What concerns me about Ron Paul.
Ron Paul is not the man people pretend he is. I've had it with all the worship of a man who has a long trail of issues people tend to brush off.
Permalink
Ron Paul Is Still A Racist Crackpot
http://southernbeale.wordpress.com/2011/12/24/ron-paul-is-still-a-racist-crackpot/
I’m glad the national news media has finally, after nearly 20 years, decided to notice Ron Paul is a racist crank. Kinda took them long enough, but whatever.
I wrote about the racist newsletters causing Ron Paul so many headaches nowwaaay back in 2007. That post generated a slew of angry comments from Rondroids bent on proving that their savior was not batshit insane (unfortunately, all of my old comments got lost when I moved from Blogger to WordPress, which is a shame, because some of them were truly awesome).
Anyway, revisiting that old post from my blog’s earliest days, I was able to call up the Houston Chronicle’s original reporting about these racist newsletters. This story first surfaced when Paul ran for Congress way back in 1996; his Democratic opponent, a lawyer from Austin named Charles “”Lefty” Morris, uncovered the racist newsletters and released them to the press. Morris lost that election, amazingly, and Ron Paul has been unleashed on the American electorate ever since. Despite running for president numerous times and despite his son Rand’s Senate campaign and the attention his negative comments about the 1964 Civil Rights Act received , the national political media is just now noticing Pater Paul’s malodorous racism.
So let’s revisit that Houston Chronicle story, shall we? Here are some excerpts from the Ron Paul newsletter:
Under the headline of “Terrorist Update,” for instance, Paul reported on gang crime in Los Angeles and commented, “If you have ever been robbed by a black teen-aged male, you know how unbelievably fleet-footed they can be.”
And:
“Opinion polls consistently show that only about 5 percent of blacks have sensible political opinions, i.e. support the free market, individual liberty and the end of welfare and affirmative action,” Paul wrote.
And:
Paul also wrote that although “we are constantly told that it is evil to be afraid of black men, it is hardly irrational. Black men commit murders, rapes, robberies, muggings and burglaries all out of proportion to their numbers.”
And:
He added, “We don’t think a child of 13 should be held responsible as a man of 23. That’s true for most people, but black males age 13 who have been raised on the streets and who have joined criminal gangs are as big, strong, tough, scary and culpable as any adult and should be treated as such.”
Paul is now claiming that he did not write these statements, even claiming that he didn’t pay close enough attention to who was writing for the Ron Paul Report. To which I say: bullshit. That’s a very different spin on things than what he told the Houston Chronicle back in 1996:
Paul, a Republican obstetrician from Surfside, said Wednesday he opposes racism and that his written commentaries about blacks came in the context of “current events and statistical reports of the time.”
“The time” being 1992. Ancient history, you know! Way back in the bad ol’ days when the Uppity Negroes were so much more uncivilized. Riiight.
Note, there was no mention of “ghost writers” and apologies that he should have policed the content of his newsletters more. Nope, when it was just the Texas media paying attention to this stuff, Ron Paul was all, “have you read the papers lately, people?!”
Liberal bloggers have known about this stuff for years. The liberal media, of course, doesn’t pay attention to us. I’m wondering if my name were Andrew Breitbart how long it would have taken CNN to figure out Ron Paul is a racist old crank.
Permalink
Either Ron Paul is so oblivious to what was being done in his name that this obliviousness alone disqualifies him for a job like the presidency — or he knew very well that horrific arguments were being published his name and he lent his name to a cynical racist strategy anyway.
What to make of Ron Paul’s racist newsletters:
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2011/12/21/394152/what-to-make-of-ron-pauls-racist-newsletter/
Permalink
SALON: Michael Tomasky: Time for Ron Paul to Fully Answer Racism Charges
“The 2012 presidential contender has disavowed racist statements in his newsletter, but he should lay the matter to rest by saying who wrote the comments and giving a speech detailing his actual racial views, says Michael Tomasky”
http://www.salon.com/2011/12/22/ron_paul_and_his_racist_newsletters/
Permalink
Ron Paul’s Double Talk
“I’ve made the observation before, that Ron Paul, really doesn’t view his job in Congress as one of governing. To him his job there is more about waxing philosophical, making ideological speeches and voting no, so he can then write books, give lectures and the like, about his supposed ideology. Ron Paul isn’t in D.C. to help govern. He’s just there to lecture.
We’ve seen Ron Paul’s double talk on a few things already. He wrote a bill for term-limits, but then served 11+ terms. He rants against earmarks but puts them in the bills. All examples of his waxing philosophical, without really governing.
Here is another example of Ron Paul double talking and waxing philosophical, without actually governing. He’s giving a little speech on abortion. He says he has some legislation in Congress about defining when life would begin. He says it’s been ignored by the pro-life community. But then he turns around and says he wouldn’t support it as president? HUH???
Around 45 seconds in he talks about this bill he has in Congress, but he wouldn’t promote it as president.
http://ronpaulexposed.wordpress.com/2011/07/12/ron-pauls-double-talk-on-abortion/
Sounds like more double talk from Ron Paul to me. Sounds like more from a man who isn’t there to govern, but rather is there to wax philosophical as everyone else does the heavy lifting.
