Ron Paul Railroaded by Fox News Debate
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
- Mahatma Ghandi
After the first Fox News debate, one could not expect an atmosphere of respect or conciliation toward Ron Paul. This proved to be the case. Despite being starved of time, Ron Paul still managed to be the center of attention - the only one with an identifiable political ideology and intelligent ideas on dealing with issues both foreign and domestic. In fact, Ron Paul won Fox News’ post-debate poll by a wide margin. Here are the top 9 reasons why the people were poorly served by this debate and why Fox should be ashamed.
1. Giving Ron Paul the Least Amount of Airtime, Again
It’s all about ratings - so why does Fox News insist on minimizing the exposure of the only interesting person on the stage? There were 8 people running for president - all deserving equal respect, yet some were more important than others. I understand that there are front runners and also-rans, but it can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you treat somebody like an also-ran, they become an also-ran. The people at Fox news are keenly aware of this.
2. Intentionally Arranging People on Stage
Being closer to the center of the stage is a definite advantage. You get more eye contact, more camera shots, and also sends a psychological message that you are more important. Here is how the candidates were arranged:
Tancredo - Paul - Huckabee - Giuliani - Romney - McCain - Brownback - Hunter
Of course, Huckabee was closer in the center due to his recent purchased 2nd-place finish in the Iowa straw poll. One must wonder whether this was to legitimize Huckabee or to legitimize the Iowa straw poll. After all, Ron Paul has won the following straw polls: Maryland straw poll, Ronald Reagan club straw poll, New Hampshire Taxpayers straw poll, FreedomWorks straw poll, Gaston County NC, Strafford County NH, West Alabama straw poll, DeKalb County GA, Allegheny County PA, and has many other strong showings at straw polls across the country.
Whatever happened to putting people’s names in a hat and lining them up accordingly like every other respectable debate?
3. Snide Follow-Up Questions
Ron Paul had the following to say about his stance on Iraq during the debate:
The people who say there will be a bloodbath are the ones who said it would be a cake-walk, it would be a slam-dunk, and it would be paid for by oil. Why believe them? They’ve been wrong on everything they’ve said. So why not ask the people who advise not to go into the region and into the war? The war has not gone well one bit. Yes I would leave, I would leave completely.
Why leave the troops in the region? It was the fact that we had troops in Saudi Arabia, was one of the three reasons given for the attack on 9/11. So why leave them in the region? They don’t want our troops on the Arabian peninsula. We have no need for our national security to have troops on the Arabian peninsula, and going into Iraq and Afghanistan and threatening Iran is the worst thing we can do for our national security. I am less safe, the American people are less safe for this, it’s the policy that is wrong.
Tactical movements and shifting troops around and taking in 30 more and reducing by 5 - totally irrelevant! We need a new foreign policy that says we ought to mind our own business, bring our troops home, defend this country, defend our borders . . . (applause).
Then the snide follow-up
Fox Guy: So Congressman Paul, and I’d like you to take 30 seconds to answer this, you’re basically saying we should take our marching orders from Al Qaida if they want us off the Arabian Peninsula we should leave?
The tone itself was disrespectful but Ron Paul gave the obvious response:
Yes, of course. They’re the ones attacking us, we should do whatever they say so that they’ll stop!
Haha, not really. Here’s what his obvious answer was:
NO! (Emphatically pointing at questioner) (Applause) I’m saying we should take our marching orders from our Constitution (Applause). We should not go to war without a declaration - we should not go to war when it’s an aggressive war . . . that’s where I take my marching orders, not from any enemy.
The moderators have no place injecting themselves into the debate with disrespectful tones and irreverent questions - maybe instead of attacking Paul with the suggestion that he’s an Al-Qaeda sympathizer, they should have just let one of the other candidates respond to what he had to say. I came away from this exchange thinking that Chris Wallace was a clown, when I should have had the opportunity to identify the REAL clown: the candidate who was laughing during the above exchange (see below). See the video.
4. Open-Mic Laughing Hyenas
The mics were left on the entire night, which might have been alright if it weren’t for an unidentifiable candidate cackling into the mics during serious moments of the debate.
Look whoever you are, this garbage doesn’t fly outside of the funhouse that is Fox News. Remember Al Gore “sighing” during the Bush/Gore debates? Learn some etiquette.
5. Dismissing the Phone Poll
Upon learning that Ron Paul was blowing away the field in the Fox News “who won the debate” telephone poll, Sean Hannity sighed in frustration and said “I’m sick of this.” Ron Paul also was the early winner of the first Fox News debate. One has to ask, if they’re sick of Paul winning, why don’t they stop conducting the poll? Colmes then laughs off the Paul victory, stating that the Paul supporters are just dialing in repeatedly. This caused me to raise an eyebrow. The text-voting is no-charge. Is Fox News really counting multiple text-votes like some American Idol episode?
To test this hypothesis, I voted for Ron Paul via text twice. I got two text-messages back from Fox. The first:
FOX News UVOTE: Thank you for voting! Watch Hannity & Colmes for the results.
The second message I got from Fox was:
You have already voted on tonight’s debate. Thank you for your participation.
Now, if you think that Paul supporters are sitting in a warehouse with a farm of activated cell phones using each one to text in to the Fox News poll, maybe you could see where Colmes is coming from. (watch somebody try). Somebody should tell the correspondents that, in fact, you cannot vote twice. The reason that Ron Paul continues to win these post-debate polls is because he has the kind of supporters who care about their candidate and are willing to pick up a phone and dial a few numbers when necessary. It’s enthusiasm, plain and simple. It’s amazing how people can get excited about the message of liberty.
