Goodbye Obama, Hello Ron Paul

“Control the coinage and the courts, the rabble can have the rest.”

– The Princess Irulan in Frank Herbert’s Dune.

Last week was a good week for the so-called “constitutional wing” of the Republican Party, those indomitable Ron Paul people.  Okay, sure, the next presidential election is a long way off but a recent snapshot taken by pollsters shows a surprising opening for the Texas congressman, the man who says that the Federal Reserve should be audited.  The general public is moving toward Ron Paul, even if most of them don’t even know who he is.

According to a recent Gallup Poll 50% of all Americans don’t think Obama deserves re-election. Only 38% think he does.  65% think that most members of Congress don’t deserve re-election. Three of four Americans are dissatisfied with the direction of the country. (As reported in USA Today, April 1, 2010.)

Meanwhile, 48% of Americans think that Sarah Palin is not ready to be president.  29% think she is.

And what gives the Ron Paul campaign an opening is how equally angry the public is with both political parties.  For the first time a majority of the public puts both Republicans and Democrats in the unfavorable column. (Ibid.)  A pox on both of their houses.  It is a complaint that Ron Paul has been making for years.

Some in the country now see the spending programs of the Obama administration as only “payoffs” to political constituencies.  Unemployment and the home mortgage crisis remain not only unresolved but untended.  Even the most cursory tweaks that could have helped the mortgage crisis were ignored as the administration rushed to get the candy off the shelves before they were thrown out of the store.

But again, all that doesn’t mean that voters like Republicans any better. More Americans still blame George W. Bush for the economic crisis than blame Barack Obama.

The new healthcare bill upsets Republican conservatives who see it as a gigantic lurch toward socialism.  Not to mention its trillion dollar price tag which comes on top of what they see as a massive political giveaway, labeled the “Obama stimulus plan.”   And Democratic liberals defend healthcare by pointing out that it only equates to the cost of the Iraq War. “Which is more important?” they ask, “The healthcare of the nation, or the personal war to avenge the Bush family honor?”  (See: Why Bush invaded Iraq.)

But Ron Paul, who says our wars in Islamic countries create ten new terrorists for everyone they kill, wouldn’t have had us involved in either one, a neat savings of $ 2 trillion, not to mention a few thousand lives.  And at least for the moment, polls back him up.  More than 50% still favor ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The greatest public anger still simmers over the bank bailouts.  And it represents a deep suspicion of anything establishment.  Peggy Noonan refers to a new “gilded age,” referring to a time when rich barons pillaged the economy and the American masses languished in poverty.  Theodore Roosevelt tried to break up the monopolies as one of the nation’s first “trust busters” and, ironically, FDR, his liberal Democratic cousin, made a similar effort.  A recent biographer entitled his book about Franklin Roosevelt as “A Traitor to His Class.”

What is appalling has been the shift of wealth from millions to a few, and the international looting of America.  This includes not only a shift of wealth to the Islamic, oil producing nations and the gigantic economic tilt toward China and to a lesser extent, India, but also the raid of the middle class within the US economy by other Americans.

Where has the money come from for these decades of $20-50 million a year salaries?  A recent figure determined that the median pay for even a corporate CEO is now $ 6.6 million.

The answer?  Millions of retirees and common Americans have paid for this gigantic shift in wealth as their IRA’s and retirement funds have dropped, manipulated by corrupt brokerages for the benefit of “insider” investors.  Several trillion dollars in real estate wealth has been wiped from the books, again a loss of net worth to the middle class.

What makes matters worse?  The rich don’t pay taxes, their political donations assure the right loopholes in congressional law.  The only revenues come from the middle class workers who have seen their net worth vanish and are now hoarding every dollar they get or using it to pay back debts.  And the Obama administration seems intent on taking their last scraps.  So the poor are next to suffer.

With a shrinking tax base schools and government run hospitals are closing their doors and goods and services for the poor are disappearing. The Post Office is again raising prices and will soon decide whether or not to cut out a day of delivery.  A survey of 155 bus and subway agencies found that 84% are considering cutting services and raising fees.  Now 15 states have put court employees on extended furloughs.  Jurors in Minnesota are now only paid $10 a day.  Swift justice, as in future healthcare, will only be luxuries for the very rich.

The country is ready.  The man who pulled an upset to win the straw poll at CPAC, need only pull another one at the Iowa Cavalcade, 15 months from now, to be thrust into national prominence.  The people are ready for some accountability.  But the Wall Street bankers and establishment leaders in the Boston-New York- Washington corridor are watching.  The Ron Paul CPAC victory sent shock waves through their ranks.  Don’t expect to see or hear about the Ron Paul revolution on the television news.  The people who stand to lose from accountability are not about to help his cause.

Meanwhile, last week Democrat congressman Phil Hare told a hometown Illinois audience who questioned the legality of the new healthcare plan that he is “not worried about the constitution.”  When there was the predictable avalanche of outrage on YOUTUBE, the congressman quickly insisted that his comments were “taken out of context.”  Really?  What context would that be?

The Hare episode was a glorious metaphor for an incredible week for the Paulistas.  The television networks can refuse to mention “he who cannot be named” and others can steal his Tea Party and try to sell it to the candidate who makes the highest bid but Ron Paul has one advantage that the political spinners and operatives keep missing.  He is right on the issues.  And he has hardly changed his positions in a lifetime of public service.  This gives him an immeasurable advantage over Obama and Palin.  The country is moving to him, not the other way around.

And Ron Paul has one other ally.  “Events.”  Day by day, month by month, events are working, side by side, with Ron Paul, to prove him right and send his political star rising into orbit.

It was a big week for lovers of constitutional government.  The numbers are encouraging.  And it is all a good sign for America.

Advertisement