Gingrich questions Ron Paul on racist newsletters

If you like Paul's videos on Gingrich, then you should fall in love with this...

American said:

If you like Paul's videos on Gingrich, then you should fall in love with this...

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how the **** do you stand up for freedom when you want to strengthen the patriot act and support ndaa?

haymarket said:

Well if he did, that should only have happened a single time and he should have been sent packing. However, that was not the case.

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Not necessarily, remember, Ron Paul was the 'writer'. Unless he suspected they were editted, he wouldn't have had a reason to read the physical newsletter.

DarkWizard12 said:

Not necessarily, remember, Ron Paul was the 'writer'. Unless he suspected they were editted, he wouldn't have had a reason to read the physical newsletter.

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And in the end, Ron Paul is responsible for the content of those newsletters. Ron Paul owns the content of those newsletters. Ron Paul owns the extremist statements in those newsletters. Ron Paul and those newsletters are one and the same.

haymarket said:

And in the end, Ron Paul is responsible for the content of those newsletters. Ron Paul owns the content of those newsletters. Ron Paul owns the extremist statements in those newsletters. Ron Paul and those newsletters are one and the same.

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This is a big failure on Ron Paul's part in my eyes. I try to be objective or I risk voting for the wrong candidate. What I've actually HEARD Ron Paul say both then and now convinces me he's not racist. But the newsletters indicate his management failed.

What I won't be convinced of is "if he can't manage a newspaper, he can't manage our country" - I'd agree if that's ALL he was doing. But as a Congressman, I'm sure his time was spent in other productive ways. Which simply means he should have ended those newsletters if he wasn't able to manage them as well as he should have. Delegating powers is fine, but get your name out of the print if it's not actually YOU that is writing/editing. Given this was 2 decades ago, I believe that the practical lesson may even be useful as a president. One good thing about age: he's learned the tough lessons already and even survived it!

ElijahGalt said:

I am one of those fervent Paul supporters (I despise the term Branch Paulinians) and I am disappointed in the newsletters. What I honestly believe is that he created them and let the writers edit the pieces. I trust him when he says he was practicing medicine at the time and involved in many other things. It is a huge mistake on his part that will come to hurt his credibility and his chances. However, I still support the man for president and I strongly defend Paul as a supporter of civil liberties, not an enemy to minorities. He's left of many democrats on issues that protect minorities. You can't find a single video clip of Paul making racist, anti-Semitic, or anti-homosexual statements. You would think a racist would do more than just publish racist things over the course of 22 years. Usually, a person of that kind of magnitude would verbalize their hateful sentiments at least once. Yet, no such audio or video of Paul exists.

Ultimately, his convictions are far more important than published pieces from 22 years ago. And for those who support minority rights, just remember that the smallest minority is the individual.

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You actually believe a politician never read his own political newsletter? Then you believe anything. You would have to at least believe minimally he is an incompetent and reckless manager of his own staff. It also is a fact that if his statements about the newsletter are the truth, then he has early stages of dementia (Alzheimers) at age 78 - since he claims he can not remember one person or one staff member's name involved in this campaign and newsletter published for nearly a decade. A person who can not remember 1 person of his staff from nearly a decade of politics is losing his mind.

His excuse of practicing medicine so too busy doesn't work, because he also was taking time to travel about politiking.

At that time he was not a significant politician worth recording nor were video cameras common like now.

His votes and statements in the past confirm those were his perspectives, only he used the refined words politicians use when in the role of politician.

The likely true reality is that you actually do not care if he published and wrote the articles or not.

joko104 said:

You actually believe a politician never read his own political newsletter? Then you believe anything. You would have to at least believe minimally he is an incompetent and reckless manager of his own staff. It also is a fact that if his statements about the newsletter are the truth, then he has early stages of dementia (Alzheimers) at age 78 - since he claims he can not remember one person or one staff member's name involved in this campaign and newsletter published for nearly a decade. A person who can not remember 1 person of his staff from nearly a decade of politics is losing his mind.

His excuse of practicing medicine so too busy doesn't work, because he also was taking time to travel about politiking.

At that time he was not a significant politician worth recording nor were video cameras common like now.

His votes and statements in the past confirm those were his perspectives, only he used the refined words politicians use when in the role of politician.

The likely true reality is that you actually do not care if he published and wrote the articles or not.