What else is interesting about this recent victory is that Hannity accused Ron Paul supporters of spamming the polls after the FIRST Fox debate. I didn’t text vote then, so I’m not sure if spamming was even possible at that time. What I do remember is that after the first debate, Paul got a huge lead, then slowly lost ground to Romney throughout the night (maybe Romney supporters started spamming?). This time, Ron Paul got the lead and kept it easily, finishing with a 33% to 18% (Huckabee) lead - a landslide. If they did fix the spamming issue between the first and second debates, it obviously worked in Paul’s favor.
Last, it would be very easy for Fox to recognize that Ron Paul did well in their poll and leave it at that, but they choose to go out of their way to discredit their own numbers - and ONLY because Paul won, they wouldn’t have the same attitude if Romney ever wins one of these things (which he won’t because he’s a waffler and people don’t trust him).
6. Sean Hannity
He gripes constantly with Ron Paul as though he’s offended that he’s in the race. Letting this guy near a forum that coins the slogan “we report, you decide” is like inviting Hitler to a bar mitzvah. It’s a trap.
7. Ordering the After-Interviews by Importance
Logic tells you that the audience will dwindle with every second that lapses after the conclusion of the debate, so naturally Fox starts with Rudy McRomney.
8. Strange McCain Revitalization
Everybody thought McCain was pretty much done for with the way his campaign has been doing so poorly. During this debate, McCain sounded like his usual self - with key differences. Fox went easy on him with the questions, and he peculiarly received two resounding endorsements by other candidates. Huckabee basically said out of nowhere that McCain was the very definition of honor, and Rudy said that if he himself wasn’t running, he would be voting for McCain. Not only that, but at the very instant that Fox News introduces the phone poll to people, they cut to a focus group that turns out to be overwhelmingly McCain-supportive. Then, to top it all off, they invited him on to the Fox & Friends show the next morning and gushed over his performance. I’m not sure how he did it, but McCain got a boost in the midst of all this, and I can’t stand it because I think the guy is a spineless compromiser of paleo-conservative values.
9. Misleading People-Meters
Tracking people’s opinions on a second-by-second graph might be useful when one person is talking. When two people are quickly firing back and forth at one another, is completely unhelpful and misleading. Is that spike for the first guy or the second guy? The whole idea is broken by the simple notion that it takes a person a few seconds to digest the speaker’s message and come to an opinion. At best, you can evaluate a person’s rhetoric, but Fox triumphantly declared Huckabee the winner of this exchange (warning, a debate broke out for about 15 seconds during the hour-and-a-half presentation, brace yourself). This is in spite of the fact that there was no audible winner, with both receiving comparable applause. Sure the stupid little hand-picked focus group second-by-second graph of indiscernible meaning is given weight, but the 33%-18% spread on who won the debate is not. (Sorry I don’t have a clip of this graph, it has yet to leak on the internet).
The bottom line is that a proper debate forum should allow the candidates to convince the viewers themselves, not for the host to intervene on their behalf. By attending Fox debates, Ron Paul continues to subject himself to ridicule, disrespect, and dismissal for his political beliefs (beliefs that are almost completely synonymous with those of Thomas Jefferson) despite his likelihood of winning. Ron Paul is without a doubt the martyr of liberty in the GOP race.
See also: Ron Paul: Right on All Issues In 2 Sentences or Less - still the quickest way to learn why the internet is abuzz.
(5, 20 votes)
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Great article! You hit pretty much all the nails on the head. The media bias is really getting out of hand. I’m glad you mentioned the “we report, you decide” slogan fox uses. It’s more like “We report, we decide for you”. I emailed fox pointing out their slogan and their hypocracies and they really should levy some disciplinary action against hannity. His comments on ron paul are very rude / disrespectful and have no place in a proffesional news corp.
Welcome to Faux News. What a joke. Ron Paul won hands down even after their silly attempts to make him look like a fool.
Thanks for authoring this article. You articulated the very same thoughts that I had. My impression during and after the debate was that there is a concerted effort to either marginalize Ron Paul or somehow discredit him. Its obviously not working. The laughter in the background showed not only disrespect and immaturity but the sort of low character that is not befitting our next president.
Thanks for the analysis. I also thought that cut to the McCain focus group at the end was strikingly odd. I expected nothing less from Hannity and Giuliani in their mocking tones and laughter. It’s disgraceful how a debate about the world’s most serious problems degrades into ad hominem argumentation and mockery. I also couldn’t help but notice the flagrant irony of Huckabee trying to retort Paul with the line “we must uphold our honor even if it’s unpopular”. I’m sad that conservatives, especially a Baptist minister in this case, have come to consider the continuation of unwarranted military aggression as honorable.
It is sad when a passionate political figure is made out to be an irrational mad man. People forget the definition of a true patriot mostly because it has been too long since anyone has really seen what one looks like. A patriot is simply, “a person who regards himself or herself as a defender, esp. of individual rights, against presumed interference by the federal government.” Right now Ron Paul is facing that interference which is just part of the job of being a patriot, it is our job to support him no matter what the government or media has to say. Thanks for posting this material, you have a nice site and will be back to read more.
Not sure if you noticed or not…..perhaps maybe you can make it an element of discussion, but Bill O’Reilly is hosting Ron Paul tonight (Monday the 10th of Sept.) and Fox just so happened to schedule it on the same night as a Monday Night Football double header. Further illustrating Fox’s contempt for the Presidential candidate, or so I think. It should be interesting to see what happens.