The Media's mind is made up: McCain, Rudy and Romney

I hold no secrets: I'm 100% for Ron Paul above all others in either party. He is unique and a breath of fresh air. Without him in the race, Ill look to the other side for likes of Richardson but until then I'm Paul all the way.

That said, I've never liked how the media are able to project their POV onto the electorate in the sense that they dismiss the dark horses and empower the front runners. In doing so, they enable a self-fulfilled prophecy. They speak as though it all comes down to McCain, Rudy and Romney and well, that's what we get and they fail to see how their dismissal of other candidates influences the very conclusions they draw.

Same on the Dems side. Though Hillary may be the front runner, they do the electoral process no favors by making her nomination seem like a nearly unavoidable conclusion...again a self-fulfilled prophecy.

Just a quick gripe I wanted to throw out there.

**update: Friday morning, I was watching MSNBC, while discussing the debates from the night before, the lady asked the "analyst" if any candidate stood out on a major issue. While the text box at the bottom of the screen stated that only one (unnamed) candidate was against further military operations, he pretended to ponder for a moment and said "NO, nobody in particular"" and then proceeded to return to discussing the Big Three. I understand that the polls show one thing but when trying to "inform" the public, the media should not isolate discussion to the narrow choices that are already well-known.

According to the interactive ratings here, Paul had the most favorable rating at 36%; 2nd place was Romney at 29%. Indeed, the big winner of the debate was Paul, who was at 9% before the debate. He jumped from 9% to 36%. Romeny, who everyone declared the winner, was the only other one to jump after the debate from 28% to 29%. The rest fell.

Actually, Tucker Carlson on his show Friday pointed out that Paul won the MSNBC polling, mentioned he voted for Paul back in 1988, but also mentioned Paul lacks charisma. But really, the main reason Paul is not taken seriously is the "money game." And that's for good reason. You can't win unless you raise the money and judging from his website, ronpaul2008.com, he's lax on taking advantage of the internet(a la Howard Dean) and web 2.0 to overcome big money PAC and special interest contributions. There's no excuse for that.

iron clad stance against the war gets no real attention...even when the discussion of stand outs comes up. The media, like I said, has made up their mind. It's the big three.

To me, the most fascinating distinctions among the 10 candidates are these:

Rudy is decidedly pro-choice

Paul is decidedly anti-war.

Guess which fact is getting more attention. And then ask yourself which issue is bigger in America. Biases aside, I'd say the war is much more prominent in people's minds.

If you go to MSNBC and click videos of debates coverage, you will see a string of videos discussing the debates, I've gone thru about videos and Paul's name was not mentioned once.