There comes a time during the course of ones candidacy where the attack phase begins. This usually occurs around the time a particular candidate becomes a threat to those considered “frontrunners,” and the frontrunners are generally those who have two pre-requisites: the most money and the highest traditional polling numbers.
Well, as Ron Paul begins to come up from behind rather rapidly, his attack phase begins. And one such attack is from one Kevin Drum of CBS news. Because Dr. Paul is essentially bulletproof when it comes to digging political dirt, the best these so called professional journalist can do is pull the childish “nutjob” or “fruitcake” card. Luckily, most of the educated masses never respond to such adolescent attempts, and those that do readily come to their senses when you simply ask them, “how does that make him a fruitcake?”
Kevin’s article can be viewed here; it is a 4 paragraph essay which attempts to characterize Ron Paul as someone who’s crazy, but like all hit pieces provides no substantive arguments to show it. Rather, it’s an amalgamation of emotion and contradiction. “In the last Republican debate I saw, this noted truth-teller gave a strange and convoluted answer about his economic policies that the audience plainly didn’t understand,” writes Kevin. Nor do I understand as Kevin forgot to cite what that example was. This is no different than the village idiot trying to sell someone three magic beans saying “trust me” they work.
He also goes on to contradict himself by suggesting the following, “Next time I expect to see some straight talk about how we should return to the gold standard and get rid of the Fed. This should be followed by a question about whether he supports the free coinage of silver at 16:1. Then some questions about the tin trust.” For someone who claims his audience is too dumbed down to understand the basic economics Dr. Paul has explained in the debates, how should he expect his audience to understand the tin trust, which is but a small tiny element in a larger spectrum of the economic engine?
I bask in the refreshment that the Ron Paul supporters I’ve met and worked with to date are intelligent, motivated, and focused individuals. We choose not to regress to grade school tactics and use emotional attack strategies. We are especially smart enough to avoid using the “fruitcake” labels, as we realize this is signal of an emotional response in the absence of issues of vital concern to the American public.
However, Kevin’s theme of the article itself is him ranting on about his readers being childish, and how they need to grow up. Yes my friends, this being professed by someone that used the term “buttload” in a so called professional journalistic entry for CBS. Kevin, you ask your readers to grow up. You’re the first ten year old that’s asked me to do that. Would you like a lollipop now?
Share This Sphere: Related Content
(Amazon)
Posts
Articles like that are so pathetic that it’s actually somewhat amusing.
Kevin Drum is a blatant idiot masquerading as a journalist. What a disgusting lack of integrity.
Granted my analysis may be somewhat biased because I am a Ron Paul supporter, but honestly, that’s NOT journalism. How could anyone take this guy seriously … Buttload? Come on.
As you pointed out Scott, there’s no substance to his argument whatsoever. The only dirt people can find about Ron Paul is that some of his followers aren’t exactly mainstream.
And that says what about Ron Paul himself? NOTHING!
Welcome to the attack phase - the one that comes to fruition before the WIN!
And what a fun attack phase it is, given the fact that there’s NOTHING to actually attack!
Great post!!
As every thinking Ron Paul supporter knows, supporting the Constitution has fallen “out of style” with every other presidential candidate. However, those who actually learned about the Constitution and the reasoning behind that document are convinced that it must be upheld to preserve our way of life.
The only candidate that does not view the Constitution as an “outdated piece of paper” really is Ron Paul.
If you corner any other candidate and ask them just how their plan(s) hold up to the constitution, you will not even get an answer. Instead you will get an off-topic “sound bite”.
I agree completely with you CorrieG. I contacted cbsnews.com about the article 2129754114 and was told that the comments on the article were not allowed for some reason…Hmm…..they said maybe because Mr. Drum “might” be an AP writer or something. Well, I looked online further and found Mr. Drum’s silly little “autobiographical” web page. If anyone wants to contact him, write to kdrum@cox.net.
Its funny that Kevin Drum would focus his fruitcake assertion on the gold standard. As I look at a gold quote of $834 dollars an ounce and oil pushing $100 per barrel. Evidently the Chinese central bank officials are nutjobs too as they announced yesterday they intend to begin divesting themselves of the US dollar as it it losing its reserve currency status. even Giesele Bunchen the supermodel wants to be paid in Euros instead of dollar. Dr. Paul has talked about the consequences of fractional reserve banking and the FED for years. Now that eight foot tall five hundred pound chicken is coming home to roost. Hey Kevin Drum got gold?
I wholeheartedly agree with your assessment of the article and the need for more coverage of alternative candidates, etc. and for Ron Paul’s important anti-war message to get the attention it deserves. As a woman it’s a reminder of the common tactic of using such arguments (women are “emotional” etc.) to prevent women from being taken seriously. However, a badly written article, or the childishness of name-calling don’t really bear on whether some of a candidate’s ideas are, indeed, crazy.
I find crazy, for example, the idea that the 10 Amendment means that “the people” may only act at the local level, rather than the federal level.
Hi Libby, in my opinion a good journalist will capture the emotion of a story and it’s subjects very well. It’s our emotions that make us human after all. This person didn’t capture any emotion and attempted to write an article explaining Ron Paul as a fruitcake –and he failed miserably. Because what he did was not spell out why Ron Paul’s a fruitcake, but provided an emotional response instead of a pointed one, which negated what he was trying to accomplish. and Yeah, his emotional response sided on that which is child-like, just exposing his own instability and nuttiness.