How much does the candidate, or his position, really matter though, and how much of it is about what the establishment press thinks we should talk about? I think the E.P. still decides what news we're going to discuss, even if they no longer have a monopoly on how it's reported.
Would Paul, or anyone else, have been sabotaged just as effectively as Romney? Here's just one example. The "war on women" meme began with Stephanopoulos asking a question, from the clear blue, about regulating birth control. Could he not just as easily have started the ball rolling, had Paul been sitting there, instead of Romney? All they found on Romney was "binders full of women." Surely, they could have found something equally as nontroversial and non-misogynistic from Ron Paul.
