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

While a lot has been made of GOP presidential candidate, Ron Paul’s racist newsletters and connections to racist groups and leaders, it seems as if the media has been ignoring his conspiracy theories.

A video from 1998, put out by the John Birch Society, the group that created the “New World Order” conspiracy theory features Ron Paul warning of a United Nations conspiracy to take away the guns and property of Americans.

The conspiracy theories from Ron Paul’s newsletters also mirror those of the John Birch Society. The John Birch Society, through racist undertones, was successful in bringing its conspiracy theories to white supremacist groups and militia groups, including Timothy McVeigh who was fueled by those theories to murder hundreds of people in the Oklahoma City bombing.

The John Birch Society believes in a conspiracy of a Illuminati group dating back to the French Revolution in which secret communist agents and American capitalists join together for a New World Order which would lead to “the destruction of all traditional religions, private property, morality, marriage, existing governments, and the fomenting of world government, “democracy” (leading to anarchy and then totalitarianism), the deification of sexuality, and the state control of children and their education” according to its president, John McManus.

Among the targets of the John Birch Society’s conspiracy theories is the Federal Reserve and the United Nations, both of which are common targets for Ron Paul.

Ron Paul has continued to court conspiracy theorists, many of whom are his rabid supporters. Paul addressed the John Birch Society on their 50th anniversary in 2009 and had their President, John McManus speak at his 2008 “Rally For The Republic.” Paul is also a frequent guest on New World Order conspiracy theorist, Alex Jones’ talk show.

When asked about the New World Order, Paul responded

The first President Bush said the New World Order was in tune– and that’s what they were working for. The U.N. is part of that government. They’re working right now very significantly towards a North American Union. That’s why there’s a lot of people in Washington right now who don’t care too much about our borders. They have a philosophical belief that national sovereignty is not important. It’s also the reason I’ve made the very strong suggestion the U.S. need not be in the U.N. for national security reasons.

http://newsone.com/nation/casey-gane-mccalla/ron-pauls-new-world-order-conspiracy-theory-video/