Ron Paul and His Many Liberties with the Truth

It seems every election cycle, politicians come before us speaking in glowing terms of themselves and all too often, making promises they have either no intention of keeping or are unable to keep once in office and reality smacks them up side their heads. We have come to expect candidates to “stretch things a little” as each goes on voyages of disinformation, embellishing their record or ripping apart the candidate they are running against.

Most voters see it for what it is and either discard it or if egregious enough, call them on it. But not all see through the distortions and questionable claims.

Ron Paul is one who frequently goes on that voyage of embellishment, fantasy, revision of history and twisting of a truth to make it appear entirely different, not unlike Michael Moore’s many fantasy “documentaries” where truth is distorted until it fits the view he desires to be imparted upon those present.

In spite of being revealed many times, Paulbots, the more militant wing of Ron Paul supporters, casts aside any and all exposing of their messiah and clinging to his words as if listening to Jesus speaking the Sermon on the Mount. In fact, some have equated Ron Paul to Biblical Prophets.

But unlike Ron Paul, neither Jesus nor the Prophets found in the Bible ever felt the need to distort or embellish upon the truth.

A few examples of Ron Paul taking “liberties with the truth” can be seen at FactCheck.org, such as his “16,500 armed bureaucrats from the IRS to enforce the mandate that everyone have health insurance,” and the “NAFTA Superhighway” conspiracy theory.

There is also his and his supporters many claims of only Ron Paul is the “true heir to legacy of Ronald Reagan,” totally ignoring and casting aside Ron Paul’s 1987 resignation from the Republican Party, completely distancing himself from Ronald Reagan’s presidency.

Recently we have seen news releases from his campaign touting being endorsed by County Republican Party treasurers, city council members and just about anybody drinking his kool-aid. Included in one such newsletter was the claim “2012 Republican Presidential candidate Ron Paul bests President Obama in a head-to-head matchup in the key swing state of Ohio according to a new Fox News poll.”

Left out was that Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney both polled higher against Barack Obama in the poll than did Ron Paul. Only Newt Gingrich polled lower. Many see that as “lies of omission.”

We keep reading how Ron Paul leads in individual, cherry-picked polls while completely ignoring and making no mention that in National Polling he remains virtually dead last!

Moving on from there, we see his ludicrous claim, “Ron Paul Is The Choice Of The Troops,” based upon another technical truth of his receiving more donations from those identifying themselves as Military than the other candidate.

Photo of Poster

Again, a little further inspection reveals what a gigantic stretch it would take for Ron Paul to even reach 4.4% support of the Troops. Equally cast aside was his dismal performance recently in the first primary election of a state with a heavy Military population where exit polling revealed Ron Paul received the least amount of Military votes of any of the 4 Republican candidates reported in both the New York Times and Fox News.

Just today, February 21, 2012 sees yet another new release from the Ron Paul campaign with the dubious statement, “Paul Tied with Obama in Key Swing State of Virginia” in regards to the upcoming primary election in that state where only Mitt Romney and Ron Paul will appear on the ballot.

And again, another glaring example of a “lie by omission,” the Ron Paul campaign glosses over and ignores from within that poll, “Romney Leads Obama By 3 In Statistical Tie,” and gives the summary findings of,

1. Nearly six in ten Republicans and Independents are not satisfied with the choices of Mitt Romney and Ron Paul on the Republican primary ballot and would like to see other candidates on the ballot.
2. Romney leads Paul in the Republican primary 53%-23%.
3. Obama trails Romney and Santorum, beats Gingrich, and ties Paul; struggles with support from independents.

Looking back towards the “racist newsletters” bearing Ron Paul’s name, Politifact rates Ron Paul’s claims of “only about eight or 10 inflammatory sentences” as “false” as they easily found “nearly three dozen.”

Ron Paul favors and his supporters often chant “end the fed,” calling on the elimination of the Federal Reserve. That is an easy one for people to fall behind as much of the blame for our economic failures is often tied to Federal Reserve Policy, even if that is not the cause of the downturn. As shown in the Bloomberg book review, “End the Fed? Ron Paul Is Wrong for All the Right Reasons,” following Ron Paul’s advice would plunge backwards to even more severe economic upheavals that led to the creation of the Federal Reserve.

In yet another example of Ron Paul’s taking liberties with the truth, Politifact rates his claim of “The federal income tax rate was 0 percent until 1913” as Half-True, indicating his “disregarding two pre-1913 efforts to impose an income tax, one of which was in place for a decade.”

Ron Paul faced a lot of scorn in his 2008 campaign for basically indicating the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks were because of we have our Troops in the Middle East. He lauds a policy of “non-intervention,” basically the same “Isolationism” policies that left us prone and susceptible to the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor that plunged us into World War Two.

Again, he calls upon a questionable knowledgeof American History in claiming that our founders practiced and believed in “non-interventionism.” He continually ignores example after example in our history of where foreign ventures were engaged to protect our interest or shores.

This is by no means an exhaustive revelation on the foibles and fallacies of Ron Paul. His hypocrisy over earmarks, lack of resolve in dealing with Iran gaining a nuclear weapon, the anti-Semitic views expressed by both he and his militant supporters and so many more are not even addressed here.

What is shown is that Ron Paul not only would be a horrible president, not that he really stands a chance of winning, but Ron Paul is in absolutely no position to label others like Rick Santorum as “FAKE.”

To me, a Vietnam Veteran, Ron Paul’s labeling others “chickenhawks” because they did not serve during the Vietnam war, and standing on his short service as an “Air Force Flight Surgeon” as qualifying him as the “ONLY Veteran running” while not opening his Military Record to clear up discrepancies seen or to show what, if any Command Experience he has to qualify him for the presidency is what borders on “FAKE.”