title: THE 2016 PRESIDENTIAL RACE: Do Our Votes Really Matter?
text: By James PerloffMy friend Rachael McIntosh was an alternate delegate at the 2012 Republican Convention in Tampa, Florida, representing Ron Paul for the state of Rhode Island.Rachael had worked for a private defense contractor for years. Awakened by the corruption and darkness she witnessed, she left the defense industry, and began working tirelessly toward getting Ron Paul elected. She has fictionalized her experiences in a superbly written trilogy of novels, Security through Absurdity.The Tampa convention was supposed to begin on Monday, August 27. Ron Paul was originally slated to speak, but the convention was cancelled for that evening due to the threat of a  hurricane.  The hurricane turned out to be no more than a brisk rainstorm. Rachael and many other Ron Paul delegates braved it that morning and went to the convention center (the Tampa Bay Times Forum, a sports complex) to watch Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus officially proclaim the delay. After the gravel had been struck and the chairman left the stage, the delegates found themselves watching a movie glorifying Mitt Romney. At the film s conclusion, Rachael heard ear-splitting applause. But when she looked around, almost no one was cheering. The applause was  canned the type sports stadiums pipe in when the home team is losing and their spectators show low enthusiasm.The next day at her hotel, Rachael s husband called and said:  Hey, I watched it yesterday and the crowd was really diggin  Romney.  Rachael had to break the news: what he (and the rest of America) heard on TV had been faked.The real blow to the Ron Paul people came when the Republican National Committee made last-minute rule changes. Under the existing rules, Paul had won enough primaries and caucuses (five) to have his name placed in nomination. Under the newrules, the required number of states would be increased to eight, thus rendering Paul s nomination impossible. Mitt Romney, who had already won sufficient delegates through dirty tricks during the primaries to become the  presumptive nominee,  would also be granted power to replace duly elected delegates with people of his own choosing.Naturally, Paul s delegates were anxious to vote on the rule changes. However, the convention busses showed up at their hotels late. The driver of Rachael s bus didn t seem to know the way to the convention center, got stuck in traffic, and took about two hours to complete the trip. By the time most of the Paul delegates reached the center, and passed through its heavy security, the vote was already over. Mitt Romney would be the Republican Convention s  unanimous  choice.Ron Paul was still offered a chance to make a speech, but only under two conditions: (1) that he endorse Romney; and (2) that the Republic National Committee first vet and approve the speech. Under these conditions, Paul acted on integrity and declined to speak.A word should be added about the media in Tampa. On the convention s last day, Rachael dressed up in funeral black and handed out cards offering condolences to America upon the loss of the democratic process. She gave one to a leading news journalist who said  I love it.  When Rachael asked if he would do a story on it, he literally replied:  It doesn t fit the pre-scripted narrative. Sorry. That the media was bound to a  pre-scripted narrative  was later proven when a brawl broke out between the Romney and Paul delegates, complete with screaming, pushing and shoving, right by the entrance to the press boxes (CNN, Fox, MSNBC, etc.). Although the brawl should have been  news,  not a single journalist emerged with a camera to record it. After all, it didn t fit the  pre-scripted narrative namely, that Republicans unanimously supported Mitt Romney.What lesson can we draw from Rachael s experience? The same one that people have been learning the hard way for decades: that regardless of much you work for a Presidential candidate, the PTB (Powers That Be) will railroad their candidate to the top. The following quote from my 1988 book The Shadows of Power refers to the election year of 1952:At the Republican nominating convention,  dirty tricks  abounded. The rules for selecting delegates were changed: Taft delegations from Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas were thrown out and replaced by Eisenhower supporters. I.e., the same sort of tactics that Ron Paul s supporters faced in 2012 were used at the GOP Convention 60 years earlier. I ll add that Dwight Eisenhower had no previous affiliation with the Republican Party; the Democratic Party had tried to draft him in 1948, and President Harry Truman (Democrat) had approached him about running on the same ticket. Above: Nixon and Eisenhower at the 1952 conventionLet s kick it back to 1940. Seven weeks before the GOP Convention, a poll showed only three percent of Republicans favored candidate Wendell Willkie, who, prior to that year, had been a registered Democrat. But with powerful magic, Willkie got the nomination. Ten-term Congressman Usher Burdick of North Dakota said of this:We Republicans in the west want to know if Wall Street and the international bankers control our party and can select our candidate? I believe I am serving the best interests of the Republican Party by protesting and exposing the machinations and attempts of J.P. Morgan and the New York utility bankers in forcing Wendell Willkie on the Republican Party. . . .There is nothing to the Willkie boom for President except the artificial public opinion being created by newspapers, magazines, and the radio. The reason back of all this is money. Money is being spent by someone, and lots of it. PHOTO: Wendell Willkie PHOTO: Usher Burdick (right) in 1958 with Ezra PoundFor those who wonder if such phenomena only happen to Republicans, Bernie Sanders can already  feel the spurn.  