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You certainly like to make guesses, don't you? Can't remember everything, oh you have dementia. And I glad to see that you are close enough to Ron Paul that you know what he was doing during the years the newsletter was published. Point being, I see a lot of Ron Paul detractors not providing any proof that he sat down and wrote these letters, or even that he read them and approved them. Give me some proof. I am all for the truth, assuming you can prove it.

Chaddelamancha said:

You certainly like to make guesses, don't you? Can't remember everything, oh you have dementia. And I glad to see that you are close enough to Ron Paul that you know what he was doing during the years the newsletter was published. Point being, I see a lot of Ron Paul detractors not providing any proof that he sat down and wrote these letters, or even that he read them and approved them. Give me some proof. I am all for the truth, assuming you can prove it.

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If you take Ron Paul at his word, then he has to live by those. Thus, his defense is essentially:

"I was duped for nearly 1 decade by a collection of racists I never met or saw that were raising millions of dollars in my name and in my campaign materials that they pocketed themselves writing the most horrifically racist and bigoted materials using the auto-signer that I gave to someone. I must have mailed the auto-signer because I never met the person I gave it to."

"I am the victim! I was way too busy between my medical practice and my traveling around the county making political speeches to have to the time to ever meet anyone on my campaign staff, to know anything about my campaign money, to know who my political treasurer was and my own political materials."

"Plus I lost all my tax returns and political finance campaign reports for that decade - or maybe all those people conning me stole those too."

"You can accuse me of being totally incompetent and reckless about my reputation, my political money, about who I have run my political and monetary affairs and about all my political activities in general, but can't call me a racist. Incompetent reckless idiot yes, but not a racist."

"I suppose I should have contacted the FBI to report the millions of dollars stolen from my campaign by an unknown racist organization - of course I didn't POCKET the money myself! I bought all my gold with MY money, not the missing millions from my campaign treasury! You can be certain of that.

"Oh, and I was too busy then - and to busy now - to be pestered by all this to report millions of campaign dollars stolen from my political treasury to law enforcement. The millions just disappeared, that's all. People should stop bothering me about it. "

"It is absurd and only a conspiracy by the Internationalists to claim that any of that has anything to do with whether I am the best person to be the chief executor, the president, over the management of administrative staffing and over the treasury of the United States. Maybe I can't manage my own staff, politics and finances, but I certainly can manage the largest organization and largest budget on earth. My actually history has nothing to do with my ability."

joko104 said:

If you take Ron Paul at his word, then he has to live by those. Thus, his defense is essentially:

"I was duped for nearly 1 decade by a collection of racists I never met or saw that were raising millions of dollars in my name and in my campaign materials that they pocketed themselves writing the most horrifically racist and bigoted materials using the auto-signer that I gave to someone. I must have mailed the auto-signer because I never met the person I gave it to."

"I am the victim! I was way too busy between my medical practice and my traveling around the county making political speeches to have to the time to ever meet anyone on my campaign staff, to know anything about my campaign money, to know who my political treasurer was and my own political materials."

"Plus I lost all my tax returns and political finance campaign reports for that decade - or maybe all those people conning me stole those too."

"You can accuse me of being totally incompetent and reckless about my reputation, my political money, about who I have run my political and monetary affairs and about all my political activities in general, but can't call me a racist. Incompetent reckless idiot yes, but not a racist."

"I suppose I should have contacted the FBI to report the millions of dollars stolen from my campaign by a racist organization - of course I didn't POCKET the money myself! I bought all my gold with MY money, not the missing millions from my campaign treasury! You can be certain of that.

"Oh, and I was too busy then - and to busy now - to be pestered by all this to report millions of campaign dollars stolen from my political treasury. "

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Still not proof of anything. Show me where there is actual evidence of Ron Pauls involvement. I have no opinion either way on the letters and his involvement, but so far I have not seen any real proof. You put on a great show and wave your hands appropriately, but fail to prove your side. If you truly believe your stance, then good, but I need more.

Chaddelamancha said:

Still not proof of anything. Show me where there is actual evidence of Ron Pauls involvement. I have no opinion either way on the letters and his involvement, but so far I have not seen any real proof. You put on a great show and wave your hands appropriately, but fail to prove your side. If you truly believe your stance, then good, but I need more.

