Paul Campaign: Make Lemons Out of Lemonade

We talked about this in passing here.

Now it looks like Ron Paul will be allowed to participate in the ABC debates.

"Fair and Balanced" and "conservative" Faux News will not allow him to appear, even though he finished in Iowa far ahead of Sean Hannity darling Rudy Giuliani, who is invited, and is polling far ahead of Fred Thompson, also an invitee, in New Hampshire.

You shouldn't need to be a Paul supporter to be outraged by this manipulation of the electorate by corporate media special interests. There are two things his supporters are encouraging us to do:

Leave a comment for the Faux propagandists at their "You Decide '08" page, and visit the "Protest Fox" webpage and learn how to send an email or two.

These are both good actions, and I will do them this weekend, but it's also time for some real creative and outside the box thinking from the Paul campaign team--immediate action. If negotiations are unsuccessful at getting their candidate in at the last minute, they should do three things--they should be starting on them now:

1. Use a portion of that $20M they've raised to buy a 1-minute ad for Ron to be aired immediately before the debate--if not on Fox, then on their competitor CNN. The content of the ad should be to call attention to his exclusion, to provide an overview of his message, and to direct viewers to #2,

2. Have Ron live on the Internet at the same time as the debate, answering all questions posed to the candidates on the Fox program. This could actually work to his advantage, as there'd be no distractions from other candidates, no questions intentionally leaving him out, and no misrepresentations of his positions or statements by the other candidates. It could also draw a significant portion of the audience away from Fox.

3. Publicize the hell out of this. Issue press releases to get it into the news. Use the unprecedented Internet network Paul supporters have established.

I have no real hopes that this will be done as I have no real influence with the Paul campaign. But I think if he did this, the wave of publicity and curiosity and potential for getting his message out could be tremendous. But if they're going to do it, they need to do it NOW, because the debate is tomorrow.

If you agree, contact the Paul campaign and tell them so. If they want to make this happen, nobody's going to go to bed tonight.