Pauling the Paulites

There has been a fair amount of internet activity today around a New Republic article on Ron Paul. Author James Kirchik has unearthed a fair amount of ugly new material from the Paul archives that is more than a little racist and sexist. Some of this we have seen before, as Paul himself points out. Some not. Whatever is new or isn’t, it is undeniably real. Paul’s rebuttal argument seems to be – it may be bad, but I didn’t write it.

Whoa. The only name on those newsletters is Ron Paul, no matter who wrote the actual articles. We all know that most politicians do not write their own speeches, but we certainly hold them to the contents. Why not Paul? And this creepy stuff went on for over ten years. It’s not like one week slipped by.

It’s hard to imagine how his many acolytes countenance this. Would they allow statements like that to made under their names for year after year? Maybe they agree with stuff like: “I think we can safely assume that 95% of the black males in that city [Washington, D.C.] are semi-criminal or entirely criminal.”

I don’t know, but I would like them to explain. No, scratch that. I think we’ve heard enough from them. I don’t want any more obscene email. Pajamas Media has gotten a ton of it from these fanatics – and most of it while Ron Paul was in our Straw Poll, even though they insisted that he wasn’t, telling us so in so many brain dead four-letter words. (They just port over like lemmings from their websites without bothering to read.)

But Paul shouldn’t be alarmed with these revelations. He has the support of Andrew Sullivan. Perhaps Andrew would also favor Le Pen, who similarly insists he is not a racist. (And, no, Andrew, all those anti-gay slurs were not written by Paul. Somebody tricked him while he was asleep.)