The American Spectator

Martin| 12.21.09 @ 12:59PM

Why do we care what Mr. Hightower's views are? Of course he's foolish, but if he supports Paul and is a good campaign Treasurer, what's the problem? By demonising views even at second or third hand, we are playing the Left's game, allowing their agenda of political correctness to govern our campaigns.

Dru | 12.21.09 @ 7:02PM

Marty.
Guilty by association is the modus operandi of the Jacobin right which has marginalized folks like Paul. The neocon right is nothing but a socialist cesspool.

Kurtis Bottke| 12.23.09 @ 11:46AM

Mr. Hightower is guilty of nothing. This was all a smear on the part of Rand Paul's enemies. Mr. Hightower never had a myspace or facebook account. One was set up by some coward in Mr. Hightower's name. The photos were posted to the illegitimate website as a comment from some ANOMONOUS poster. This was all done I am sure by someone on the left or in Trey Grayson's camp to discredit Dr. Paul. Get your facts straight. Anyone can set up a facebook or myspace account in anyone else's name and destroy their reputation. Don't believe much of anything in those sites. If you do, you might also be interested in buying the Brooklyn bridge from me. I'll sell it to you cheap.

Erik| 12.21.09 @ 2:01PM

Yeah, Martin. It's like when those leftists tried to tear down our presidential candidate by associating him with some of the views of his pastor and a guy who was on the board of a nonprofit he once served on. Damn leftists and their political correctness.

b| 12.21.09 @ 2:43PM

First off, the staffer never espoused any racism. The racist posts were a comment on a band myspace page he was in and were left almost 2 years ago. This was not his personal myspace page and was a page that was not updated. He did not post the images. Still looks real bad but I dont think its fair to tarnish him as a racists. Doesnt google own myspace or is it News Corp? Why not blame them for actually hosting the racist images? that is just as ridiculous.

Red Phillips| 12.21.09 @ 3:34PM

Suggesting that US foreign policy plays some role in Islamic anger toward us is a thought crime, but suggesting we should pretty much indiscriminately bomb Muslims as many of the pro-war yahoos do is perfectly OK. Does any objective person need further evidence of twisted interventionist moral logic?

Grayson is not only a moderate trying to masquerade as a conservative, but he is also now carrying water for the PC Gestapo. Morris Dees should be very proud.

Sean| 12.21.09 @ 3:35PM

You shouldn't be held responsible for what other people post on a Myspace page. I would have respected Rand Paul even more if he would have kept his staffer. I guess if I post something on a Grayson page that is racist that will make Grayson racist also.

Quit Writ| 12.21.09 @ 5:02PM

If by "associated with a website" you mean "had a MySpace page on which a random commenter posted racist images," then, yes, this story is accurate. But by any other standard, it paints quite the disingenuous picture. And anybody who's ever seen MySpace should know the difference.

Eric| 12.21.09 @ 5:24PM

You better be careful what you say here, Sean... You might make W. James Antille, III into a racist too.

Mike| 12.21.09 @ 5:49PM

You are dead on about the 9/11 truthers. I've looked at all the facts, watched all the Alex Jones movies, I am not convinced in the least. It really is insane some of these people who believe in this stuff. They are so close-minded and only look at one side of the issue. They marginalize Ron Paul because of their association with him.

Eric Dondero| 12.21.09 @ 7:11PM

Thankfully Rand Paul himself has moved away from his father's isolationist/pacifist views on foreign policy. A couple weeks ago Rand sided with the Pro-America view against shutting down Gitmo, much to the shock of many of his father's supporters.

Any support he may have lost on the Leftwing of the Libertarian movement, he quickly made up for among Pro-Defense Libertarians who were formerly skeptical of his candidacy.

And there's twice as many Pro-Defense Libertarians out there as there are Ron Paul-style defeatist America-last so-called "libertarians."

Paul| 12.21.09 @ 9:37PM

Eric, your Neocon roots are showing... Ron Paul is neither an isolationist, pacifist or anti-American. Ron Paul is for a strong military. What's he's against is the Neocon/Liberal style of indiscriminate use of the military to attack and occupy countries when it has nothing to do with defense or our best interests.

William R| 12.21.09 @ 11:04PM

And always Israel Firsters like you!

Dru| 12.22.09 @ 10:39AM

And what kind of a Libertarian supports Rudy Giuliani. You are as much of a Libertarian as Obama is conservative.

Red Phillips| 12.21.09 @ 7:35PM

Eric, Rand Paul is a non-interventionist and you know it. You're grasping and it is rather pathetic.

S.L. Toddard| 12.22.09 @ 7:41AM

Dondero is a statist and an imperialist who has fully adopted Big Gov't newspeak and uses its terminology. He can't write two words about America without one of them being "homeland". He has a blog called "Libertarian Republican" and on it he exhibits many of the typical hyper-statist tendencies we discussed recently:

* Endless quasi-religious worship of the state's military power

* Endless demands that more and more wealth (and therefore power) be confiscated from American workers and redistributed to the state's military machine

* Blind and passionate advocacy for any and every costly, state-expanding, state-empowering scheme the egghead bureaucrats in Washington cook up - as long as it involves using the state's military machine

* Abiding faith and devotion to the idea that (whenever the government exercises or proposes to exercise its truly awesome and terrible military might) government is noble and beneficent, that it is efficient, that it is peopled with wise men, and that it should be further empowered with confiscated tax money so it can be used as an engine to effect social change all over the world.

When the jackboot fits...

Denny| 12.21.09 @ 10:49PM

eric, you're still around? Talk about being irrelevant just like all of those other neocons, fake conservatives.

