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.
