Ron Paul: Our Elections are a “Charade”

Ron Paul, who is familiar with being the popular “outsider” candidate for president, said in an interview this week that there was a great deal of “deceit” in the American electoral process.

“I see elections as so much of a charade,” Paul told the hosts of RT America’s “The Fishtank.”

Paul has mounted three separate bid for the presidency. His 2012 campaign inspired a surprising amount of support among libertarians, even forcing the RNC to modify their convention rules so that Paul could not challenge Mitt Romney for the nomination. Those rules, which require a candidate to have won at least eight states to be considered on the balloting, have been much-discussed in a year where party forces are desperate to stop Donald Trump.

“I’ve worked on the assumption for many, many decades, that whether there’s a Republican or a Democrat president, the people who want to keep the status quo seems to have their finger in the pot and can control things,” Paul said. “They just get so nervous, though, if they have an independent thinker out there – whether it’s Sanders, or Trump or Ron Paul, they’re going to be very desperate to try to change things.”

Paul has nothing but disdain for any of the current presidential candidates from both parties, but he does believe that the success of Trump and Sanders has exposed voters to the truth about American elections. “More people are discovering that the system is all rigged and voting is just pacification for the voters and it doesn’t really count,” he said.

The Washington establishment has been under merciless attack since the beginning of the primaries, but Trump’s recent losses in Colorado and Wyoming have confirmed for many how corrupt the system really is. In both states, the delegates went to Sen. Ted Cruz, but the voters did not get any direct say in the process. Trump has said that it’s all proof of a rigged nomination system, and many of his supporters agree.

Meanwhile, Republican party officials have chosen to thumb their noses at dissenters. Their defense is to chuckle and say, “Hey, the rules are the rules. Too bad if you don’t like ’em, because there’s nothing you can do about it.”

And it’s true. The Republican National Committee is a private organization, and they can nominate their candidate in any fashion they deem appropriate.

But here’s what they don’t seem to understand: this isn’t about law – this is about perception. Right or wrong, Americans were under the impression that these primaries actually mattered. That we were engaged in a democratic process. If the RNC thinks their “Ha, nope” response is going to fly, they are in for a big surprise.