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GOP Establishment Thuggery Backfires, Sticks Party with Loser

Updated on November 8, 2012

With many of Obama's progressive base staying home, vowing never to cast a vote for a president responsible for the gravest assault on the US Constitution in history, Democrats nevertheless managed to romp to victory in almost every key swing state. Last January Barack Obama signed the "NDAA" National Defense Authorization Act 2011 which allows the indefinite military detention of US citizens, and his administration continues to defend it in court.

Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul not only polled strongly in many swing states; he upset the traditional electoral math by coming within 4 points of Obama in California as far back as September of 2011. California's large number of electors had long been considered to be rock solid in the Democrat column by double digits.

Then a barrage of vote-flipping, voting irregularities, and media falsehoods saying that Paul had dropped out of the race were unleashed against him during the primary season. Paul's delegates were beaten and arrested at state conventions such as Louisiana and Missouri. The GOP hijinks did not stop at the Republican National Convention when RNC leaders changed the number of states required to be won to be eligible for the nomination, from five to eight (Paul had won six.)

Paul polled well in head-to-head matches against Obama as early as February 2012, when a Rasmussen poll showed him beating Obama by 2%. Sarah Dover of the International Business Times noted:

"the latest Rasmussen poll has Ron Paul as the only GOP presidential candidate who could actually beat President Obama in the general election..."

Although gaining in the popular vote toward the end of the race, Romney had been consistently polling behind in swing states. In the key early states of Iowa and New Hampshire, evidence that Ron Paul had actually won was uncovered, indicating that the actual results had been altered by county "vote-flipping."

The Republican establishment then made the mind-boggling choice of Paul Ryan for vice president, which met with roaring approval from the right wing of the party, but which confounded strategists who knew Ryan's choice was a red flag for the all-important senior vote in Florida. Florida was considered a state without which Romney could not win, and Ryan was associated with a plan to gut Medicare. Sophisticated observers beyond the thrall of the GOP right said the move was almost certain to swing the election to Obama.

In contrast, fiscal conservative and constitutionalist Ron Paul was drawing record crowds at his rallies, remarkably, at college campuses which had always been historic strongholds for Democrats. Young people who had never voted before were registering Republican, and arguing foreign policy with older party members who, as often as not, agreed. Paul's support within the US military is legendary, with Paul's campaign donations from active-duty soldiers far outpacing all other candidates.

In the end the Republican base is left to ask what their leaders are really working for: a socially and fiscally conservative vision of America which enshrines the Constitution, disdains foreign adventures, and insists on stripping the power to print money and thus dilute the currency from unelected bankers, or a vision in which fiscal conservatism is only given lip service, even as multi-trillion dollar bail-outs to banks continue, and American foreign policy is determined by Halliburton and AIPAC.

It has been noted by cynics that Obama has accomplished, as a Democratic president, things which would have drawn fire from his party, were they to be attempted by a Republican. The steep escalation of the war in Afghanistan, stripping the right to a jury trial from Americans and replacing it with the threat of indefinite military detention, and openly proclaimed executive authority to assassinate Americans through secret orders, all would have drawn loud condemnation from Democrats if the perpetrator were a Republican. But Obama shepherded these into law with nary a peep from the party which normally stands against such outrages.

Cynics note that the true far-right is perfectly happy with Obama's political skills, as well as with his foreign policy. Why would they want a change?

For all the breathless excitement of the year-long "horse race"-like commentary in the American media, drawing millions into the sincere conviction that their votes mattered, it is entirely possible that the winner was decided long ago, and that Paul would have presented a threat to that decision.

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Ron Paul Rally at UCLA Strauss Stadium

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