The smear campaign against Presidential candidate Ron Paul has hit an all time high with the corporate media today ludicrously declaring that the Congressman's immense worldwide popularity is all a huge con emanating from Dr Paul's own office.

Rupert Murdoch owned Australian outlet News.com.au has today disseminated the most insidious and farcical report concerning Ron Paul to date.

Headlined Republican Ron Paul in possible 'fake online campaign', the article attempts to convince the reader that every aspect of Ron Paul's popularity, from his you tube website, to his dominance of online polls and debate polls has been totally faked by his own staff!

The astounding accusation reads:

    A CANDIDATE for the US presidency is being buoyed by a massive online campaign that may be a fake grassroots movement organised by party staff.

    Head of Flinders University's Department of American Studies Don De Bats told NEWS.com.au that it 'sounded like' an astroturfing campaign.

    Astroturfing is the term used to describe a fake grassroots campaign, where members of an organization create the illusion that 'ordinary people' are behind the movement.

Note how the author of the article uses words such as "possible" and "may" and sounded like" to cover the fact that its content is total baloney from start to finish and could even be considered libelous.

From what I can make out (please correct me if I'm wrong because this trash is almost incoherent) the author, Mark Schliebs, then makes a pathetic rambling attempt to sell the notion that because popular youtube videos of Ron Paul were uploaded by the same person with the username RonPaul2008dotcom this means it is some sort of massive fake conspiracy???!

As blogger Darryl Mason points out in this excellent rebuttal, "The RonPaul2008 channel is an election channel, which every presidential wannabe who is seriously pursuing an online audience also has, including Billary, Giuliani and Barack Obama. It's an online campaign, so of course Ron Paul supporters or Ron Paul's own office is going to post clips, just as the teams behind Giuliani, Billary and Obama are now also doing."

Ron Paul's most popular clips on youtube have received tens of thousands of views, where as figures for Rudy Giuliani's most popular clips are in the low hundreds or even in the 90's. Ron Paul's youtube channel has been viewed 4.5 million times by supporters, is youtube in on this mass conspiracy too? Is youtube fixing its viewing figures for Ron Paul?

To add insult to injury Schliebs then throws in the "expert analysis" of an American studies professor. Not a technological expert or an experienced internet campaigner or someone within another successful grassroots organisation, but a guy who lectures about Abe Lincoln to 17 year olds:

    Professor De Bats said that for a relatively unknown candidate like Dr Paul to have so much prominence online was suspicious.

    'I would not put any credibility on those results,' Prof De Bats said.

    'I find it terrifically surprising and unlikely (that Dr Paul would attract that level of response).'

I find it terrifically surprising that such awful journalism can make it into umpteen nationally syndicated newspapers, but it still has.

The piece reads like Schliebs has been ordered to attack Ron Paul and has just taken a wild stab in the dark with no foundation of evidence or substance and then had the gall to find some unwitting person with the letters "PhD" after their name to agree with him.

Similar claims denying reality have been made about Ron Paul's dominance in polls after Republican debates. Despite the fact that most major media organisations only allow one vote from each IP address or mobile phone, for text messaging polls, corporate media outlets keep suggesting that their own polls are being rigged and hijacked by Ron Paul spammers.

In a familiar move CNBC even removed its own poll on Tuesday night just hours after the debate had ended when they realized Ron Paul was winning by such a wide margin.

Today CNBC Managing Editor, Allen Wastler, responded to demands for an explanation by clearly stating that CNBC pulled the poll because Ron Paul was winning. Wastler then also spouted the conspiracy theory that every poll is being rigged for Ron Paul to win:

    Now Paul is a fine gentleman with some substantial backing and, by the way, was a dynamic presence throughout the debate , but I haven't seen him pull those kind of numbers in any "legit" poll. Our poll was either hacked or the target of a campaign. So we took the poll down.

    The next day, our email basked was flooded with Ron Paul support messages. And the computer logs showed the poll had been hit with traffic from Ron Paul chat sites. I learned other Internet polls that night had been hit in similar fashion. Congratulations. You folks are obviously well-organized and feel strongly about your candidate and I can't help but admire that.

    Some of you Ron Paul fans take issue with my decision to take the poll down. Fine. When a well-organized and committed "few" can throw the results of a system meant to reflect the sentiments of "the many," I get a little worried. I'd take it down again.

What kind of twisted logic is this? Ron Paul has more fans and is attracting more committed and organised supporters than any other candidate, so it's not fair? We are talking about the lead up to a democratic election for crying out loud, THAT'S THE POINT OF AN ELECTION, TO DETERMINE WHO IS THE MOST POPULAR!!

Dear Mr Wastler, some Ron Paul detractors take issue with the fact Ron Paul is trouncing the opposition. Fine. But when a well-organized and committed "few" can throw the results of a system meant to reflect the sentiments of "the many," I get a little worried.

If a huge mass of people vote for Ron Paul and don't vote for Giuliani, too bad for Rudy, that does not mean the poll has been "hacked"! If you don't show up to vote, your vote doesn't get counted my friend.

If a football teams scores more points than their rivals because their players come out more committed and stronger, does it mean the game was rigged?

Many Neo-Con blog sites now do not even include Ron Paul in their polls anymore, pretending that he doesn't exist because too many people are voting for him!

How ridiculous is this going to get? If Ron Paul won the primaries and won the election would he then be stripped of the presidency because too many people want him to be president?

And I guess every other facet of Ron Paul's campaign has been rigged too. I guess the 5.1 million dollars he has raised is totally fake. I guess the fact that Ron Paul is the only Republican who is gaining in campaign funds is also fake. Ron Paul has won more straw polls than any other Republican candidate, that's fake naturally. The sun that came up this morning, that's fake too.

Corporate media outlets and interests are clearly frightened to death that the Congressman and his campaign of freedom and limited government has quickly become a huge phenomenon and that there is now a very serious chance for a Ron Paul candidacy.