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Newsletters with his name on them speaking in the first person as Ron Paul in edition after edition after edition is not proof for you?!?!?!?!

shame I was turning into a bit of a Ron Paul fan but after reading those newsletters that is no longer the case.

haymarket said:

Newsletters with his name on them speaking in the first person as Ron Paul in edition after edition after edition is not proof for you?!?!?!?!

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Nope. If you want, I can write some first person newsletters with his name on them.

Chaddelamancha said:

Nope. If you want, I can write some first person newsletters with his name on them.

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You could, and you could do it year after year, with his blessing and full knowledge. And if he then came out an denounced everything you'd written, people would rightfully throw the bull**** flag.

AdamT said:

You could, and you could do it year after year, with his blessing and full knowledge. And if he then came out an denounced everything you'd written, people would rightfully throw the bull**** flag.

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I am just looking for proof, so far none has been given. Show me where it was done with his blessing and full knowledge. I am not trying to defend the newsletters or Ron Paul, it's just that I hear all these arguments about "oh he must of known, he is lying." Well, show me.

Chaddelamancha said:

I am just looking for proof, so far none has been given. Show me where it was done with his blessing and full knowledge. I am not trying to defend the newsletters or Ron Paul, it's just that I hear all these arguments about "oh he must of known, he is lying." Well, show me.

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FACT CHECK: Ron Paul Personally Defended Racist Newsletters | ThinkProgress

AdamT said:

FACT CHECK: Ron Paul Personally Defended Racist Newsletters | ThinkProgress

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People change their opinions as they age, so he didn't particulary love black people, again this was his feeling, he was human. He didn't set out to do them .harm. You think Newt, Mitt, and the other well of to do candidates deep down love black people? ofcourse not they are human and are entitled to their personal likes and dislikes, as long as they follow the law and do their duty. If you watched the Republican debate you would see out of all the candidates, he priortizes American Interests the most, takng care of the economy and Americans come first to him. the other candidates had other more urgent priorties, judging from what i saw and heard.:2wave:

24107 said:

People change their opinions as they age, so he didn't particulary love black people, again this was his feeling, he was human. He didn't set out to do them .harm. You think Newt, Mitt, and the other well of to do candidates deep down love black people? ofcourse not they are human and are entitled to their personal likes and dislikes, as long as they follow the law and do their duty. If you watched the Republican debate you would see out of all the candidates, he priortizes American Interests the most, takng care of the economy and Americans come first to him. the other candidates had other more urgent priorties, judging from what i saw and heard.:2wave:

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He isn't claiming that he used to have a problem with black people but he's become more advanced. His claim is that he didn't know about the newsletters, which is obviously a lie.

screw the stupid useless newsletter, if you want to judge someone by his actions and not some words on a paper, then look at infidelity to his signifcant other like newt. now that's worse.

Lots of a-Paul-ogists here. Guess that's to be expected, it is said he has such a loyal following.

But, anyhoo, you folks should back somebody who is remotely viable. Paul is not going to be the candidate. He's about as electable as Herman Cain, if anybody remembers that guy.

haymarket said:

If you want to make those allegations I would expect that they would be accompanied by proof of the said disgruntled employee and a reasonable explanation for his motivations. Absent that, this is mere speculation on your part and a rather weak attempt at defending both Paul and Rockwell. This only proves each and every time you attempt this what I have been saying all day is the libertarian dilemma on this issue.

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Eric Dondero is the one person that has made the allegations about Paul's role in the newsletters that you attributed to "staffers" and his agenda is blatantly obvious. If you were to look at his blog, for instance, you might notice that it is replete with whatever anti-Paul coverage he can find with plenty of fear-mongering about the Mooslems.

Here is something for you to get the full flavor of the man in how he relentlessly goes after whoever disagrees with his Islamophobic foreign policy ideas: http://blogs.ocweekly.com/navelgazing/2011/12/ron_paul_eric_dondero_greenhut.php

joko104 said:

You actually believe a politician never read his own political newsletter? Then you believe anything. You would have to at least believe minimally he is an incompetent and reckless manager of his own staff. It also is a fact that if his statements about the newsletter are the truth, then he has early stages of dementia (Alzheimers) at age 78 - since he claims he can not remember one person or one staff member's name involved in this campaign and newsletter published for nearly a decade. A person who can not remember 1 person of his staff from nearly a decade of politics is losing his mind.

