Howard Fineman
On Hardball last night, Howard Fineman said that Ron Paul’s views on Iran “would seem to put him outside the mainstream” of American politics. And this is how Fineman characterized Paul’s views: “Iran being justified in getting a nuclear weapon.”
This is an effort to marginalize the best American political thinking about Iran, and a misrepresentation of Paul’s views. Paul said that he could understand why Iran would want nuclear weapons because if you have ’em then you don’t get invaded, and right now we’re bombing countries all around Iran. And he said that there is no hard evidence that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons.
And most of all, he called on the U.S. to exercise diplomacy as John F. Kennedy, a Democratic president, did during the Cuban missile crisis. We had 30,000 missiles pointed at us through the Cold War without attacking the Soviet Union. People are overreacting to these threats.
Howard Fineman is a liberal Establishment Democrat. And in very much the way that the neoconservative Republican David Brooks is doing (not to mention the Republican Jewish Coalition), Fineman is determined to redline Ron Paul as an extremist. When actually Ron Paul is speaking to a highly reasonable sentiment in the American people, who are the ones whose children are sacrificed to war. This is called populism– a progressive understanding among the people. The wisdom of populism here is that neoconservative foreign policy is crazy. That same populist wisdom lifted Obama 4 years ago, though Chris Matthews and Howard Fineman now seem determined to forget as much. When Ron Paul says his message has appeal to Democrats and Independents, he is right.
It’s a classic illustration of the groupthink that these people operate. The military, corporate and Israel lobbies flood the media with their heavily propagandised version of events. Suckers and stooges like Fineman and most of the networks obediently pick up and echo the propaganda, and define it as ‘the mainstream’ – if the same dumb viewpoint is on the same narrow cable networks and a host of syndicated op-eds they believe themselves that somehow it is a ‘mainstream’ point of view. Follow the propaganda trail up and you will find how easily a small group of networked propaganda campaigns, from AIPAC and military thinktanks to a self-obsessed group of neocon pundits, ensure the ‘mainstream’ reflects their warmongering, xenophobic, narrow-minded views.
The fact that they are smearing and ridiculing Paul only highlights how worried they get when one guy faces down their lies and manipulations. They own most of the media and Congress, but when one person points out that they are dimwit emperors without clothes, intent on more death, destruction and economic disaster, they all huddle together and shout ‘radical, extremist, terrorist, lunatic’ at him.
“When Ron Paul says his message has appeal to Democrats and Independents, he is right.”
I think both establishment parties will be jaw-dropping shocked at how quickly Pres. Obama’s independent support migrates to the Republican side if Ron Paul becomes their candidate.
I don’t have the feeling the establishment kickback shtick is going to work in 2012. All Paul has to do is mention Iraq. The war had many parents and is now an orphan.
Democrats should be deserting their party in droves and registering Republican to vote for Paul in the primaries.
Imagine Obama having to run against an anti-war Republican!