harold Pease
The day before the Iowa primary the Des Moines Register reported that 41% of Iowans still remained undecided with respect to their choice for president which strongly indicates that no one has yet “touched” a majority of the Republican Party—far from it! Nor did Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum together, each with 25% of the vote, capture even a simple majority. Third place went to Ron Paul with 22%, who was short only 4,000 votes from taking first place. So, it appears the Republicans are not enthused by anyone. This aside, let us look at the race from another perspective, what I call the negative index. Who was the most negatively targeted presidential candidate, but still had good numbers, perhaps the “real” winner?
To the question, “Who is least likely to win the Republican Party nomination and defeat President Barack Obama? The answer was, and is, always Congressman Ron Paul. “Ron Paul is OK but he is not electable.” Who said so! Virtually every radio or television commentator or pundit from MSNBC to Fox News has so said. The chorus includes virtually every columnist and major newspaper in the country as well. Probably no presidential candidate in our history has had more organized opposition. Whether you like Ron Paul or not the fact remains that despite the intensity of this opposition, over one in five Iowans voted for him. Moreover, a vast majority of the funding from Super PACs was targeted against Paul and Newt Gingrich. Newt tumbled to fourth place and Paul to third but one wonders what might have happened if Romney or Santorum had received similar negative—even hostile—coverage.
As a presidential candidate four years ago Paul was treated dismissively, ignored or undermined. Such is still so, supporters maintain, but his ranks increased and showed themselves to be exceptionally loyal none-the-less and less tolerant of this treatment. Still victories, like coming in second to Michele Bachmann by less than a hundred votes in the Iowa Straw Vote several months ago, were ignored by the establishment press. More recently others noticed that he received only 90 seconds out of an hour and a half debate several weeks ago and began to ask why. Such slights were subtle but numerous. Prior to the Caucus it was indeed difficult to find any favorable commentary by any major news source outside Judge Napolitano’s Freedom Watch on the Fox Business Channel.
Recently when polls showed the possibility of a Ron Paul victory in Iowa fellow candidates and political pundits collectively intensified their negative treatment, all accused him of being out of step with Republican foreign policy. One commentator went so far as to say that if Paul won the Iowa Caucus, the Caucus should not be treated as seriously in the future. Newt Gingrich took time to call Ron Paul “a dangerous man” in a speech attempting to explain his poor showing of only 13% in the Caucus, nine percentage points under that of Paul.
Why the almost universal opposition? Perhaps in part it comes from the Council on Foreign Relations, the most influential special interest group in the United States. It’s magazine Foreign Affairs, advertised as “the most influential periodical in print,” is considered direction for its over 2100 members and thousands more readers. What suggestions are published in this publication become U.S. foreign policy. The April 2011 edition housed an article “The Tea Party and American Foreign Policy: What Populism Means for Globalism” an article essentially defining The Tea Party movement as dangerous and a threat to world governance. In that article it acknowledged having to deal with the movement but concluded that, at the time it had two arms, one represented by Sara Palin, the other by Ron Paul. Of the two they felt that the “Palinites” could be molded properly in foreign policy, which they dominate regardless of which party comes to power, but under the “Paulites” they would have no voice thus he had to be resisted at all costs. In other words, they could not control Ron Paul. With a majority of the key media players being CFR members and falling in line, opposition to Presidential Candidate Paul is more understandable.
Whether one loves or hates Paul, probably no presidential candidate in our history has had more long term organized opposition than he and with such he still was able to garner 22% of the Iowa vote with no one receiving more than 3 percentage points higher than he. Given the negative index it is amazing that he is still a viable candidate (probably anyone else would have been crushed into nonexistence) and perhaps with such opposition factored in, the actual winner of the Iowa Caucus.
Dr. Harold Pease is an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He has taught history and political science from this perspective for over 25 years at Taft College. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org.