He won New Hampshire by a landslide (60 to 38 percent) only to discover that Hillary Clinton had been awarded the majority of delegates. This is because the Democratic Party has 717  superdelegates  who support whomever they prefer, regardless of the wishes of voters or primary results.Go back to 1976. According to a Gallup poll, just seven months before the Democratic National Convention, less than four percent of Democratic voters favored Jimmy Carter for President. What happened? As Lawrence Shoup noted in The Carter Presidency and Beyond:What Carter had that his opponents did not was the acceptance and support of elite sectors of the mass communications media. It was their favorable coverage of Carter and his campaign that gave him an edge, propelling him rocket-like to the top of the opinion polls. This helped Carter win key primary election victories, enabling him to rise from an obscure public figure to President-elect in the short space of 9 months.How did Carter acquire this media following? It began at a dinner with Republican David Rockefeller  kingmaker of the Establishment at the latter s Tarrytown, New York estate. Also present was Zbigniew Brzezinski, who helped Rockefeller found the internationalist Trilateral Commission, and whom Carter would later appoint National Security Adviser. The media blitz included adulatory pieces in the New York Times, and a Wall Street Journal editorial declaring that Carter was the best Democratic candidate. Before the nominating convention, his picture appeared on the cover of Time three times, and Newsweek twice. Time s cover artists were even instructed to make him look as much as possible like John F. Kennedy. The TV networks inundated the public with his image.As former Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater said:David Rockefeller and Zbigniew Brzezinski found Jimmy Carter to be their ideal candidate. They helped him win the nomination and the presidency. To accomplish this purpose, they mobilized the money power of the Wall Street bankers, the intellectual influence of the academic community   which is subservient to the wealth of the great tax-free foundations   and the media controllers represented in the membership of the CFR and the Trilateral.If you want to glimpse how far back this sort of power-brokering goes, read Ferdinand Lundberg s 1937 classic America s Sixty Families. He related how, a century ago, the rich were scorning voters and maneuvering their own choices into nominations, whether a Democrat like Woodrow Wilson in 1912 or a Republican like Herbert Hoover in 1928.The 2016 RaceWhat about this year? Who have the  PTB  anointed to become President? While I am of course not privy to their conclaves, I believe their chosen one, as I stated in my blog post of February 15, is Hillary Clinton. There are several indicators:(1) Despite her  anti-Wall Street  rhetoric, Hillary receives by far the most donations from Wall Street of any candidate. Jeb Bush competed with her for that distinction, but since Jeb s personality proved too lackluster to muster enough votes to stay in the race, Hillary holds the honor alone. Above: Hillary partakes in groundbreaking ceremony for Goldman Sachs  new headquarters in 2005. (2) Of the viable candidates, only Hillary is committed to 100 percent of the Rothschild agenda:  pro  War on Terror    pro Israel   pro gun control   pro GMO (Monsanto)   pro population control (abortion, vaccines, etc.)   pro  climate change  control   pro mass immigration   pro Internet censorship   pro gay agenda   pro TPP (she is currently backing off on this because of voter concern about jobs, but before running she said  This TPP sets the gold standard in trade agreements, and was a strong proponent of the job-destroying NAFTA and GATT agreements)(3) I ll interject here that Rachael McIntosh told me she believes that in 2008, an understanding was reached concerning Obama and Clinton, both of whom were running that year. Obama would become the first black President; Hillary s turn would arrive in due time, and she would become the first woman President. Having a black or woman in the Oval Office, of course, gives the public the illusion that they are  empowered  and that the Establishment has somehow been stymied, whereas in fact both Obama and Hillary are flunkies for the Establishment. I agree with Rachael s assessment 100 percent.And so it was that Obama appointed Hillary his Secretary of State, a move clearly intended to give her a  foreign policy expertise  credential for the 2016 Presidential campaign. After Clinton left the position (2013), CBS began airing (2014) its still-running drama Madam Secretary, all about a blonde woman Secretary of State. Subliminal Advertising: Hollywood began campaigning for Hillary Clinton in 2014.  Beginning with the very first episode, in which  Madam Secretary  rescued American hostages held in Syria, viewers would receive a weekly dose of subliminal propaganda for Hillary s campaign, portraying her as beautiful, heroic, honest and competent.(4) Prior to being Secretary of State, Hillary served as U.S. Senator from New York. She had never lived in New York before, but the state is the center of America s banking industry, and has been a launching point for Presidential candidates such as the Roosevelts. Serving a Senate term, of course, would also give Hillary an important  can work with Congress  credential for her Presidential run. There is considerable Internet buzz that John F. Kennedy, Jr., who had long lived in New York, was planning to run for the Senate in 2000, the same year as Clinton. The handsome son of the popular President would likely have defeated Clinton, adding interest to Kennedy s death in a suspicious plane crash on July 16, 1999, especially in light of what has been termed the Clinton Body Count.(5) Perhaps most importantly, the Establishment has already marked Hillary with their stamp of approval by entrusting her with two terms in the White House. Yes, Bill Clinton was President then, but if Hillary is elected, Bill will of course be returning.Will the email or Benghazi scandals derail her Presidential bid? I doubt it. During Bill s tenure, the Clintons were plagued by innumerable scandals besides mysterious deaths: sex charges, perjury, Whitewater,  Chinagate,   Travelgate,  drug allegations connected with his Arkansas governorship, Hillary s incredible cattle futures profits, etc. Yet although many pundits back then claimed these scandals would lead to impeachment, the Clintons always remained untouched by justice. So far, nothing seems to have changed. However, Hillary s scandals do give the Establishment a blackmailer s leash on her; i.e., if she ever steps out of line, prosecutions could suddenly materialize.What about the other candidates currently running? All of them share some of Hillary s positions, but none do 100 percent. Bernie Sanders is too opposed to banker bailouts to be acceptable, even though the Establishment is OK with his socialism (since, in an illusional democracy, empowering government empowers them). Cruz s wife Heidi is a former term member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a vice president at Goldman Sachs, from whom Cruz s Senate campaign received a million-dollar loan; but his positions on matters like abortion, gun control and immigration don t pass muster Continue this story at James PerloffREAD MORE ELECTION NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire 2016 Files