The "Second Tier" Candidates

The mainstream media has a dividing line between candidates. Their method of choosing which candidates are first tier, and thus worthy of news reports, and which candidates are second tier, and thus not newsworthy eludes me.

Why is Former Governor Mitt Romney more qualified to be President than former Governors Gilmore, and Huckabee? Why is former Senator Gravel less qualified than former Senator Edwards? The only distinction that I can draw is that Romney and Edwards have been anointed by the media. Certainly Romney has not brought forth new ideas. To the contrary, he has changed his position on issues like abortion to mimic more traditional pro-life candidates such has Huckabee and Gilmore, yet Romney is a media darling. That brings with it large sums of money and ready volunteers. Gravel is anti-war. Most Americans today, and certainly an overwhelming majority of Democrats want the United States out of Iraq, yet Gravel is treated as a crazy old man out of step with the voters, by the establishment media.

The media is beginning to give Congressman Ron Paul some attention since his now famous confrontation with former Mayor Rudy Giuliani over the reasons terrorists don't like us, but most of the press has been negative. The media pretends that somehow a former mayor knows more about foreign policy than a sitting Congressman who has served on the foreign relations committee for years. Not to mention that CIA reports, and the 9/11 Commission Report itself backs up Paul, but somehow the mere happenstance of being mayor of NYC on September 11th has made Rudy Giuliani a foreign relations guru.

The point is that any of the Republican or Democratic candidates could be "first tier" candidates if the media treated them the same way as they treat those referred to as "first tier". Qualifying them as second tier alone, hurts a candidate's chances of grabbing the nomination. This is a blatant attempt by our media to choose the next president (or at least narrow it down) and should be seen as nothing less than that. People like John McCain claim that our election system is unfair because of campaign finance, but the real reason is because the media has decided ahead of time who is a viable candidate and who is not.