Jan 3, 2012

Ron Paul and Harry Truman: Where the News Media Goes Wrong

The common word one often hears from the media’s so-called ‘experts’ today when it comes to Ron Paul is that the man cannot win the Republican nomination or the general election. He is simply too far out. He has no chance. One also hears that the nomination seems to be destined for the former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and that he has the best shot to beat incumbent President Barack Obama.

Interestingly enough, the same was said over sixty years ago about a man who was fighting for the Presidency of the United States against odds that all the ‘experts’ said were much too great for him to overcome. They did not see how the man could win the nomination of his party, much less the general election. This man was Harry Truman.

Truman was running for the presidency at a time when his popularity, according to the national polls, was very low. As a result, many news media ‘experts’ said that Truman had no chance to win the presidency in the 1948 elections and that the Democrats would be better off finding a different candidate. As the election approached, Truman wanted to run despite his low poll numbers, but was opposed by many Democratic Party leaders who wanted to nominate another candidate such as General Dwight D. Eisenhower (it was not yet known that Eisenhower was a Republican).

Truman was also taking up positions on certain issues which made him popular with one faction of his party and yet very unpopular with other factions of his party and so many were opposed to his nomination. He was a strong anti-Communist in foreign policy which made many conservatives in his party happy, but also offended many liberals. He was also strongly in favor of the federal government handling the civil rights issue instead of the states, which pleased many liberals in the party but offended many small-government conservatives. Despite all the odds however, Truman did indeed win the nomination and clung ever harder to his positions on the issues heading into the 1948 election.

Unable to reconcile with the fact that Truman was the Democratic nominee, the party was split into three pieces by extreme fringe defectors opposed to Truman. Many extreme liberals followed former Vice-President Henry A. Wallace into the new Progressive Party and proclaimed their stance as being friendly to the spreading wave of Communism engulfing much of Europe and part of Asia. Many extremist small-government conservatives backed Governor Strom Thurmond of South Carolina who ran for President as the candidate of the southern-based States’ Rights/Dixiecrat Party and they reiterated their call for states’ rights to be respected.

All of this made the Republicans feel confident they would win the Presidency in 1948 and so many prominent Republicans fought for their party’s presidential nomination, most notably Senator Robert A. Taft of Ohio and Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York. The Republicans ended up nominating Dewey for the presidency and went into the 1948 presidential campaign confident they would win in the November elections.

All throughout the campaign of 1948, opinion polls and vote forecasts by the ‘experts’ in the news media foretold of a catastrophic defeat for Truman at the hands of Dewey. However, Truman refused to give up his campaign. He took his appeal to the people with a campaign all over the nation and began to inspire the people of America with his fight to win against all the odds.

There are many similarities to Ron Paul’s current situation. Paul is being listed as ‘unelectable’ by the national media and the ‘experts’ they rely on. The general consensus among the media leading up to the 2012 elections is that the top candidate for the nomination has been former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney with others such as Congresswoman Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, Governor Rick Perry of Texas, businessman Herman Cain and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich attempting to replace him as the dominant consistent frontrunner.

Paul’s stances on many issues seem to please certain factions of the Republican Party and yet offend other factions and many predict that Paul’s influence will divide the Republican Party instead of uniting it. For example, Paul calls for the nation to re-direct its military strategy away from nation-building in foreign countries to protecting America’s own borders. That stance pleases many libertarian and liberal Republicans and offends the Bush-friendly-conservative and moderate factions of the Republican Party. He is also pro-life which pleases many of the Bush-friendly-conservative and moderate Republicans but worries many libertarian and liberal Republicans.

The media’s general consensus about Ron Paul being ‘unelectable’ is being disproved by angles that the media either disregards or ignores. For instance, as of January 2012, Paul has won many straw polls hosted at various places around the country and has come in a close second at several others. In addition, interviews with local Republican Party leaders in Iowa have revealed that the projections on the ground from the earliest were that Ron Paul would have a very big finish in that state and many in New Hampshire have repeated that consensus. If that is so, and this organization is implemented in the other states as their primaries approach, then that means Paul is by no means ‘unelectable’ or unable to win the nomination. He is very much a top-tier candidate in the race.

The theory of many ‘experts’ that Paul’s views will divide the Republican Party is not very logical. Rather then dividing the party, by agreeing with each faction of the party on certain issues, Paul is actually in a position to be a better unifier of the party and the only people who would be in danger of leaving from the Republican Party would be extremists of each faction who have a higher chance of leaving if they do not get their complete platform adopted anyway. For this reason, a Ron Paul nomination would actually be in a better position to appeal to a much wider spread of voters, even if a defection to an independent candidacy of some Republican or Republican-leaning independent were to take place.

Finally, the news media seeks to discredit Paul by showing national opinion polls that show him with a very low popularity percentage and so they maintain there is no way he can win the Republican nomination. They also claim that even if he were to pull it off in some way, he would have no chance to beat President Barack Obama in the general election. This has inspired Ron Paul and his supporters to push their fight harder and Paul has taken his message to the public with his appearance at town hall meetings, whistle-stop tours and many other public appearances. He has begun to inspire the people with his fight to win and, just as with Truman in 1948, there is now evidence, as the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries approach, that Paul is actually in a good position to win.

In 1948, despite all the odds, Harry Truman’s fight bore fruit. He pulled off one of the biggest American election upsets ever and not only defeated Dewey, but defeated him soundly by more than three million votes in the popular vote with a 303 to 189 advantage in the Electoral College. Truman did this despite all the divisions within the Democratic Party, and the negative polls and opinions of the experts that Truman could not win. Today in 2012, Ron Paul is in a position to pull off a similar upset with his positions on the issues, superb organization, enthusiasm and fight for his cause. With this historical precedent of Harry Truman in 1948 considered, it is logical to predict that when the Republican National Convention convenes in August 2012, this humble congressman from Texas could very well be chosen to be the GOP nominee for 2012 and subsequently elected as the 45th President of the United States of America.

© 2012 The Subsidiarity Times. All rights reserved. This material may not be re-published, re-broadcast, re-written or re-distributed without written permission from blog author.

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