Brilliant!

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World Affairs Brief, January 6, 2012 Commentary and Insights on a Troubled World. Copyright Joel Skousen. Partial quotations with attribution permitted. Cite source as Joel Skousen’s World Affairs Brief (http://www.worldaffairsbrief.com)

THIS WEEK’S ANALYSIS:

Stopping Ron Paul in Iowa—How They Did It

Brokering the Republican Convention

Embargo of Iranian Oil—How Effective?

Pentagon Budget Cuts Modest but Dangerous

Missile Technology Leaks to Russians

Hillary Signs UN anti-Gun Treaty

Obama’s Eligibility challenge

STOPPING RON PAUL IN IOWA—HOW THEY DID IT

As the Iowa caucus drew near, the establishment GOP and the power that be (PTB) were faced with a dilemma: Ron Paul—that pesky anti-war libertarian Republican — kept rising in Iowa polls despite all establishment attempts to evade, denigrate, and dismiss him. Ron Paul was drawing crowds like a rock star and the nearest candidate in the polls was Romney, who the establishment is also trying to stop. Where could they steer the delegates? The establishment hates Paul even more than Romney and wanted to make sure he didn’t win a primary election in any state. The first blip of manipulation showed up last Friday when the polling numbers showed a “surge” for Rick Santorum, an establishment candidate that had been otherwise going nowhere. The Iowa Republican establishment pulled out all the stops from within to make sure Paul didn’t win. Even still, he came very close. Here’s how they did it.

In the end it was Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum tied for first at 25% and Ron Paul in third place with a close 21.5%. Despite media attempts to crucify Paul as someone to the Left of Obama (Clinton’s old buddy-turned-RINO-Republican, Dick Morris), Paul took it all in stride and told followers he was happy with a top tier third place result. Paul has always been satisfied with slow and steady growth, knowing that all the other candidates who have been flung ahead by the PTB have fallen flat once the voters find out more about them.

It’s one thing to take a candidate new to the race like Rick Perry and artificially boost his polling numbers, as they did last summer (after all, there was nothing to compare him to previously), but Santorum has been in the race from the beginning and never demonstrated more than single digit support, despite a presence in each and every debate. As I said before in the WAB, people don’t suddenly change their opinions about someone without some dramatic incident or change of position that is very popular and unique. Santorum has done nothing spectacular this whole race.

Disgusted, Aaron Dykes of Inforwars.com asks: “What accounts for Santorum’s swift rise to the top of polls in Iowa only days out from the contest when he barely showed a pulse in ANY state, let alone Iowa, among the crowded GOP field at any time in the weeks and months before?” Nothing. It was a total fraud.

In fact Rick Santorum is an establishment insider who is playing conservatives for fools. Sure he talks like a conservative but he’s voted for every expansion of federal power to come along. He advocated for and voted in favor of big government programs in education and transportation and benefits for low-income people while in Congress. Now that he is running for office again, he rails against big government. How convenient.

The real telling issue was his past support for Senator Arlen Specter who, although feigning Republican ideals for many years, was actually a Democrat in action and even a co-conspirator in the JFK assassination cover-up. Rick Santorum played the establishment lackey by backing Specter over the very conservative Pat Toomey who was challenging Specter. That alone tells volumes.

Although Santorum claims to be opposed to same-sex marriage, gay marriage and allowing homosexuals to serve openly in the military, he supported Specter who switched to his home Democratic Party in 2009 and was a supporter of gay rights, gay marriage and repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in the military. Specter is also a staunch supporter of abortion rights.

Brian Montopoli of CBS news focuses on Santorum’s dilemma: “As he works to build on his momentum and become the consensus conservative alternative to Mitt Romney, social conservatives are taking a second look at the two-term Pennsylvania senator’s record.

“There is one position, however, that social conservatives ask Santorum about regularly on the campaign trail, an issue that also comes up regularly on conservative talk radio: His support for former Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter in the 2004 GOP Senate primary. Santorum said he made a hard decision [claiming] that [it] was grounded in his opposition to abortion, saying Specter had agreed he would support then-President George W. Bush’s Supreme Court nominees no matter what. Specter denies this assertion [One or both are lying].”

The bottom line is that Santorum is someone who the establishment can get to do their bidding and that should be a disqualifier for conservatives, no matter what verbal positions he takes that please them. He’s business as usual in Washington, just like Gingrich and Perry. As further evidence that Santorum is an insider, consider how he got very wealthy after being defeated for re-election. He stayed within the revolving door system of the Washington Beltway:

Businessweek records, “Since his 2006 re-election defeat, the former Pennsylvania lawmaker has gone from being one of the poorer members of the U.S. Senate to earning $1.3 million between January 2010 and August 2011. In 2007, he spent $2 million to buy a 5,000-square foot home in Great Falls, Virginia, according to property records.

“Santorum’s financial rise was powered by consulting contracts with fuel producer Consol Energy Inc., faith advocacy group Clapham Group and American Continental Group, a Washington consultancy, as well as media engagements. ‘If he’s claiming he’s not an insider, this is the thing that insiders do — after public office they cash in,’ said Kent Cooper, a campaign finance expert and former Federal Elections Commission assistant staff director.”

