Take the Cash and Let the Credit Go
I once discovered, on the coffee table of a relative I was visiting, a copy of the Spotlight. A few months later, I was explaining why it pissed me off to a boss. (It was the ebb tide of the dot.com boom. I had a lot of bosses that year.)
“Lots of people have their little prejudices,” I said. “But some people turn them into a hobby.”
Or, worse yet, a vocation.
So let’s talk about the Ron Paul newsletters again. Via Virginia Postrel, I see the famous 2001 Texas Monthly profile by S.C. Gwynne that is probably the earliest available, fragmentary reporting on the problematic bits. The profile is very sympathetic. The passage on Paul’s 1990s success in standing off challengers drew my eye:
As it turned out, Morris [in 1996] had underestimated Paul’s ability both to raise money from his national network of donors and to successfully paint his opponent as a tool of trial lawyers and big labor. Paul raised $1.2 million to Morris’ $472,153. “He has one of the largest contributor bases in Congress, outside of the leadership,” says Ken Bryan, a political consultant who has worked for Democratic state senator Ken Armbrister and for Paul opponents Laughlin and Loy Sneary. According to Paul’s campaign manager, Mark Elam, Paul raises a lot of money in small amounts. “He appeals to people nationwide,” he says. “We have used direct mail and built our own contributors’ list. The vast majority of it comes from individuals, at an average of about forty dollars.” That money enabled him to launch a massive direct-mail campaign in the 14th Congressional District.
In the 1998 election, the Democrats were just as certain that Paul could be beaten. His opponent was Loy Sneary, a rice farmer from Bay City and a former Matagorda County judge. This time even more national party money and union money flowed into the 14th. “The Democrats officially targeted us both times,” says Elam. After all, here was a politician foolish enough to preach against federal farm subsidies in a rural district. And he was now famous as Dr. No, the man who voted against everything.
Again, Paul drew on his vast contributor base, outraising Sneary $2.1 million to $734,000. And again he won, this time by 55 percent to 44 percent—a significant improvement over his 51 to 48 win over Morris. In 2000 Paul raised $2.4 million to Sneary’s $1.1 million and widened his margin yet again, to 60 to 40.
How did Paul develop and maintain a national contributor base? Through the newsletters. (In a brief account of Paul’s contest with Russell Means for the 1988 LP Presidential nomination, Paul’s financial newsletters are one of the most noteworthy things to the author, a Means backer.) That means the various newsletters over the years weren’t trivial pursuits. They were central to Paul’s political success. During Paul’s early, dicey contests for the 14th District seat, the early 90s numbers with the most racist items were fresh, not ancient history, and the donors Paul was drawing on would have included people who liked what they were reading.
One explanation is that Paul published racial bitterness when it was good for business and stopped when it became bad for business. (His business being politics.) A more benign theory comes from Wirkman Virkkala in a Hit & Run comment thread:
And they, themselves, may have repented of some of the overblown rhetoric and flirtations with racism. I’m sure they would rather everyone forget about the biz.
Could be. I hope that’s what they were thinking, actually. But the history of the newsletters certainly suggests why, regardless of Paul’s stated views or current platform, the proprietor of Stormfront would have thought to donate money to Paul’s campaign. He or someone he knew was probably a newsletter subscriber back in the day.
Next (maybe not until tomorrow): “What Ron Paul needs to say (and probably won’t),” as kind of promised below.
See also: McElroy; Cavanaugh; Mark. Also, Dave Weigel provides Megan McArdle with some retrospective ammunition in her and my “protest vote clarity” dispute of the other day:
Paul’s numbers spiked after he ran a simple ad slamming the government for invading Americans’ privacy, but then the campaign moved on to media that stressed his
army[Air Force, I believe - JH] record, his pro-life views, and especially his yen for closing the border. The ads got slicker and slicker, and the numbers didn’t move. The slickest ad, a Tancredoean cry against birthright citizenship and visas for terrorists, was a total flop . . . A volunteer who went by the name of Ball griped that the ads made Paul look like a generic Republican, not a solution-spouting maverick libertarian.
On this report, Paul’s ad campaign could have sharpened his distinction from the other GOP hopefuls – war; privacy – but blurred it. Paul spent a lot of money doing this.
