Racist Ron's Excuse Is Pathetic

clipped from youtube.com

Even for 24-hour-news-cycle outlets like CNN, a 10 minute, 36 second story is exceptionally long, but that's what CNN gave to this report on Ron Paul's racist newsletters, as originally reported in The New Republic's piece Angry White Man.

On the clip, Paul says:

Yeah, it is [shocking], and of course it's been rehashed a long time and it's coming up now for political reasons, but everyone knows in my district that I didn't write them and I don't speak like that.

Staffers have reaffirmed this, saying Paul did not write the pieces.

It doesn't take having a career in messaging, as I do, to realize that the professional term for this is "poppycock." Paul's newsletters carried his message to constituents, fundraisers, contributors and hangers-on for over a decade. Paul's office produced them, his name was on top, and it presented his views, sometimes in a very personal way, like this 1992 piece, which says of carjacking:

I frankly don't know what to make of such advice [about how to prevent carjacking], but 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 [black, hip-hop youth, from an earlier reference] are coming.

I all for firearms for self-defense, but any fool can see that this is written in the first person and includes references to Paul's town and Paul's family. If it's not written by him, it was written by a ghostwriter close to him to appear to be by him.

When I'm writing for a client, I personalize it in similar ways so it sincerely reflects the client; not only his views, but his life. Whoever wrote this, and Ron says utterly unconvincingly that he doesn't know who did, knew Paul and was comfortable writing in his place.

The writing absolutely reflects Paul's views; that's how ghost-writing works. Similar stuff is sprinkled through ten years of Paul's newsletters, and it's inconceivable that he never reviewed a word of it, and never demanded a rewrite. It's also inconceivable that a small-time congressman with a shoestring staff of fellow travelers doesn't know who wrote the piece.

So we're left with only two possible conclusions:

1. Ron Paul is a lying racist, or
2. Ron Paul doesn't know how to manage a staff.

Either option does not a good president make.