A Question Rand Paul Refuses to Answer About Dad

Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) turned his back to me. Why? Because I asked a question he really didn’t want to answer.

On Saturday night, during the first of the back-to-back New Hampshire debates, ABC News moderator George Stephanopoulos asked Rep. Ron Paul, who’d been running second in the New Hampshire polls before the first GOP presidential primary, about racist remarks that appeared in his newsletters during the 1980s and 1990s: “Can you…explain to everybody what happened there, how it was possible that those kind of comments went out under your name without you knowing about it?”

Paul said he did not write those passages, but he declined to explain how such swill had ended up in a newsletter bearing his name. He dismissed the 20-plus-year-old matter as “diverting the attention from most of the important issues.” But then he jumped back in time himself, saying, “You ought to ask me what my relationship is for racial relationships. And one of my heroes is Martin Luther King [Jr.] because he practiced the libertarian principle of peaceful resistance and peaceful civil disobedience.”

After the debate, I found Rand Paul in the Spin Room, where representatives of the candidates had gathered to explain to the gaggle of reporters why their particular man had won the debate and was now firmly on the path to victory. I asked him if he could point to any specific times in his life—as a child or young adult—when his father had expressed admiration for King. He replied:

Through the years, I’ve not only heard him say that, but that he has admiration for Gandhi. He has admiration for people who have led mass and nonviolent protests against government unjustness. There’s one quote I can remember him using, saying that ‘any unjust law is a law a majority passes upon a minority but doesn’t make binding on themselves.’ And that was the whole nature of segregation in the South… That’s something that’s been consistent through his career.

That was not so specific, but Rand Paul did at least note that his pop could cite MLK. (The real quote: “An unjust law is a code that a majority inflicts on a minority that is not binding on itself.”)

Next, I asked, “Then can you explain why in the newsletter that came out under his name, they called Martin Luther King a communist and a philanderer?”

“Yeah,” he replied, “he didn’t write that.”

“But how did that come to be?” I inquired.

This was when Rand Paul turned his back to me—and said, “Anybody else?”

“You’re turning your back on me,” I remarked. “Can you just explain? Is he responsible for that?”

“Anybody else?”

“You’re not going to answer that question?”

Another reporter jumped in: ”Did you ever read the newsletters when you were growing up?”

“Anybody got any current events?” Paul said. “Are there a couple more current events? Then I got to go.”

His back was still toward me. I moved off to listen to pointless spin from others.

Though Sen. Paul had not displayed the best manners, I decided to give him another chance. After the second New Hampshire debate on Sunday morning, I saw him entering the Spin Room and trailed him to his designated spot. I first asked how he thought his father had done this morning. “He did great,” he said. Then I returned to the previous evening’s topic:

“Last night I asked you a question and you turned your back on me.”

“I’ll probably do the same.”

“Your father last night brought up the issue of Martin Luther King… He talked about history. Why won’t you talk about hte newsletter and say how—”

“If you want to talk about current events.”

“Your father talks about history all the time. Why can’t you talk about this newsletter.”

“Anybody else? Anybody else?”

“Why can’t you talk about who wrote this?”

“Asked and answered yesterday.”

“But you didn’t answer it. That’s the thing. Why can’t you answer this?”

Another reporter then interrupted: “What do you think of Romney?” Paul happily fielded that query: ”I think he did very well in the debate… I think he presents himself very well. He shows great leadership.”

Ron and Rand Paul truly do not want to talk about those newsletters. Is it conceivable that Ron Paul doesn’t know who wrote the garbage that appeared under his imprimatur—and helped him make money? Not really. This is a cover-up. They are stonewalling. And it appears the Pauls will do almost anything to avoid explaining the origins of these and other racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic, and conspiratorial claims.

http://motherjones.com/politics/2012/01/ron-paul-rand-racist-newsletter-debate-king

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

ARTICLE: Why Ron Paul Cannot Win.

This is a serious letter to the many Paul bots that scour this blog, looking for a glimmer of hope that anti-war or anti-drug law leftists can be converted into the fold. I admire your devotion to your candidate, although, at the same time you have already labeled me an Obama-bot, a proud mindless drone beholden to the Republicrats in your mind. Well, think what you will, but I can give you a run down of why it is that Ron Paul will not win the GOP primary, and even if by some miracle he did, would never beat Obama in an election. It’s not possible.

Your first hurdle is to get past other Republicans. Seriously. This has always been your main struggle. Your alliance with theocrats and fascists has always been a tenuous one, I know. Rachel Maddow pointed out just how looked down upon Ron Paul is on FOX News, which is the mouthpiece of the Republican establishment. Yes, it is disgusting how it is that he is treated for his views. I would like you to notice, however, that liberals usually are the ones pointing this out and have him on their shows, ala the Jay Leno, etc. We can’t be trying to suck you into our Orwellian big government and at the same time host you on our shows and let you speak your piece. To Republicans, Ron Paul is essentially mistrusted as not having the proper bona fides to keep gays from living happy lives, exterminating Muslims, defending Israel until the Sky God returns, and making sure that drugs are only used by rich people while the poor are converted into money for the privatized prison system. Yes, I heart his stance on foreign policy and his stance on the war on drugs makes me giddy (see the intellectual honesty?) , but I do find everything else unworkable and shocking. The thing is though, you don’t have to convince me of anything, you have to convince the theocrats and the fascists, and they are having none of you.

