Honestly, some libertarians think they can get away with anything! Maybe it's because they think of themselves closer to anarchists than Republicans - hoping to spark a revolution that will abolish government all together. The problem with such hubris is that it blinds libertarians like Paul to his own reality: he has been a racist, a homophobe and all around bigot and he has very little means of proving that he isn't now.
And forget the Rosa Parks speech crap. Stuff and fluff.
So now, say his supporters, the Ron Paul slander wagon is going at full speed with some very old news. He doesn't deserve it, does he? To date, however, his culpability has had too many permutations not to accept it for what it is: total. What's different this time is the attitude taken by the Paul campaign: more flustered, more confusing, as if this episode in Paul's career has come up for the first time.
Huh? Let's see... maybe a Ron Paul newsletter timeline might help clear things up:
1976 - Ron Paul is elected to the House of Representatives in a special election for Texas' District 22.
- Founds a "think tank" - Foundation for Rational Economics and Education (FREE)
- Paul's foundation produces a newsletter, Dr. Ron Paul's Freedom Report,
1978 - Llewellyn Rockwell, political commentator, becomes Ron Paul's congressional chief of staff. Rockwell is first charged with writing the racially charged newsletters - a charge that Rockwell has flatly denied.
1984 - The Formation of Ron Paul & Associates.
1985 - RP&A begins publishing the Ron Paul Investment Letter and the Ron Paul Survival Report.
1987 - RP&A begins publishing the Ron Paul Political Report
1996 - Paul's first response to criticism of the newsletters is to the Dallas Morning News citing "out-of-context" attacks even though the newsletters WERE ACCURATE.
1996 - Paul's opponent in his bid for re-election, Charles "Lefty" Morris, cited the offending newsletter. Again the out-of-context defense was made, but along with another position: "that voters might not understand the "tongue-in-cheek, academic" quotes out of context" (wikipedia). At this time, Paul admitted to writing the letters:
From the Houston Chronicle:
Small wonder, Morris said, that Paul's political newsletter, the ""Ron Paul Political Report," has ended up on a reading list recommended by the Heritage Front, which Morris said was a neo-Nazi group based in Canada.Later on, Morris demanded disclosure of back issues of the newsletters, whereupon Paul's campaign refused.
Paul, who earlier this week said he still wrote the newsletter for subscribers, was unavailable for comment Thursday. But his spokesman, Michael Quinn Sullivan, accused Morris of ""gutter-level politics."
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