Posted on 01/11/2008 6:59:44 AM PST by jdm
Reason Magazine has long associated themselves with the Ron Paul campaign, if not officially endorsing him. Their Hit & Run blog has served as the heart of rational Paul apologetics, and in their skilled hands, that has proven essential to his campaign. Now, as the magazine has Paul on its cover, its new editor has the unpleasant task of looking a little more closely at the candidate, and Matt Welch finds it an unpleasant journey.
Has Paul really disassociated himself from, and "taken moral responsibility" for, these "Ron Paul" newsletters "for over a decade"? If he has, that history has not been recorded by the Nexis database, as best as I can reckon.The first indication I could find of Paul either expressing remorse about the statements or claiming that he did not author them came in an October 2001 Texas Monthly article -- less than eight years ago. ...
So what exactly did Paul and his campaign say about these and more egregious statements during his contentious 1996 campaign for Congress, when Democrat Lefty Morris made the newsletters a constant issue? Besides complaining that the quotes were taken "out of context" and proof of his opponent's "race-baiting," Paul and his campaign defended and took full ownership of the comments.
Indeed. Rather than claiming he had never read these newsletters, as Paul absurdly did on CNN last night, Paul claimed that he himself wrote the newsletters. Matt Welch find this in the contemporaneous Dallas Morning News report on the newsletters during Paul's 1996 Congressional campaign (May 22, 1996, emphasis mine):
Dr. Paul denied suggestions that he was a racist and said he was not evoking stereotypes when he wrote the columns. He said they should be read and quoted in their entirety to avoid misrepresentation. [...]
In the interview, he did not deny he made the statement about the swiftness of black men.
"If you try to catch someone that has stolen a purse from you, there is no chance to catch them," Dr. Paul said.
Matt has more examples of Paul's non-denials in 1996. Twelve years later, Paul wants people to believe that not only did he not write any of his newsletters, he never read them either. His role in the single most effective piece of outreach of his organization, he explained to Wolf Blitzer last night, was as a publisher -- one who didn't bother to read his own publication. These 1996 quotes put lie to his CNN interview answers.
Not only does this show dishonesty, but it indicates that Paul had a lot more involvement in the publication of the despicable statements found in his own newsletter than Paul or his less-rational apologists want to admit. The supremacists and conspiracy theorists surrounding his campaign apparently got attracted by more than just Paul's views on the Constitution; they read the newsletters and determined that Paul was one of them. His refusal to recant in 1996 and his explanation that he can't recall ever reading the newsletters today signal to them that he still wants their support.
People wonder why this matters, given Paul's fringe appeal. It matters because we can't allow this kind of hatred to get legitimized in mainstream politics again. This kind of rhetoric used to be mainstream, and not just in the South, either. Republicans cannot allow the party to get tainted by the stench of racism and conspiracy mongering. If enough of us don't step up and denounce it, strongly and repeatedly, we will not be able to avoid it.
Matt Welch and the people at Reason have reached that same conclusion in regards to libertarianism and their magazine. Good for them, even if it came a little late.
I've gotta say, watching the meltdown of the Giulianites as he continues to fade into oblivion warms the cockles of my heart. I might have to stop over at one of the FR exile sites today for a good laugh.
“Actually, Thompson was much like a Ron Paul supporter in one respect: he was taken in by the rhetoric of a scummy charlatan who claimed to be a man of principle.”
On Oct 10th 1991 Thompson filed papers lobbying for Aristide
http://conservativesagainstfred.files.wordpress.com/2007/06/ppm43_thompson-doc2.pdf
2 weeks EARLIER -On Sept 27th - 1991 Aristide endorsed ‘necklacing’
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID={E4D5ADDB-07EB-45F4-968E-965ADD70E6E2}
FrontPageMagazine.com | Friday, February 20, 2004
ONCE AGAIN HAITIAN PRESIDENT JOHN-BERTRAND ARISTIDE
may be ousted by his citizens, who began a new rebellion against his tyrannical rule on February 5.
After Aristide was removed by a military coup in 1991, President Bill Clinton in 1994 sent 20,000 U.S. troops to Haiti to restore to power this former Roman Catholic Priest and advocate for Leftist Liberation Theology who once called Cuban Marxist dictator Fidel Castro his “greatest personal hero.”
