Herman Cain\u2019s unexpected victory in Saturday\u2019s Florida Straw Poll has the media, especially the so-called \u201cconservative\u201d media, quite excited.\u00a0 Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Bob Dole each won this contest, and each eventually received their party\u2019s presidential nomination.\u00a0 Thus, so goes the conventional reasoning, this poll is not without its share of significance as far as the end result of the GOP primaries is concerned.<\/p>\n
As usual, in covering this story, the pundits and \u201cjournalists\u201d reveal both their proclivity for sensationalizing events as well as their seemingly insuperable cognitive challenges.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That there is a coincidence <\/em>between two events most certainly does not <\/em>establish that there is a causal relation <\/em>between them.\u00a0 In other words, that three <\/em>Republican presidential aspirers won both the Florida Straw Poll and, <\/em>subsequently, <\/em>their party\u2019s nomination does not mean that the one event caused or predicted the other.\u00a0 There is a complex of factors, and one factor in particular, that this argument from prediction omits: namely, the fact that Reagan, Bush I, and Dole were all competitive in their respective races at the time that they achieved victory in Florida.\u00a0 The painful truth of the matter is that, judging from his polling numbers thus far, Cain hasn\u2019t been serious competition for anyone. This, of course, isn\u2019t to deny the possibility that he could experience a reversal of misfortunes; rather, it is only to point out that if <\/em>he has better luck in the future, Florida, or at least Florida by itself, will have had little to nothing to do with it.\u00a0 The coverage of <\/em>his victory in Florida, <\/em>however, is a different matter.<\/p>\n More exasperating than the predilection for hyperbolic eruptions and the intellectual shortcomings of most \u201cconservative\u201d pundits is the raw hypocrisy that is on parade throughout their coverage of the Republican primaries.\u00a0 Indeed, so staggering is this hypocrisy, so glaring are the inconsistencies of which it consists, that getting a hold of it is a monumental task in and of itself.<\/p>\n For the longest time we have been told that the GOP presidential primaries were a \u201cthree way\u201d race: Rick Perry, Mitt Romney, or Michele Bachmann would eventually walk away with the spoils.\u00a0 Mind you, it wasn\u2019t that these three candidates all polled comparably with one another: Perry held first place while Romney and Bachmann steadily came in second and third places, respectively.\u00a0 But then something happened.<\/p>\n Ron Paul overcame Bachmann.<\/p>\n Suddenly, the media\u2019s tone changed.\u00a0 No longer was this a \u201cthree way race\u201d; it was now a contest between the two <\/em>frontrunners, Perry and Romney.\u00a0<\/p>\n When Bachmann won the Iowa Straw Poll, she was all of the rage.\u00a0 Much like more recent developments inFlorida, media personalities couldn\u2019t underscore enough the significance ofIowa.\u00a0 That they weren\u2019t all that wide of the mark is born out by the decision of Tim Pawlenty\u2014of whose \u201cformidability\u201d and \u201cattractiveness\u201d as a candidate neoconservative talk show host and Republican Party loyalist Michael Medved, among many others, continually reminded us\u2014to terminate his campaign due to his poor showing there.\u00a0<\/p>\n But for as poorly as Pawlenty did in Iowa, what must not be lost upon us is that he performed better, significantly better, <\/em>than every other candidate\u2014except, of course, for Bachmann and\u2026Ron Paul.\u00a0 Paul, you may recall, came within nine-tenths of one percentage point of defeating <\/em>Bachmann.<\/p>\n Yet so painfully obvious was \u201cthe conservative media\u2019s\u201d omission of this critical fact in its coverage ofIowathat leftist comic Jon Stewart couldn\u2019t resist parodying his ideological rivals\u2014Fox News specifically.\u00a0 In truth, however, Stewart didn\u2019t have to do all that much, for Chris Wallace and company at Fox, along with their cohorts in \u201cconservative\u201d talk radio, have become parodies of themselves.