New Ron Paul Quotes At TNR Are Tame

An unsigned blog posting at The New Republic offers "more selections from Ron Paul's newsletters". At least some of the selections have been released before, and none of them are nearly as bad as those that TNR released earlier. (Eric Dondero inexplicably paints them as worse, after correctly pointing an Economist story as the most perceptive on the scandal in the MSM.) Ignore the quote about "Black Helicopters"; it turns out to have been just a catchy mid-article header, followed by a summary dismissal of the concept. (This is sadly typical of how Paul has coyly flirted with and encouraged the looniest of conspiracy theorists, even as he breathlessly promotes his more pedestrian conspiracy theories.)

The most interesting quote is from Feb 1990, about the man who Paul now says is his "hero":

Boy, it sure burns me to have a national holiday for that communist philanderer, 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.

Paul diehards will point out that ghostwriters try to write as the named author, but insert here the usual point about Paul's shocking ignorance of the references to his family and career that were going out for decades under his name and financing his political career. An interesting exercise for a Paul defender would be to dig up the earliest available quote of Paul praising MLK. If one cannot be found that predates the end of his newsletter's reign of racism, it would somewhat weaken his claim of ignorance. But don't expect anybody at lewrockwell.com to do such digging; they're observing a policy of strict radio silence on the substance of the scandal, and thus deepening suspicions that Rockwell would be implicated if the full story were out.

Stephen Gordon at Third Party Watch makes an impassioned plea for Ron Paul to confront the story head-on, and points to an inside look at self-examination in the Ron Paul campaign.

9am update: Bob Capozzi notes an apparently authentic open letter to Ron Paul from his self-described 1981-1985 chief of staff, and also spots a list of traitors to the Paul cause on which he and Tom Knapp feature prominently.