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Why the Press Loves Jon Huntsman but Ignores Ron Paul (and Gary Johnson): The media is fascinated by protest candidates who critique their own parties, but it marginalizes those who attack the establishment
This problem goes beyond the reviled MSM and bleeds into the web politico community.
Conor Friedersdorf said:Jon Huntsman won't win the GOP nomination, or so pundits assure us. But he is getting press attention anyway because he decided to start telling his fellow Republicans truths that they don't want to hear.
. . .
Rather than obsess over the horse race 15 months before a presidential election, broadcast, Web and print journalists are self-consciously covering [the Huntsman] campaign for its substance, even speculating that doing so might have a positive effect on the national conversation. As much as I agree with Sullivan, Fallows, Weisberg, and all the other journalists praising Huntsman for challenging orthodoxies of thought in the GOP, however, I am struck by the very different standards that govern coverage of two other candidates, Ron Paul and Gary Johnson.
Neither Huntsman nor Johnson nor Paul is likely to win. All three are challenging orthodoxies of thought in their party. In doing so, all have an opportunity "to affect the political conversation for the better" and to "shine light on the evasions of his rivals, even if it fails to change the outcome of the race."
Here is the difference.
Huntsman is challenging orthodoxies of thought that afflict the GOP alone, and taking positions that reflect the conventional wisdom in the media: evolution is a fact, so is climate change, and the debt ceiling had to be raised. In contrast, Johnson and Paul are challenging orthodoxies of thought that are bi-partisan in nature and implicate much of the political and media establishment.
There is a strong case to be made that their libertarian voices are more vital. The debt ceiling was already raised. Embracing evolution has some political costs in a GOP primary, but matters very little when it comes to the vital policy questions that the next president is going to face. Huntsman nonetheless wins praise for those stances. For questioning America's aggressive, interventionist foreign policy and its failed War on Drugs, policies that are tremendously costly, consequential, and executed in ways that are immoral and demonstrably damaging to our civil liberties, Paul and Johnson aren't given points for speaking uncomfortable truths, shining light on evasions, or affecting the political conversation for the better.
They're ignored, and the excuse given is that they can't win.
. . .
But American discourse is never going to suffer for lack of arguments already advocated by one of the two political parties. If the press is really seeking to air the arguments of protest candidates to shed light on evasions and improve the political conversation, as Weisberg suggests, it should seek out serious critiques that the establishments of neither political party want to acknowledge. So long as it doesn't, no wonder guys like Paul and Johnson have no chance.
This problem goes beyond the reviled MSM and bleeds into the web politico community.