W. James Antle III| 12.22.09 @ 1:17AM

Rand Paul's campaign made a judgment call with regard to the staffer. I've made no claims as to what his real views are and even in announcing his resignation, Paul's campaign manager defended him from accusations of racism and from hostile interpretations of his 9/11 views. But the point is that a nontrivial number of racists and 9/11 truthers have tried to make a home for themselves in the Paul movement. The leaders of that movement should do whatever they can to make them feel less at home.

Dru| 12.22.09 @ 10:41AM

So what? How many "conservatives" who believe Saddam was behind 9/11 and was actively engaged in making WMD's populate the Republican rank-and-file? Are you going to put these conspiracy theorists on the same rank as 9/11 Truthers?

W. James Antle III| 12.22.09 @ 12:37PM

"Are you going to put these conspiracy theorists on the same rank as 9/11 Truthers? "

No, I don't think all conspiracy theories are created equal. Some are borne of malice, others ignorance. But I do think the theories you refer to have been as damaging to the credibility of the Republican Party as 9/11 trutherism has been to the Ron Paul movement's credibility. And in light of Iraq, more damaging to the country.

Dru| 12.23.09 @ 10:46PM

9/11 Truthers don't cost a dime, nor does it kill our men and women in uniform. Bush's Iraq invasion based on false pretenses cost us trillions, not to mention thousands of lives to satisfy his Jacobin fanatasies. Now, Mr. Antle, you know how 9/11 Truther conspiracy theories are created. If it wasn't for the deprave Rousseauistic nationalists on the right, 9/11 Truthers will not exist. So, what is your opinion of the trillions squandered and thousands of lives and families destroyed pursuing simply "ignorant" conspirac theories?

Jason| 12.22.09 @ 1:22AM

Holy crap! We don't need to agree with Eric's opinions but there's also definately no need to demonize him and call him silly names. The guy has judged himself over years with his own behavoir and some of you have done the same just based on your reaction to his comments; but what the heck I must be bored posting here cuz this is the internet and anything goes right?-jmm

Lisa Graas| 12.22.09 @ 10:00AM

Points well taken! Speaking as a conservative Kentuckian, I'm supporting Bill Johnson for Senate. I've been blogging on the race, including the news about Hightower, and Rand Paul supporters have been strangely silent. I guess they're spending all their time spamming Barefoot and Progressive, the Kentucky blog that exposed Hightower.......but it's odd that not one Rand Paul supporter has objected to my posts when, in the past, they've bombarded me with comments. Also, last night The Daily Paul was down. I haven't checked this morning. Are they scrubbing their site of of comments that may not necessarily go over well with genuine conservatives? I think this is a gamechanger and that Bill Johnson's internal polling shouldn't be ignored. Johnson was at an event a couple of days ago and the campaign reported to me that several people who had been supporting Rand Paul came over to the Johnson camp after reading this regarding Sarah Palin - http://lisagraas.com/?p=1411 Popcorn anyone?

Charles| 12.22.09 @ 11:31AM

I intend and hope that the following is thought-provoking:

Should we expect candidates and incumbents to insist that extensive background checks be conducted on each would-be employee and volunteer prior to their employment or time of service?

How many years in the potential employee's or volunteer's past should the investigator(s) search for despicable (or simply undesirable) behavior and commentary? What should the candidate or incumbent concern him or herself about with regards to the individual in question's past associations, friendships, romantic involvements, et cetera?

How important would family history be in this scenario? Consider the unlikely case where the individual in question is the descendent of an individual who willingly participated in any kind of slavery or played a key role in one of the concentration camps that blighted World War II Germany.

The natural revulsion a majority of us experience at confronting the worst humanity has to offer is a powerful force. How we channel that energy and whether we use it for positive ends or negative ends may reveal much about who we are as individuals.

Best regards,

Charles

W. James Antle III| 12.22.09 @ 12:41PM

It's an interesting question. I don't have answers to most of your scenarios, but I do have an answer for this one:

"How important would family history be in this scenario? Consider the unlikely case where the individual in question is the descendent of an individual who willingly participated in any kind of slavery or played a key role in one of the concentration camps that blighted World War II Germany. "

I don't think you should be held responsible for what your family members did unless you had some role in it yourself. And I certainly don't think you can be held responsible for the behavior of long-dead ancestors.

Dru| 12.25.09 @ 10:49PM

Just curious..if someone receives a Fullbright scholarship, is he or she a racist?

Jason| 12.23.09 @ 9:22PM

I believe the whole thing about Hightower is being twisted from the truth. Has anyone actually seen the myspace page? Lets say, hypothetically speaking, it was a comment that was posted on his mypace artist page by someone else, does that automatically makes him racist? If you have a myspace page and if you don't configure it to block comments untill you review them then anyone you've added to your 'friends' (I use term loosely, it doesn't automatically mean real life firends) then anyone added to the list can post comments. I think the whole thing is nonsense and I do find it disgusting that people are maligning this person without all the facts; just whatever a blog or news article on the internet says must be true right? (I am being sarcastic here) As far as it's impact on the campaign, yea something like this is political collateral damage, and the damage control action taken was letting Chris go. I haven't heard anyone from Rand's camp saying he is racist so my guess is it was something both the camp and Chris came to realize that this political liability was stronger then his service to the camp. I don't however, untill I see the cold hard facts of what happened, believe Hightower to be racist. -jmm

flenser| 12.23.09 @ 10:52PM

"My goodness, how soon some people forget we invaded them … do you not remember when we installed a foreign leader in Iran in the 1950s, do you not remember putting military bases in Saudi Arabia? Or, perhaps, you have forgotten the attack on Iraq in the Persian Gulf War, and the continued arming of Israel,” the letter said."

Meh. If a Democratic staffer said this stuff they'd get a promotion. There's a double standard here.

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