I really don’t give a damn if he wrote his newsletters or not. The fact is, he published them from his home, he was listed as the editor and publisher on many issues of these letters, his face and signature was planted all over each issue, they sounded like he was talking in first person about “my wife Carrol” and so on, and besides that he made MILLIONS off of this kind of disgusting BS! IT’S NO EXCUSE! 20 years later he is somehow MORE responsible to run a country? He’s the one who voted for term limits year after year in the 80’s and 90’s! The man is a hypocrite and he is much older which does not help things at all. Ron Paul is disgusting.
Washington Post: Ron Paul on Huntsman tweet: We’ve heard this alibi before.
CNN’s Soledad O’Brien did a fine job Wednesday of quizzing Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul regarding the above tweet. It flew out of the Paul operation last night, though the campaign came to its senses and deleted it. The erasure, however, came after plenty of Twitter hawks had retweeted and saved it.
In responding to O’Brien’s inquiries, Paul could have simply apologized to the Huntsman campaign, taken responsibility for the tweet and moved on to talking points about the Fed and Iran. But he instead pulled a Ron Paul, denying, blustering, parrying. After O’Brien read aloud the offending tweet to him, the candidate replied:
Well, I didn’t quite understand even what you just read but, uh, obviously I didn’t send it, so I don’t even understand. I’m sorry I didn’t catch the whole message about Jon Huntsman. I haven’t talked about Jon Huntsman in a long time, so I don’t know what’s going on there.
The “snitty” message, O’Brien stressed, was sent out “under your name, under your Twitter handle.” More Paul stonewalling ensued, this time with a dismissal of the issue’s “importance.” “It just seems to be irrelevant to me,” he snarked.
Not. O’Brien was right to push hard on this question. Here’s a campaign that thrives on Twitter and it’s sending playground-level messages to another candidate over its medium of choice. That’s news.
Also news is that Paul, again, shows little concern or control over scribblings transmitted under his name. Too bad Paul didn’t seize this opportunity to highlight the progress he’s made on this front. Decades ago, such scribblings, in Ron Paul’s newsletters, demeaned entire classes of people, chiefly minorities and disadvantaged groups. In this case, the scribblings merely tweak a sole privileged white man who has failed to catch fire with Iowa voters. Hey, that’s an improvement, Paul could have argued.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/post/ron-paul-on-huntsman-tweet-weve-heard-this-alibi-before/2012/01/04/gIQAa5ldaP_blog.html
Ron Paul has about as much compassion as his former Michigan campaign coordinator, Randy Gray. You should probably google “Randy Gray and Ron Paul”
Also- http://moronpaul.tumblr.com/post/14000262826/for-the-record-the-naacp-never-defended-ron-paul
Ron Paul’s Ascent Won’t Last, or Help His Cause: Ramesh Ponnuru
Representative Ron Paul, a Texas Republican and a candidate for the presidential nomination, doesn’t mind long odds, and doesn’t mind standing alone.
In 2004, the House voted 414-1 for a resolution celebrating the 40th anniversary of the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Paul not only voted no but gave a speech arguing that the act should never have been enacted. Employers who wish to discriminate against blacks, in his view, should be free to do so. A federal government that claims the power to override their decisions, he said, could also impose racial quotas. “Relations between the races have improved despite, not because of, the 1964 Civil Rights Act.”
Most of Paul’s fellow libertarians are excited that he is doing well in the polls in Iowa, and hope that more Americans will be exposed to their political philosophy. But as Paul’s record on civil rights suggests, more familiarity with his brand of libertarianism won’t necessarily lead to much more support — for him or for his cause.
Libertarianism is a political philosophy based on the minimization of coercion, with government limited fairly strictly to the prevention of force and fraud. Both prostitution and insider trading would be legal in a libertarian society. But libertarians sometimes have fierce internal splits, and not all of them support Paul.
Defying Orthodoxy
Most libertarians, for example, were in favor of the recent free-trade pacts approved by Congress. Paul voted against them, as he usually votes against such deals, because he believes that the government should abolish all tariffs unilaterally rather than reduce some of them in deals negotiated with other governments. Similarly, he voted against the House Republican budget earlier this year — the one that Democrats denounced for “ending Medicare as we know it” — because it didn’t shrink the federal government enough.
Paul is also more culturally conservative than other libertarians. He opposes abortion, which he considers an infringement of the individual’s right to be free from violence. He has supported the Defense of Marriage Act, and wants to limit the jurisdiction of federal courts so that they can never force state governments to recognize same-sex marriage. On issues such as these, Paul differs with his fellow libertarian Republican Gary Johnson, the former New Mexico governor — which was one reason socially liberal libertarians were glad Johnson joined the presidential race, to present another side of their philosophy.
Many of them were also dismayed by bigoted newsletters sent out under Paul’s name during the 1990s — newsletters that Paul has disavowed, claiming that he didn’t review the offensive passages before their release and doesn’t know who wrote them.
Paul’s top issues in this campaign are foreign policy — he opposes all U.S. military action except in response to attacks - - and monetary policy.
His foreign-policy stance has led him to sympathize with the regimes the U.S. government is most concerned about: In last week’s debate he tried hard to explain what the world looked like from the perspective of Iranian policymakers, and dismissed concerns that they are close to acquiring nuclear capability as “war propaganda.” It has also led him to hostility to Israel. It has led him to oppose, in retrospect, the Civil War, which even his fans worry might not be “a winning position.”
And it has led him, all too often, to conspiracy theory. “The CIA runs everything,” he said in a 2010 speech. “We need to take out the CIA.” He repeated the sentiment on the radio show of the 9/11 “truther,” and all-around conspiracy theorist, Alex Jones. Paul isn’t too fastidious about the company he keeps; he has said that he has “a lot of friends in the John Birch Society.” Nor is he above sending a discreet signal to such theorists that he shares their suspicions, as in his recent comment about the “glee” that the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks caused in the Bush administration.
