The Real Reason Behind Ron Paul's Infamous Newsletters

I have been investigating Ron Paul on and off for about four years, when he first popped up on my radar. I first heard of Ron Paul in 2008, when I started seeing Ron Paul bumper stickers and he started gaining media attention for his innovative online fundraising stunts.

It was back then when I first heard of his infamous newsletter problem. So it's surprising that the media is dragging this up again. The information has been around for a long time, and Ron Paul even went toe-to-toe with CNN's Wolf Blitzer on this issue in 2008.

According to media reports, Ron Paul's excuse for the racist comments in his newsletter were that he was not paying attention to the content, even though he was listed as the editor. In the past he apologized for the comments, but in recent years, he has denied seeing the comments because he was too busy with his medical practice. However, there are some holes in his story. Firstly, the Ron Paul newsletter was run by various members of his family, so you would think that they would have warned him about potential problems. Also, according to a 2008 article in Reason by Julian Sanchez and Dave Weigel, Ron Paul's newsletters generated almost $1 million. Now I would imagine if you had a million-dollar business venture you would pay close attention to it.

But let's assume that Ron Paul didn't write the articles. We are still left with the fact that his organization put out publications filled with vile comments about black people, Jews and gays. The real question is why? I believe this was done deliberately. According to Reason, Ron Paul staffers Lew Rockwell and Murray Rothbard, made a deliberate attempt to reach out to disaffected Southern whites. These were people who operated on the fringe of the political spectrum and harbored views that were more in line with the neo-Nazi movement.  

The Reason article states, "The most detailed description of the strategy came in an essay Rothbard wrote for the January 1992 Rothbard-Rockwell Report, titled "Right-Wing Populism: A Strategy for the Paleo Movement." ... Rothbard pointed to David Duke and Joseph McCarthy as models for an 'Outreach to the Rednecks,' which would fashion a broad libertarian/paleoconservative coalition by targeting the disaffected working and middle classes. (Duke, a former Klansman, was discussed in strikingly similar terms in a 1990 Ron Paul Political Report.)"  Rockwell also wrote, "Wishing to associate with members of one's own race, nationality, religion, class, sex, or even political party is a natural and normal human impulse."

You could call this the David Duke strategy, after the former Klansmen who decided to undergo plastic surgery and rebrand himself as a Republican. During the 1990s, many white supremacists decided that they could be more effective by blending into the political system. As long as they had shaved heads and were wearing Doc Martens and bomber jackets, they were always outsiders who would be shunned. So they grew out their hair, covered up their tattoos and started wearing khakis and called themselves Conservatives. And they turned up as campaigners for Pat Buchanan and even Sen. John McCain, who had to fire staff member Richard Quinn when it was discovered that he had worked for a pro-Confederate magazine, Southern Partisan.  Derek Black, son of Stormfront founder Don Black, actually won a seat on the executive committee of the Palm Beach Republican party, and was eventually denied the position because of his white nationalist views.

Ron Paul's camp also realized that there was an appetite for material that tapped into the fears of working class white men. In a sense, they weren't any different from shock jocks like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, who have gotten rich doing the same thing. And Ron Paul, who has been running for president for almost 30 years, needed the money. So his organization put out those newsletters and maybe even lead white nationalists to believe they were on the same page.

But now, Ron Paul has gone mainstream being cozy with racists doesn't look so good. Now Paul says he is against the drug war which has sent so many black men to jail and is a fan of Martin Luther King.  At this stage it doesn't even matter if Ron Paul has racist views. Evidently he was willing to pander to white supremacists when he  needed their money, and that's just as bad.