\u00a0 The Paul Derangement Syndrome that has been ravaging their minds every few years has reduced them to undifferentiated masses of raw irrationality. Because they have refused to attend to their condition, they have become caricatures of themselves.\u00a0 Stewart just exploited this fact.<\/p>\n Ron Paul has not only consistently maintained his third place showing, polls have shown him actually beating <\/em>Barack Obama when it comes to that most coveted \u201cindependent\u201d voter.\u00a0 Furthermore, Paul does as well in this regard as \u201cfrontrunner\u201d Mitt Romney and better <\/em>than \u201cfrontrunner\u201d Rick Perry.\u00a0 No other GOP contender or potential contender even comes close.<\/p>\n In spite of his impressive feats, though, the \u201cconservative\u201d punditry still insists on treating Paul as if he was utterly irrelevant.\u00a0 Had Rick Santorum, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, or even Jon Huntsman been doing remotely as well overall as has Paul, you can rest assured that these very same pundits would have been singing their praises. Remember, it wasn\u2019t all that long ago that these \u201cexperts\u201d were touting Huntsman\u2014a man whose polling has been so <\/em>poor that he is just scarcely a candidate (This is no exaggeration: Huntsman was bordering upon being excluded from further debates because of his abysmal showing among Republican voters).\u00a0 In fact, even now, given that his numbers in New Hampshire <\/em>(and New Hampshire alone<\/em>) have finally reached double digits, some of \u201cconservative\u201d commentators find their excitement over Huntsman\u2014Huntsman!\u2014rekindled.<\/p>\n Cain wins one <\/em>straw poll and \u201cconservative\u201d talking heads speak as if he <\/em>now has an opportunity to not only secure his party\u2019s nomination, but to beat Obama.\u00a0 Paul, in contrast, not only picks off straw polls like they are going out of style but, as I already noted, excels by every other conceivable criteria used to measure a viable candidacy, and yet Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, Michael Medved, and scores of others incessantly inform us that he <\/em>hasn\u2019t got a shot.\u00a0<\/p>\n Because they can\u2019t deny that Paul has a substantial following, they try to dismiss it by referring to the millions of his supporters as \u201cRon Paul people\u201d or, in the case of Medved, \u201cPaulistinians.\u201d\u00a0 Notice, you never hear any talk from this same crowd of \u201cCain people,\u201d \u201cBachmann people,\u201d \u201cPerry people,\u201d or \u201cRomney people.\u201d\u00a0 Neither will they refer to \u201cGingrich people,\u201d \u201cSantorum people,\u201d or \u201cHuntsman people,\u201d but in all fairness, in these cases it may just be because there are no such people.<\/p>\n If, as Limbaugh and his ilk would have us believe, it is only a fringe element to which Paul appeals; if his following consists of \u201ckooks\u201d and \u201cnuts\u201d who need not, and should not, be treated with any seriousness, then, presumably, the Republican Party can afford to dispense with their votes in the next election.\u00a0 If Paul does not become his party\u2019s presidential nominee, then because his following is so negligible, it apparently would not matter if those who would have otherwise cast their votes for Paul decided to abandon to its fate the party that spared no occasion to subject them to ridicule and insults.\u00a0 Is this what Paul\u2019s right-of-center detractors would have his supporters do?<\/p>\n The question, obviously, is rhetorical, for if Paul\u2019s supporters refuse to back the Republican nominee, Obama\u2019s reelection is a foregone conclusion.\u00a0 Perhaps it is time for \u201cconservative\u201d media personalities to be reminded of this.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Jack Kerwick, Ph.D.\u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Herman Cain\u2019s unexpected victory in Saturday\u2019s Florida Straw Poll has the media, especially the so-called \u201cconservative\u201d media, quite excited.\u00a0 Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Bob Dole each won this contest, and each eventually received their party\u2019s presidential nomination.\u00a0 Thus, so goes the conventional reasoning, this poll is not without its share of significance as…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n