Permalink
Ron Paul: Bigot
In recent days troubling passages of Ron Paul’s newsletters have surfaced. The New Republic lists a few dozen of the most inflammatory passages including many racist and homophobic statements. Here is a sampling:
“A Special Issue on Racial Terrorism” analyzes the Los Angeles riots of 1992: “Order was only restored in L.A. when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks three days after rioting began. … What if the checks had never arrived? No doubt the blacks would have fully privatized the welfare state through continued looting. But they were paid off and the violence subsided.”
The November 1990 issue of the Political Report had kind words for David Duke.
An October 1990 edition of the Political Report ridicules black activists, led by Al Sharpton, for demonstrating at the Statue of Liberty in favor of renaming New York City after Martin Luther King. The newsletter suggests that “Welfaria,” “Zooville,” “Rapetown,” “Dirtburg,”and “Lazyopolis ” would be better alternatives—and says, “Next time, hold that demonstration at a food stamp bureau or a crack house.”
The September 1994 issue of the Ron Paul Survival Report states that “those who don’t commit sodomy, who don’t get blood a transfusion, and who don’t swap needles, are virtually assured of not getting AIDS unless they are deliberately infected by a malicious gay.”
The June 1990 issue of the Political Report says: “I miss the closet. Homosexuals, not to speak of the rest of society, were far better off when social pressure forced them to hide their activities.”
http://www.examiner.com/liberal-in-philadelphia/ron-paul-bigot
Permalink
The Ron Paul Newsletters
Yesterday, during a discussion on Ron Paul with Sean Hannity on the latter’s radio show, Hannity brought up with me the impossible-to-get around subject of the infamous Ron Paul Newsletters.
As Hannity quite correctly pointed out, with the other GOP candidates having received the political equivalent of an anal exam, somehow Ron Paul has escaped notice.
No more.
While I think the lack of attention has been due to the fact that many did not take him seriously, a justifiable complaint from his supporters, I have tried to do just that in this space. And in doing so launched a fusillade of angry response from Paul supporters that, peculiarly, never seems forthcoming when I criticize Gingrich/Romney/Perry/Huntsman etc etc.
But as we head into this last debate of the season, Hannity has raised an excellent point. The higher Ron Paul goes, as with his fellow candidates who have floated to the top previously, the scrutiny will intensify. And Ron Paul will have to seriously answer.
To refresh, Reason magazine came out with a detailed piece on the Paul newsletters back in 2008. The piece was written by reporters Julian Sanchez and David Weigel.
The article was as disturbing as it was alarming.
Here, according to Reason, was a potential Republican nominee for president who had for whatever rationale acquiesced to having a newsletter sent out under his name that used the most vile of racist language. To wit, this from the May 22nd Dallas Morning News in 1996:
Dr. Ron Paul, a Republican congressional candidate from Texas, wrote in his political newsletter in 1992 that 95 percent of the black men in Washington, D.C., are “semi-criminal or entirely criminal.”
And this, from the Houston Chronicle on May 23, 1996:
…we are constantly told that it is evil to be afraid of black men, it is hardly irrational. Black men commit murders, rapes, robberies, muggings and burglaries all out of proportion to their numbers.
And this from the Austin American-Statesman, also on May 23, 1996:
Opinion polls consistently show that only about 5 percent of blacks have sensible political opinions.
Look.
One can, unfortunately, go on and on and on here with this story and various appalling quotes.
But since we are busy doing political proctology exams on all these candidates, and Congressman Paul has mostly escaped the examination, it’s past time for discussion and explanations. Were Ron Paul the GOP nominee the liberal media would pounce within micro seconds, so better that the questions come here and from Sean Hannity and Mark Levin and others on the conservative side.
It has to be said there is a disturbing pattern that appears with the Paul proctology. Quite aside from his decidedly McGovernite foreign policy pronouncements (“Come Home America” as McGovern used to say) there are other serious signs of leftism in the Ron Paul world view. Whether it’s the appalling statements on race (and there are more) made either by Paul himself or someone on Paul’s newsletter writing team in his behalf and under his name — this has nothing whatsoever to do with conservatism. This isn’t Ronald Reagan much less Edmund Burke. This is sheer progressivism — the domestic version of progressive sentiments that match like a glove with a McGovernite foreign policy.
Mark Levin has taken all kinds of heat for exposing this business over the last few months. The sheer nuttiness of the Abraham Lincoln was a tyrant/James Madison and the Founding Fathers never intervened anywhere stuff, the latter flatly untrue. Not to mention the and-oh-by-the-way-pay-no-attention-to-all that-anti-Semitic-stuff that trails the Paul candidacy like the little cloud of dirt that used to follow the Peanuts cartoon character Pigpen around.
Pigpen, as a matter of fact, once said of all the dirt following him around: “Being dirty is a practical matter…I’m never bothered by girls or mosquitos.”
In the world of presidential politics, a political version of this has been following Ron Paul around for years, which is why he was never bothered by serious seekers of Republican presidents or the media.
Yesterday, Sean Hannity took Ron Paul seriously — and respectfully so, just as he has done with all the other candidates. Mark Levin has been seriously examining this situation for a long time.
Now…as Iowa approaches and Ron Paul rises in the polls…so will others.
Stay tuned.
