What to do about Ron Paul?

Congressman Ron Paul, now third in national polls, passing Michelle Bachman, is throwing a wrench into the whole presidential contest. The insider establishment is divided over just how to respond. At stake are the unlimited treasures of the Federal Reserve. This private piggy bank of the American-Elite has been exposed by Dr. Paul’s relentless decade long campaign and its days of operating secretly may be numbered.

It is a stunning turnaround for a political figure who only four years ago was regularly referred to as “loony.” In 2008, 74% of the American people did not know what the Federal Reserve was. A poll last year showed that 74% now agreed with Dr. Paul that this institution should be accountable and it should be audited.

A few months ago a partial audit was indeed conducted and its results were mind boggling. In the national debate on Wednesday, Ron Paul referred to the numbers. The Federal Reserve loaned out over $15 trillion in 2008. And while the government and the public weren’t given all of the details of this audit, we did learn that $3 trillion went to other countries.

These are staggering sums. Remember Glenn Beck’s towering charts inside his Fox News studio, where he showed us just how the Bush and Obama national debt compared in history? Well, keep this in mind. The entire national debt has just topped $14 trillion. And the Federal Reserve doled out more than that in one year, 2008, most of it to large corporations and leaders of the American-Euro elite. No wonder they don’t want Ron Paul talking.

But the public, having lost the value of their homes and their retirement funds, are now beginning to awaken to how these huge sums enter the monetary bloodstream and dilute the efficacy of the currency making everyone’s dollars and food stamps less valuable. It is an insidious tax on the masses and, as Ron Paul has pointed out, it hurts the poor and the retired the most.

New candidate, Governor Rick Perry of Texas, entered the presidential race last month with both guns blazing, warning that if Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben Bernanke adopted another round of “quantitative easing,” insider language for “printing money,” he would be committing a “treasonous” act. Perry, like Michelle Bachman, sometimes shamelessly uses Ron Paul’s exact language. At the Reagan Library GOP Debate, Perry echoed Ron Paul’s call from the previous debate, “Bring our troops home.”

The division and bitterness within the establishment is intense. A lot of money is at stake. Goldman Sachs and the unions prefer Barack Obama, of course, while Halliburton-Bush-Rove prefer Mitt Romney. (Romney made headlines last week by pointing out that corporations are people too. It elicited more laughs than tears. ) But Rick Perry’s bravado and Paulista language notwithstanding, no one in the establishment really fears him either. Rick Perry would do fine, in a pinch.

It is Ron Paul that scares the willies out of them all and it is why the television networks pan him as much as they can get away with. The corporate bosses at those networks know all about the piggy bank.

But while it is perfectly acceptable for the other candidates to steal Ron Paul’s lines and shamelessly profess agreement with many of his now popular ideas, and while they can still call him “looney” on national television or, as the governor of Connecticut recently said, “an idiot,” they will not allow Ron Paul a single thrust back of his own.

Wednesday night, when he pointed out that Rick Perry had supported Jimmy Carter for president and then Al Gore and had endorsed Hillary-care, something that no other candidate dared mention, Rick Perry was livid. Meanwhile, the off camera moment of Governor Perry grabbing Ron Paul’s arm and shaking his finger in his face, was apparently benign. My original take on that in this column was wrong. The picture is nonetheless an excellent metaphor for the relationship between the two Texans.

Ron Paul has nothing to lose and so he tells the truth. He has had 22 years to prove that he will not be corrupted by the flow of billions of dollars. He still gives back some of his modest expense allowance as a congressman. In 22 years he has never gone on a congressional junket. But Perry has that little piggy bank to think about. Which in one year has the power to replicate the entire national debt, a sum that took 200 years to accumulate. Just imagine what Glenn Beck missed in those shows a couple of years ago? He was getting too close for comfort. Well, Ron Paul is there.

The most significant happening at the Wednesday night debate occurred just before and after. And that was a national television buy of Ron Paul commercials. This is what angers Rick Perry and this is what strikes fear into the hearts of the establishment. What if Ron Paul pulls a Reagan and goes directly to the people? That is why the next Ron Paul moneybomb will be watched with rapt attention. It will tell more about the future of this campaign than any of the debates.

Photo Credit: Reuters, Mario Anzuon