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Nice how, just because he is old, you presume the explanation is Alzheimers. Here I thought the newsletters were so offensive because bigotry is anathema in society.

His excuse of practicing medicine so too busy doesn't work, because he also was taking time to travel about politiking.

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So you are arguing that because he also took time to travel across the country doing speaking engagements while he was running a medical practice that he must have been capable of adding yet even more of an intensive workload on himself. I have no idea how you can think that argument makes sense.

His votes and statements in the past confirm those were his perspectives, only he used the refined words politicians use when in the role of politician.

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No, there is nothing that has been presented in all the time I have looked into this that would "confirm" any such notion. You may feel free to take x vote out of context to push the idea, but that is not the same as actually confirming something.

joko104 said:

If you take Ron Paul at his word, then he has to live by those. Thus, his defense is essentially:

"I was duped for nearly 1 decade by a collection of racists I never met or saw that were raising millions of dollars in my name and in my campaign materials that they pocketed themselves writing the most horrifically racist and bigoted materials using the auto-signer that I gave to someone. I must have mailed the auto-signer because I never met the person I gave it to."

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Nonsense, pretty much all the material we are talking about is minute in relation to the size of the newsletter itself. Any money made off of it would reasonably be due to the more common content as opposed to these isolated bits of material.

"I am the victim! I was way too busy between my medical practice and my traveling around the county making political speeches to have to the time to ever meet anyone on my campaign staff, to know anything about my campaign money, to know who my political treasurer was and my own political materials."

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There was no connection to his campaign, this was a business venture run by someone else.

"I suppose I should have contacted the FBI to report the millions of dollars stolen from my campaign by an unknown racist organization - of course I didn't POCKET the money myself! I bought all my gold with MY money, not the missing millions from my campaign treasury! You can be certain of that.

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More made-up accusations with no basis in reality. No one has suggested the money was stolen, just that he was never getting a substantial cash flow from the venture in the first place. That would probably be because the "millions of dollars" were in pure revenue and got spent mostly on the various expenditures with those most involved in the business seeing the biggest share of whatever profits were made.

24107 said:

People change their opinions as they age, so he didn't particulary love black people, again this was his feeling, he was human. He didn't set out to do them .harm. You think Newt, Mitt, and the other well of to do candidates deep down love black people? ofcourse not they are human and are entitled to their personal likes and dislikes, as long as they follow the law and do their duty. If you watched the Republican debate you would see out of all the candidates, he priortizes American Interests the most, takng care of the economy and Americans come first to him. the other candidates had other more urgent priorties, judging from what i saw and heard.:2wave:

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These accusations of him writing it are garbage. He has never supported racist material. These were ghost-written eight-page newsletters mainly handled by a staff of interns assigned to Lew Rockwell, who himself had many other obligations at the time, with the offending newsletters being from a five-year period when Ron Paul was running a medical practice and traveling across the country doing speaking engagements. Most of the snippets that contain the objectionable comments are not even substantial within any given issue, never mind the fact that this was a monthly newsletter distributed over two decades with all of this material popping up sporadically in the five years I mentioned.

Just so you understand this is all from five out of the twenty years this newsletter was running. The material pops up sporadically in issues over that five-year period. When it does pop up the material is buried in the middle and generally doesn't even take up a substantial amount of the page, let alone the issue as a whole.

No one wants to mention the fifteen years of newsletters that no one has apparently found objectionable along these lines. It also does not seem anyone is interested in the numerous issues during that five-year period that no one has claimed contain such material. Seems no one is even wanting to talk about rest of the articles in the issues where this material does pop up where apparently no one has found more such comments.

AdamT said:

He isn't claiming that he used to have a problem with black people but he's become more advanced. His claim is that he didn't know about the newsletters, which is obviously a lie.

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That would be a lie, if it were what he actually said. He said he did not know about this specific material. Obviously he knew there were some newsletters out there with his name on them. It is the full content of the newsletters he was not privy to at the time.

Yours is a pile of words all trying to write around the obvious. In the time frame of those newsletters, they were the ONLY way a political figure communicated with supporters and solicited funds. That he didn't read them is more than just recklessness as he now claims, it is as believable as if Ron Paul claimed he never looks at his campaign's website now.

Obviously, we can at least agree if he were president he wouldn't have time to read any of the written materials that came across his desk, which certainly would be more than 8 pages every few weeks. Between doing a job and traveling, Ron Paul acknowledges he doesn't have any time to read even 1/4th a page a day. Instead, all matters would be read by people he doesn't know who are authorized to sign his signature.

