Why Ron Paul is Wrong

As much as it pains me to do this (ok, maybe it doesn't) it is that time of the election cycle once again. It seems that every four years, Ron Paul shows up at a debate and says some things that are so good on domestic issues that some Republicans forget the insanity of his foreign policy and they start getting excited about his candidacy. Perhaps you are one of those people. If not, you may know one. If you are not one and you don't know one, you can usually find one on an internet forum board typing in all caps with horrible spelling. If you recognize any of these traits in yourself, or someone you know, please read this and share it with the others. Ron Paul will never be President of the United States, and his candidacy is a complete non-starter to most Republicans because Ron Paul is a bigot. Now I know, that is strong language. And perhaps you don't want it to be true so badly that you will convince yourself it is not. That is fine too, because you will see here that I can make such a convincing case that it doesn't matter if it is true or not. He can never win.

Now, if you are a racist or a homophobe, then I am not talking to you here. To the rest of us, would you not blush if you were eating dinner with a friend and they said the following?

If you have ever been robbed by a black teen-aged male, you know how unbelievably fleet-footed they can be.

Now, perhaps if you knew the person and you knew them to not be racist, you would take it as an attempt at humor that was in bad taste. So if I told you that Ron Paul said this over a beer with a buddy, then it probably wouldn't be the end of his political world. The problem is, that is only one in a string of racist quotes from a newsletter that was put out by Ron Paul over the years. He, of course, claimed that the quotes were taken out of context. If you are a Ron Paul supporter, could you kindly put these quotes in a context where they would be acceptable?

Opinion polls consistently show only about 5% of blacks have sensible political opinions,

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Barbara Jordan is “the archetypical half-educated victimologist” whose “race and sex protect her from criticism.

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Boy, it sure burns me to have a national holiday for Martin Luther King. I voted against this outrage time and time again as a Congressman. What an infamy that Ronald Reagan approved it! We can thank him for our annual Hate Whitey Day.

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"Homosexuals, not to speak of the rest of society, were far better off when social pressure forced them to hide their activities.

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Even in my little town of Lake Jackson, Texas, I've urged everyone in my family to know how to use a gun in self defense. For the animals are coming.

If you are a Paul supporter who is trying to defend them or looking for the right context, stop. Ron Paul gave up on that a while ago. That is why he changed his story to "he did not author the challenged passages, he bore 'some moral responsibility' for their publication". Apparently, Ron now wants us to believe that he bears no moral responsibility for the comments printed in his newsletter. Here is what he told CNN.

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Now, Ron clearly distances himself from these comments here, but why would he not distance himself from the white supremacists that helped fund his campaign? One thing is clear. You as an individual may be able to get past these comments and questionable backers, but we as a party cannot. If we chose Ron Paul to be the standard bearer for our party, are we any better than the Democrats who had the founder and "Exalted Cyclops" of a chapter of the Ku Klux Klan as their Majority and Minority Leader in the U.S. Senate until 1997, and allowed him to serve in the Senate under their name until 2010? They thought they could bury Senator Byrd's past as well, but in 2001 his true colors shown through again when he dropped the "n" word twice in a television interview.The Republican party is already viewed as racist by some members of minority groups. Turning the reins over to a man with either blatantly racist views, or horribly flawed judgement is a chance we cannot take.

Sources:

Wikipedia

New Republic