Ron Paul's Discredited Campaign

The New York Times has jumped on the band wagon with others who are slamming Ron Paul for his racist and bigoted newsletters. I continue to be amazed how candidates for high office - and Republicans seem the most inclined to do this - run for office when there's all kinds skeletons and baggage just waiting to come tumbling out of the closet and other dark recesses. WTF are they thinking. In Paul's case, did he truly believe that this slimy crap wouldn't get dragged out into view? If he indeed believed that this poison would not surface, then he's too stupid to ever be president. Here are highlights from the Times' editorial:

Ron Paul long ago disqualified himself for the presidency by peddling claptrap proposals like abolishing the Federal Reserve, returning to the gold standard, cutting a third of the federal budget and all foreign aid and opposing the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Now, making things worse, he has failed to convincingly repudiate racist remarks that were published under his name for years — or the enthusiastic support he is getting from racist groups.

Among other offensive statements, the newsletters said that 95 percent of Washington’s black males were criminals, and they described the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday as “Hate Whitey Day.” One 1993 article appeared under a headline lamenting the country’s “disappearing white majority.” Other articles suggested that the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, was responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, praised the Louisiana racist David Duke and accused some gay men with AIDS of deliberately spreading the disease, “perhaps out of a pathological hatred.”

A direct-mail ad for the newsletters from around 1993 warned of a “coming race war in our big cities” and said there was a “federal-homosexual cover-up” to suppress the impact of AIDS.

Mr. Paul has never given a full and detailed accounting of who wrote the newsletters and what his role was in overseeing their publication. It’s especially important that he do so immediately. Those writings have certainly not been forgotten by white supremacist and militia groups that are promoting his candidacy in Iowa and in New Hampshire.

The Times reported on Sunday that dozens of members of the white nationalist Web site Stormfront are volunteering for the Paul campaign, along with far-right militias, survivalists and anti-Zionist groups.

As vile as the newsletters might be, what's even more distressing is that the views they expressed are now pretty much mainstream among the Christianist/Tea Party base of the GOP.