The contortions Paul supporters go is extreme. And they'll shift. Paul did defend the materials in 1996 more than once to the press, defending those exact sections that he now claims he never saw. I guess he not only forgot who was on his newsletter staff, he also forgot that he read those messages and defended them to the press too.

Just an edit to the above message. I forgot the preface that not all Ron Paul supporters take such extreme views from what I've seen. There are those focused on more single issues such as anti-war, anti-federalism, very economic conservative or otherwise more conventional political perspectives etc.

AdamT said:

FACT CHECK: Ron Paul Personally Defended Racist Newsletters | ThinkProgress

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This is what I was looking for, thanks. From what I gather in the article is that he defended them during his campaign probably because he was told that was the best option. Afterwards, he denied that those words were written by him and now he denounces them completely. Then the article goes on to mention him opposing the medal to Rosa Parks and that it where it loses me. His reason for voting no is because he doesn't believe that the government should pay for the medal, it should come out of the pocket of someone else. And he opposed the property rights portion of the Civil Rights Act, not the desegregation laws, it says so in the article it is linked to. I understand peoples hesitancy to believe Ron Paul when he says he had nothing to do with the newsletters, but to pervert his actions and show them in a racist light (wrongly) is just as naive as those who try to convince you that he didn't know anything about the newsletters. You want to show him as a racist, then show him doing something racist. Pretty simple.

joko104 said:

Yours is a pile of words all trying to write around the obvious. In the time frame of those newsletters, they were the ONLY way a political figure communicated with supporters and solicited funds. That he didn't read them is more than just recklessness as he now claims, it is as believable as if Ron Paul claimed he never looks at his campaign's website now.

Obviously, we can at least agree if he were president he wouldn't have time to read any of the written materials that came across his desk, which certainly would be more than 8 pages every few weeks. Between doing a job and traveling, Ron Paul acknowledges he doesn't have any time to read even 1/4th a page a day. Instead, all matters would be read by people he doesn't know who are authorized to sign his signature.

The contortions Paul supporters go is extreme. And they'll shift. Paul did defend the materials in 1996 more than once to the press, defending those exact sections that he now claims he never saw. I guess he not only forgot who was on his newsletter staff, he also forgot that he read those messages and defended them to the press too.

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It seems like quite a leap to say, if he didn't read every sentence in his newsletters, then he wouldn't read all bills as President. I would wager a guess that most bills are not read by the President in their entirety, they are just simply too long. That is why he has advisors and cabinet members. Not to mention that Congress does a pretty good job of screening them. I think you are mistaken if you believe that all bills get read by the President completely before he signs them.

Chaddelamancha said:

This is what I was looking for, thanks. From what I gather in the article is that he defended them during his campaign probably because he was told that was the best option. Afterwards, he denied that those words were written by him and now he denounces them completely. Then the article goes on to mention him opposing the medal to Rosa Parks and that it where it loses me. His reason for voting no is because he doesn't believe that the government should pay for the medal, it should come out of the pocket of someone else. And he opposed the property rights portion of the Civil Rights Act, not the desegregation laws, it says so in the article it is linked to. I understand peoples hesitancy to believe Ron Paul when he says he had nothing to do with the newsletters, but to pervert his actions and show them in a racist light (wrongly) is just as naive as those who try to convince you that he didn't know anything about the newsletters. You want to show him as a racist, then show him doing something racist. Pretty simple.

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I find the whole Rosa Parks medal thing and his stand on it to be painfully stupid. We spend 100's of billions of dollars a year, but he gets offended at the thought of the government ponying up 30k for a medal. If we made all the cuts Paul wants, we would still be spending 100's of billions of dollars. If you are going to stand on principal, do it when it matters and might make a difference.

The problem with Paul and the newsletters is he is handling things like a typical career politician. Admittedly that is what he is, but that is not how he wants to present himself. There are a total of 2 possibilities. Either he knew and approved of the content, or he did not know nor approve, but did profit from the content. In the first case he should admit mistakes and apologize. In the second case he should admit mistakes and apologize. Saying he did not know does not work for some one who wants to be president. We expect our presidents to know what their subordinates do, and to be responsible for what their administration does. Paul is not showing he would do either.