As for Santorum’s sudden surge, the only thing that changed about this candidate was that GOP leaders on the national level conspired with the GOP establishment in Iowa to make sure Ron Paul got no extra votes beyond his faithful cadre of followers. The kingmakers did not want Ron Paul to benefit from the growing perception that he was leading in the polls.

A caucus system produces a much higher percentage of activists than an open primary where all voters are invited to participate—thus a bit harder to manipulation as many caucus delegates already have fixed positions. But still, at least a third of caucus participants in the Republican Party are conservatives by gut feeling only and not well schooled in the arguments. These are those that are concerned only about beating Obama, no matter how it is done, and without carefully considering what we’ll get instead. These are the votes that normally flow to the perceived leader (Romney).

The PTB knew that they couldn’t convert the Paulites to Santorum, and the pro-Romney votes were also pretty solid. So, they concentrated on the conservatives with evangelical tendencies who would not switch to support a Mormon candidate like Romney. Then the media drummed up the issue of Ron Paul’s position against foreign aid (even to Israel) knowing that this would elicit a negative reaction from Christians who have been fed the line that “Israel can do no wrong because God is behind Israel.” While God may be behind the Biblical doctrine of Israel’s return to its consecrated homeland, He certainly does not endorse the unrighteous policies and moral habits of Israel’s globalist leaders who masquerade as Right-wing conservatives (just like Republican leaders in the USA).

Santorum’s drum beating militarism is the perfect attraction for conservatives who can’t see the ulterior motives behind US intervention and unconditionally supporting Israel’s government.

Paul voters have solid intellectual, libertarian roots and can’t easily be persuaded to vote for another unless equally as principled and persuasive. But non-thinking Christians who base their conservatism on some generic notion of small government, militaristic patriotism and restoring Christian values in education can be fairly easily duped by wolves in sheep’s clothing who promise them the world (and always betray them once in office).

Few Christians understand the conspiratorial nature of the battle we are fighting in America and Israel and the necessity to elect someone who will directly fight against the establishment instead of going along with the globalist interventionist agenda. Only Ron Paul qualifies, even though he is reluctant to admit to conspiratorial evidence in government affairs (though privately he understands some of it). To say so publicly would be political suicide.

In Iowa, there were about 20-25% of caucus participants that were undecided. The Republican leaders decided they would concentrate on two forms of pressure to make sure these undecided didn’t vote for Ron Paul: 1) Create a false surge for Rick Santorum and promote his credentials that appeal to Christian conservatives. 2) Use fear tactics at the caucus meetings to ram home the message that if they voted for Ron Paul, Iowa would become the laughing stock of the nation and that the National GOP leadership would deny Iowa its coveted slot as the first primary in the nation.

They did all this with some degree of success. But it wasn’t enough. They had to fudge the voting results. However, the bane of all election manipulators are the entrance or exit polls, usually done by college students working for extra credit in political science. These are hard to falsify without students becoming aware of a conspiracy to commit fraud. This restricts manipulation of the results to within 5-10% of exit polls lest people get suspicious.

In Iowa the pollers use entrances where people are not all arriving at once, making it easier to do polling. These polls all showed Ron Paul leading both Romney and Santorum. The reversal of the end results were not totally attributable to GOP leaders in the caucus making threats about a Ron Paul win. They had to falsify some votes.

First they manufactured a reason for counting the votes in secret: the media announced that Occupy Wall Street was threatening unrest and that possibly the hacker group Anonymous would infiltrate the recording. All this to justify taking the vote count into secret chambers somewhere at GOP headquarters in Des Moines. I don’t believe there was any threat at all. However, this ruse did provide the Iowa GOP the suitable excuse to take the vote count away from the numerous volunteers who had assembled to make sure everything was done in the open.

So, instead of being public and audible to all in attendance (as happens in most caucus meetings), the results were only tallied among the Republican elite who, by open admission, had vowed not to allow Ron Paul to win. These intentions surfaced on BreitbartTV.com as one anti-Ron Paul GOP leader (Dee Dee Benki) told Brietbart how the GOP were going to stop people from voting for Paul. Here’s the link to the interview: http://www.breitbart.tv/republican-strategist-iowa-gop-will-not-allow-paul-to-win/

Aaron Dykes of Infowars.com then declares: “It is no secret that all the stops have been pulled to minimize Paul’s media visibility throughout the campaign trail, with many top GOP figures and media commentators going so far as to pre-script a plan to ignore Iowa in the event that Ron Paul won the caucuses, in order to prevent the Congressman from dominating the national stage. Did the GOP establishment succeed in sabotaging Ron Paul in the Iowa caucus vote as it vowed to do?

Fudging the vote in New Hampshire: the mechanism is being set in place to alter the vote in New Hampshire if necessary. This year New Hampshire has decided it will be optional to record how many people come in to vote so there may be no way to completely match up how many came in vs. actual vote count.

Even with Paul’s third place finish in Iowa, his star is rising significantly in New Hampshire. People are no longer embarrassed to say they are supporting Paul, especially since three local newspapers have endorsed him.