The Ron Paul Precedent by Justin Raimondo

The results of the Iowa caucus have the news media spinning a “victory” for Mitt Romney, the Goldman-Sachs candidate, and the supposedly all-but-inevitable nominee of his party.

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Just why he was deemed the “frontrunner” before even a single vote had been cast is a mystery known only to the professional pundits, who seem to have bestowed this title on him because of his perfect hair and his perfectly unauthentic persona. Romney is the Stepford Candidate, robotically repeating those phrases which are expected of him with all the conviction of a simulacrum. Which leads one to wonder: how can this preprogrammed human automaton ever hope to defeat the personable and relatively authentic Obama?

For those with more imagination, the victor in this fight has been Rick Santorum, whose surge toward the end put him within a dozen or so votes of Romney. Hours after the results were announced, we were treated to the sight of breathless commentators anointing a candidate with no money and no real conservative credentials as the One True Anti-Romney who could snatch the crown from Mitt’s brow.

The Iowa caucus results are supposed to be all about “expectations,” which begs the question: whose expectations? Why, the mainstream media’s, of course, a fact which – you’ll note – allows these guardians of the conventional wisdom to play their key role as the final arbiters of what all this voting means. And the formulaic “spin” had been determined far in advance: if Romney won, then his coronation was supposed to be foreordained. If anybody but Romney won, it would simply delay Romney’s final victory. If Ron Paul won, then the Iowa caucuses would henceforth be deemed “irrelevant.”

Peter Feaver, writing on foreignpolicy.com, was typically dismissive of Paul’s showing:

“The Iowa results probably indicate that there will not be a big crack-up within the Republican party on foreign policy because the caucus returns are likely to be the high-water mark for the candidate with the most distinctive foreign policy platform in the field: Ron Paul. He did well enough to gain another week of press attention. But in the one contest best-suited to his unusual political operation, Paul did not beat expectations. He would have to really surprise in New Hampshire in order to remain relevant in the later primaries, and those are likely to be even tougher terrain for him.”

EXCERPT

via The Ron Paul Precedent by Justin Raimondo.

 

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