Ground Game

The New Hampshire primary is the biggest story in politics today, but the biggest story in the blogosphere is regarding newsletters from the past three decades attributed to Ron Paul that contain homophobic and racist sentiments.

The New Republic’s Jamie Kirchick, who wrote today's story, has been investigating Paul for months now, earlier unearthing a campaign contribution from a Nazi sympathizer that Paul’s campaign refused to return. Kirchick traveled to Kansas where he was able to track down the newsletters in question and has even posted some of them on TNR's website.

Paul granted a quick interview to Reason’s David Weigel today that was evasive at best. When Paul can't give definitive answers to Weigel and Reason, who have basically been supporters of his campaign, that's not a good sign.

The Texas Congressman described the newsletters to Weigel as “old news,” and his campaign spokesperson has said that Paul did not author many of the offensive pieces himself. But as several bloggers have already pointed out, the offensive statements are not an isolated incident. There isn’t absolute evidence that Paul himself is racist and/or homophobic, but there is now a growing trail of evidence that he has, at least, turned a blind eye to those elements in his circles.

Conservative Ann Althouse says she knew all along:

The things Ron Paul has been saying made me suspect that his libertarianism was a cover for racism.

The Weekly Standard’s Michael Goldfarb mentions the racist campaign contributor:

Kirchick and others attacked Paul a few months back over his failure to return a $500 check from a prominent white supremacist. At the time, Paul had explained that he couldn't possibly screen ever donor. Of course he couldn't, but the media had screened this one for him, and he refused to give back the money anyway. Now we know why. He's been speaking in code to the dregs of American society this whole time. And he had no intention of alienating his base of support.

And Roger L. Simon says you can only excuse so many individual incidents before a pattern is formed:

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.