MORE: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-20/ron-paul-s-ascent-won-t-last-or-help-his-cause-ramesh-ponnuru.html
Yes, actually…Ron Paul IS responsible for those newsletters…
Yes, actually…Ron Paul IS responsible for those newsletters…
posted at 11:49 am on December 20, 2011 by MadisonConservative
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As Ron Paul supporters continue to have a collective orgasm at the thought that America’s Greatest Patriot may win the Iowa caucuses, pretty much everyone who doesn’t support him, on both sides of the aisle, is bringing up those newsletters of his. Sensible enough. Every time a candidate starts showing an advantage, something comes out to torpedo them. In Paul’s case, it’s something we saw last time around. However, its age, contrary to the opinions of some, doesn’t dilute the validity of the claim.
The primary argument that most Paul supporters seem to offer up is that Two First Names denies having written the material, and that his name was simply a branding on the newsletter. The fact that he was listed as editor on these publications weakens that argument from the start, but the real pressure point is from the Dallas Morning News, May 22nd, 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.”
He also wrote that black teenagers can be “unbelievably fleet of foot.” […]
Dr. Paul, who is running in Texas’ 14th Congressional District, defended his writings in an interview Tuesday. He said they were being taken out of context.
“It’s typical political demagoguery,” he said. “If people are interested in my character … come and talk to my neighbors.” […]
According to a Dallas Morning News review of documents circulating among Texas Democrats, Dr. Paul wrote in a 1992 issue of the Ron Paul Political Report: “If you have ever been robbed by a black teenaged male, you know how unbelievably fleet of foot they can be.”
Dr. Paul, who served in Congress in the late 1970s and early 1980s, said Tuesday that he has produced the newsletter since 1985 and distributes it to an estimated 7,000 to 8,000 subscribers. A phone call to the newsletter’s toll-free number was answered by his campaign staff. […]
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. […]
“If someone challenges your character and takes the interpretation of the NAACP as proof of a man’s character, what kind of a world do you live in?” Dr. Paul asked.
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.
He also said the comment about black men in the nation’s capital was made while writing about a 1992 study produced by the National Center on Incarceration and Alternatives, a criminal justice think tank based in Virginia.
Citing statistics from the study, Dr. Paul then concluded in his column: “Given the inefficiencies of what DC laughingly calls the criminal justice system, I think we can safely assume that 95 percent of the black males in that city are semi-criminal or entirely criminal.”
“These aren’t my figures,” Dr. Paul said Tuesday. “That is the assumption you can gather from” the report.
How do you take statements like “95 percent of the black males in that city are semi-criminal or entirely criminal” out of context, unless you’re addressing such assertions in a critique of those who make them? The links I provided above provide several more articles that back up this point, but I think one is sufficient to demonstrate that Paul, in fact, defended the statements made in these newsletters, with the same old lame political rhetoric employed by most modern liberals, after being caught saying stupid crap.
Now, let me pre-address a few expected counters to this.
You can’t trust the media! Fair enough, but how else are we to find out what Paul’s history was regarding these newsletters? We have to use what’s available.
He never actually says in the article that he wrote anything! His words are specific enough that he is defending the content. Regardless, his statement that “these aren’t my figures” also provides the implication that the interpretation of the figures are his own.
And now, the big counter I expect: He hasn’t said anything like that in recent years, so it doesn’t matter.
Then why not vote for Mitt Romney? I’ve heard the exact same argument from Romney supporters. Multiple times I’ve been told “he hasn’t changed his positions since 2005“. News flash: when you have to command people to ignore a politician’s history in order to defend duplicitous, reprehensible, or contradictory behavior, your candidate sucks.
Now, that isn’t a huge surprise, given the rest of the 2012 GOP roster. I’m without a candidate that I can support, sadly. From a domestic platform standpoint, Paul is pretty damned attractive as a small-government pro-liberty conservative. However, the main apprehension that I and most other conservatives find with the guy is his attitude towards Israel, and the propensity for attracting the support of groups like 9-11 truthers and white supremacists. Supporters have also argued that a politician can’t control who takes a liking to them, and for the most part, that’s true.
However, when you have newsletters that spew the same garbage that these Emmy Award winners live by, you’re defending them one minute, and pretending they don’t exist the next…how can we trust you?
http://hotair.com/greenroom/archives/2011/12/20/yes-actually-ron-paul-is-responsible-for-those-newsletters/
LA TIMES: Ron Paul’s naive promises.
Ron Paul’s promises are empty. People fail to realize that a lot of the President’s success depends on his support from congress. Ron Paul would have to persuade Congress to carry out his wishes and they just wouldn’t. Look at how they are with Obama! Ron Paul would be no different. In fact, because both sides have various issues with several of his policies, it would most definitely be worse.
“Paul has been in Congress, off and on, for nearly 30 years. In that time, he will rightly tell you, Congress has spent money with reckless abandon, expanded the state’s police powers, launched numerous wars without a declaration of war and further embraced fiat money (he got into politics when Richard Nixon took us fully off the gold standard). During all of that, he took to the floor and delivered passionate speeches in protest convincing … nobody.
Paul’s supporters love to talk about how he was a lone voice of dissent. They never explain why he was alone in his dissent. Why couldn’t he convince even his ideologically sympathetic colleagues? Why is there no Ron Paul caucus?
Now he insists that everyone in Washington will suddenly do what he wants once he’s in the White House. That’s almost painfully naïve. And it’s ironic that the only way the libertarian-pure-constitutionalist in the race could do the things he’s promising is by using powers not in the Constitution.”
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-goldberg-ronpaul-20111220,0,4923395.column