See, I knew the Tea Party thing was a complete hoax from the beginning in terms of their being “real conservatives.” You are absolutely correct when you say Paul is a consistent far right candidate truly evocative of what conservatism is in its purest form. This is why the teabaggers will never go for you. Your ability to ignore crazy when it is not directly linked to the government is astounding. Maybe Republican style hypocrisy has to be laid bare for you to finally understand it, but these people do not really care about the deficit, nor do they care about the country. Well, they do care about their country, because in their minds, the country is only made up of people they agree with, who are in the “in” group in terms of religion, ethnicity, and adherence to their world view. Michele Bachmann is their hero, not Paul. The man who heckled Elizabeth Warren, saying that the Tea Party was originally against Wall Street, is more indicative of the dissonance you have to contend with. The Tea Party has not stopped home foreclosures, they have not called on anyone on Wall Street to be prosecuted, and their solution is to just continue letting banksters do more of what they did to get us in this mess. I mean, if you needed a starker demonstration of the intellectual dishonesty of your would-be allies, the head of Teabagger Nation went on Martin Bashir’s show and thought Newt Gingrich was great; a Washington outsider who was an historian for Fannie and Freddie and a true conservative. Tea Party thumbs up!

W T F

So, I do not see how you go into New Hampshire and sell Paul. Yeah, he won some straw poll for young republicans; no surprises there. But those things are not indicative of anyone’s future performance and Romney out-polls him by a crushing margin. And frankly, I have no clue how you are going to sell him to the theocratic fascists in South Carolina. Sure, they get off hearing about ending Social Security, but if they do not see Ron Paul in Israel genuflecting before Netanyahu, then they are not going to be satisfied. Pat Robertson is going to dig through old videos and remind people that not banning gay people on a federal level is bad. By the way, his comments on Jay Leno were spot on, but they pissed people off (although they made me smile!). Not that Michele Bachmann has a lot of supporters, but essentially he was declaring himself sane, which doesn’t go over well with Republican primary voters. I really commend you for trying to customize his campaign for the Iowans by reminding them that Paul loves babies, Jesus, and will allow them to live free from Negros. It really shows your dedication and love of your candidate, but sadly, even if he wins there it is not going to translate to people who are more hardcore than the state where they hate government, but stuff their faces with farm subsidies.

Now, I know you say he transcends people’s ideologies, backgrounds, and he is an ideas candidate. That really is all very refreshing and I am sure there are people on your forums that help you think this way. I’m sure there are disaffected Obama voters and super anti war progressives who have joined your ranks for a tentative alliance, and who most likely do not care all that much about social programs or have yet to hear him talk at length about people carrying gold ingots to the marketplace in wheelbarrows. But know this: they are not like you. If Ron Paul is not up, they are not going to stay home and protest voting for a RINO, they will go for Obama as the candidate of last resort, so I wouldn’t trust too much in these people allying with you. Heck, I was one of you until I heard Paul thought Medicare was unconstitutional despite the fact it was deemed constitutional.

Now, let’s say that you really work it, you really undo the effect of FOX News in South Carolina and Florida. I say this because FOX is really your enemy; the actual liberal people on MSNBC will actually talk about him once they see that he is doing well in the polls and not in a necessarily dismissive tone. Let’s say Paul gets the Republican nomination by sweeping aside Karl Rove, the Bushes, most of the Super Christian organizations who want gay people carted away to reeducation facilities, and stands toe to toe with Obama. I’m sorry, but now you’ve got an even harder fight on your hands. The Republicans will probably revolt, and the Tea Baggers, fearing that a decisive blow to the non-Whites will not be given by Paul, will prolly run a third party candidate. Then, you have to pretty much defend ending Medicare, Social Security, no student loans, and not putting regulations on Wall Street banksters to the general public. Killing Medicare does not go well. It did not go well for Paul Ryan and it will not go well for you. Your strategy would then be to hand wave over those things, and talk about the wars. Well, Obama ended one of them, and while being patient on waiting for the economy is a hard sell for him, it is a much easier sell to say “Look, I ended one war, and I’m doing it responsibly just as I promised on the campaign trail.” Centrists will lean with the person that doesn’t radicalize things out of a sense of feeling responsible, and then Paul gets his ass handed to him on election day. Oh, and by the way, switching to a gold standard would send the economy into a tailspin, as Paul himself has said, so that’s not really on the agenda at all.

You constantly deride others, especially Obama supporters, for being enthralled with a candidate like a gaggle of wild animals, incapable of rational, dispassionate thought and instead running towards our world leaders like rock stars who will bring the cargo. Well, I hate to say this, but you do the exact same thing. You are just as rabid, just as fanatical, just as willing to believe that one man will change the course of history and sweep aside all of the darkness plaguing you. You envision him being assassinated for going up against the Fed or the industrial military complex, or that he is the candidate that will bring peace where Obama only brings war. I hate to break this to you, but a lot of people in this country aren’t actually against war per se, they just don’t like being lied to. I’m young as well, so I know why it is you feel so inspired and are willing to really work so hard to get him in, and you really believe that he is the “only one” talking about X, Y, and Z. Well, this is where the idealism train has to end. Whether you think it is logical or not, whether or not you think that Americans will wake up and suddenly become rational automatons or have a mass conversion to your political religion, you are dealing with Americans as they are.