If Ron Paul has a handicap, it's that his ideas are complex and difficult for quick consumption. He doesn't resort to the easy-out demagogy that seems to be political par these days. Instead, he engages the more robust discussions that Americans entertain in coffee shops and academic quarters. As Glen Greenwald at Salon.com explained, "While Barack Obama toys with the rhetoric of challenging conventional wisdom, Paul's campaign -- for better or worse -- actually does so, and does so in an extremely serious, thoughtful and coherent way."



This sort of thinking is ill-suited for the soundbite-oriented mainstream outlets. It can only be understood in its entirety by doing enough research on the Internet. Thus, the Internet is where Ron Paul flourishes.



Second, he regularly challenges the conventional wisdom of Washington D.C. Objectively, his points are equally valid; he pits trade against war, low taxes against corporate welfare, lower grocery prices against agriculture subsidies. But again, the common assumption that politicians succumb to the whims of Washington can only be overcome by researching the theories that underlie his beliefs. Why, for instance, was he the only Congressman who opposed casting a posthumous gold medal for Rosa Parks? It turns out, he wasn't opposed to casting the medal per se, "Rosa Parks is a hero of mine...I believe in civil disobedience", he said. Instead, he offered to help pay for it with his own money and encouraged other Congressmen to do the same. They would not.



Paul makes an excellent point here: Why is congress willing to raid your Social Security and tax you for a medal that they're not willing to pay for themselves? Meanwhile, they have a lucrative pension plan in which Ron Paul refuses to partake. If you use the Internet, you can delineate these points. But if you get all your information from the major outlets, you'll hear "Ron Paul hates Rosa Parks".



This article also evidences this phenomenon. It says that Paul blamed the attacks on 9/11 on American foreign policy. That was a demagogic simplification of his statement. It was first misconstrued by the moderator at the debate, then by Giuliani, and now Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reiley. Bill Maher corrected Chris Dodd about this, "Excuse me Senator, but that is just what the Republicans at the debate were trying to do, they were trying to say that he blamed America for 9/11". Yet, he wasn't talking about a good-and-evil blame-game that informs most of our Bush-era understanding of the world. He was talking about geopolitical cause-and-effect. The fact that he is correct according to the 9/11 Commission report, the CIA's declassified intelligence, and Paul Wolfowitz himself seems to matter little to voters who don't have the time to do internet research.



The fact is Paul addresses the issues that America faces. There is no doubt that Social Security is crumbling. Rogue economists who set out to buy time cannot overwhelm the weight of economic wisdom that a system of IOUs backed by IOUs that the government wrote to itself, simply cannot sustain. The value of the dollar is deteriorating and inflation will be our next biggest long-term financial crisis., according to Greenspan. The cost of our war is increasing with no viable end. Not to mention the cost of maintaining troops deployed all over the world. All of these put together are recipe for financial collapse.



Paul's wisdom hails from the school of foresight. While conventional politicians go to great efforts to secure legacies by pushing problems down to their successors, Paul stands for the idea that we can address them now, on our terms. One thing is certain though; we *will* address them. Hillary Clinton and Rudolph Giuliani may be in wheelchairs when we do. But an entire generation of Americans who will be worried about putting farm-subsidized bread on the table and will suffer the real, difficult consequences of government largess...well, they also use the Internet.