(snip)
Aristide has also endorsed “necklacing” of the kind widely practiced in South Africa by Winnie Mandela. It consists of seizing a victim, forcing an automobile tire filled with gasoline down over their head and shoulders, and then setting the tire and gasoline on fire.
“What a beautiful tool!… It smells good. And wherever you go, you want to smell it,” Aristide said of the necklacing of his critics on September 27, 1991, as witnessed and reported by Associated Press.
Didn’t your mother teach you personal responsibility? The excuse that “Jimmy did it too” doesn’t fly with me.
And I think there is a qualitative difference between making a mistake about a foreign country’s politics and tin-pot politicians and a US politician personally holding morally repugnant racist attitudes.
I too like a lot of the things Paul says (Lets get rid of the IRS! Yay!)
But anyone can find and mouth a few libertarian ideas that will appeal to me. But I don’t let it lead me down the path toward supporting this guy who has been known as a radical kook in Texas for years.
You should feel betrayed by him, not attack others.
There is no bottom of the barrel for the hate brigade. Blackbird.
I think I see why the Aristide issue keeps coming up, they like Marxist Military Coups. Paul seems to have taken the opposite approach to Haiti. He was the only member of Congress in September not to pass a resolution urging Haiti to conduct fair, free, and peaceful elections.
I have never served in the military in any capacity.
Which is immaterial to the point: Ron Paul by his own admission served in a military he did not believe in solely for the cash.
“The reports of necklacing came from the 1996 split between the OPL party and Aristide’s Lavalas faction, when there was open violence in the streets between Aristide supporters and his former allies.”
No - 1991.
See the article I just posted to you previously.
You have gotten nearly every fact you’ve cited wrong.
I’ve posted links rebutting each one.
I am sure this will only earn more namecalling.
Aristide and Castro have a mutual admiration society. and this was equally true in 1991.
In the interest of full disclosure, always a good thing for a politician, Paul refused to release copies of the newsletter.
Note the quick mention in a July, 2007 interview with Paul by the NYT Magazine. A fairly positive bio.
The question is whether the old ideologies being resurrected are neglected wisdom or discredited nonsense. In the 1996 general election, Paul’s Democratic opponent Lefty Morris held a press conference to air several shocking quotes from a newsletter that Paul published during his decade away from Washington. Passages described the black male population of Washington as “semi-criminal or entirely criminal” and stated that “by far the most powerful lobby in Washington of the bad sort is the Israeli government.” Morris noted that a Canadian neo-Nazi Web site had listed Paul’s newsletter as a laudably “racialist” publication.Paul survived these revelations. He later explained that he had not written the passages himself — quite believably, since the style diverges widely from his own. But his response to the accusations was not transparent. When Morris called on him to release the rest of his newsletters, he would not. He remains touchy about it. “Even the fact that you’re asking this question infers, ‘Oh, you’re an anti-Semite,’ ” he told me in June. Actually, it doesn’t. Paul was in Congress when Israel bombed Iraq’s Osirak nuclear plant in 1981 and — unlike the United Nations and the Reagan administration — defended its right to do so. He says Saudi Arabia has an influence on Washington equal to Israel’s. His votes against support for Israel follow quite naturally from his opposition to all foreign aid. There is no sign that they reflect any special animus against the Jewish state.
As recently as June he refused to release copies, answering the request with the standard you're accusing me of being an antisemite excuse, which struck me odd at the time, since the issue was racism. Neither Jews nor Israel are mentioned in the article being questioned. Obviously Paul knew about the newsletters content, else his response would have been Even the fact that you’re asking this question infers, ‘Oh, you’re an anti-Semite racist’, based on the single racist article.
That pretty much covers it.
Yes, he was. He would have also opposed a “free” election in Palestine which led to the victory of Hamas, an election that U.S. has now repudiated though clearly free and fair.
Fascinating that your link does not work.
With an equal dose of "blind defense" by those who only "read" what they wanted to in the article.
That's the actual topic of the thread.
“Oh, and Ron Paul is still a lying, fraudulent scumbag who claimed to be the author of those newsletters before deciding later that he didn’t write them.”
You’re the liar as I proved in post after post on this thread.
I guess namecalling is easier than researching.
I guess changing the subject is easier than defending the indefensible.
You have not made any effort to address the issue at hand. You are using the classic Democrat defense of "everybody does it..."
Pathetic.
I notice that you have backed away from your previous support of Jean Aristide as a rationalizationt to Fred’s behavior (no wrose than Paul’s) in this thread. Why?
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