Stop the War? Restore the Constitution? He’s Your Man By MIKE WHITNEY "The American Republic is in remnant status. The stage is set for our country to devolve into a military dictatorship, and few seem to care." –Rep. Ron Paul First we stop the killing, and then we restore the Constitution. These are our two main priorities. And that’s why I’m voting for Ron Paul. He is the only candidate who’s promising to do both. And he’ll keep his word. That makes him the only truly American candidate running for president. Paul is serious about withdrawing US troops from Iraq. He knows that the war was a mistake and believes that the American occupation must end. He has promised to stop the ongoing slaughter of Iraqi civilians. That should be the primary moral consideration for anyone casting a ballot on November 3, 2008. Will you vote to stop the killing or not? It’s as simple as that. Paul has also promised to restore the rule of law–to repeal the Patriot Act and the Military Commissions Act; to reinstate Posse Comitatus, due process, habeas corpus, and the "presumption of innocence." He’ll make sure that US prisoners–whether they be American citizens or foreign nationals–are treated in way that complies with our treaty obligations, the Geneva Conventions, the Bill of Rights, and the basic tenets of human decency. Under Paul, the torture will stop. Period. What other candidate will stop the torture of US prisoners? What other candidate will stop the government’s spying on the American people? What other candidate will challenge Bush’s claim that the president can arbitrarily cast an American citizen in prison and keep him there as long as he chooses without charging him with a crime? Bush has abolished the basic safeguards which protect the citizen from the long-arm of the state. The legal system needs to be purged of his executive signing statements and presidential decrees. Only Paul promises to restore the Constitution. There is no second choice. On November 5, Guy Fawkes Day, the Paul campaign raised over $4.07 million in one day, mostly from private citizens. He surpassed all the other candidates except Hilary Clinton and has raised more than $6.84 million in the first five weeks of this quarter alone. Paul’s "purely" grassroots movement is energized by working class Americans who see his candidacy as a last-ditch effort to end the war in Iraq, reestablish fiscal sanity, and restore civil liberties. Despite the fact that Paul has strong personal approval ratings and polls well against his competitors, the media have deliberately–and very successfully–kept him out of the public eye. That will be more difficult to do now that his campaign war-chest is bursting with contributions and his base of support is expanding across the country. We expect the media to abandon their failed strategy of simply ignoring Paul and take the more aggressive approach of attacking him outright. Now that Paul has established himself as a credible threat to the warmongering, autocratic corporate elites, he will have to be discredited through a coordinated media-blitz which will target his voting record, his character, and any other personal foible which may incite public scorn. He’s got a bull’s-eye on his back. We’ve seen it all before, haven’t we? The politics of personal destruction organized and directed from the penthouse suites of the media’s corporate offices? http://www.counterpunch.org/whitney11092007.html