Comment by Mona —
January 9, 2008 @ 11:43 pm
Never have I endorsed Paul, tho my approval for so many of his contemporary positions and the fits he gives the GOP make many surmise that I have. But I have carefully NOT endorsed him.
What I wonder is this: what did Eric Dondero think about those newsletter items before he abandoned Paul over “Islamofascism” and Total War on Muslims?
Comment by Mark —
January 9, 2008 @ 11:45 pm
Thanks for the link! You can change the reference to me to just Mark instead of Publius, though- Publius Endures is just my blog title.
Comment by Leonard —
January 10, 2008 @ 1:10 am
I’m a bit skeptical of the money angle, but it’s worth looking into. How much did Ron Paul make off those newsletters? Recall that at the time he was out of power and not apparently looking to return to Congress, which he only did considerably later.
As for what the newsletters got him in 1988, that was before anything really objectionable was published, no? Kirchick has one quote from 1978 about the Panama Canal Treaty, which is IMO wrong but not offensive. Then the next in 1987 — apparently nothing was interesting to Kirchick in between — called Israel “an aggressive, national socialist state”. Again I am not offended in the slightest, although obviously the intent is incendiary.
In 1989, Paul probably thought he was out of politics completely. That’s when the racially insensitive quotes started.
My guess is that the man who wrote the more inflammatory stuff for Paul (probably North, maybe also Rockwell or some lesser light) was and still is a good friend of his. That, combined with what I guess was Paul’s overall tolerance of racially incendiary language at the time, was why he never did anything about it back then. His statement on the whole issue does not say that he did not know about the incendiary comments at the time, merely that he rejects them and they are not his words.
He’s still shielding the identity of this friend of his. This is, I guess, loyalty, but it must end if Paul is to retain credibility.
Comment by Jean —
January 10, 2008 @ 1:59 am
This is, I guess, loyalty, but it must end if Paul is to retain credibility.
Too late.
Paul’s credibility has gone. He has put his name to some racist shite.
He’s not a credible representative of any political philosophy at this point. Hell, he isn’t even consistent enough to be a racists’ candidate — he said nice things about MLK.
He might get away with only being an incompetent.
But he’ll never be credible.
Comment by Thoreau —
January 10, 2008 @ 2:59 am
I’m starting to think that he’s a better politician than I gave him credit for.
That’s not a compliment.
Comment by sine —
January 10, 2008 @ 3:42 am
At least I get to feel kinda smart since my lingering doubts about the first excerpts stop me from donating. Go me! (And it’s not like his ads did that much to promote liberty anyhow.)
Now that so many old guard libertarians are saying that this stuff was common knowledge, its a bit surprising that we never had scans or transcripts of this stuff until now. How come The Ron Paul Survival Report doesn’t get archived at the Library of Congress?
Comment by TLB —
January 10, 2008 @ 3:43 am
From the article: In 1978, a newsletter blamed David Rockefeller, the Trilateral Commission, and “fascist-oriented, international banking and business interests” for the Panama Canal Treaty, which it called “one of the saddest events in the history of the United States.”
Some links on that here. DR has at least three links to the PCT, and I’m not expert on that so there might be more. The author also puts a happy face on DR-linked groups to a certain degree in the article and to a greater degree in an interview at that link.
Perhaps those who’ve now thrown RP overboard can now feel free to start asking perfectly valid questions about the motivations of the author of the piece. That would seem to be a story all to itself.
Comment by Bill Woolsey —
January 10, 2008 @ 9:28 am
I knew that Ron Paul was close to the paleo-libertarian crowd. I have never liked that group. I have pretty much been a “Cato” libertarian for close to 30 years. I have generally liked “Reason,” and even liked that there were some writers there (over the decades) that I didn’t like much.
Yet, through all that time I have had respect for Ron Paul. It seemed to me that he stood above the ugly invective coming from the paleo-crowd (aimed at Cato, Reason, and the Libertarian Party.) And, of course, he managed to stay in Congress for 20 years with what I still believe is a remarkably strong libertarian record.
I never read Ron Paul’s newsletters. I don’t remember knowing that they existed, but I may have forgotten. Certainly, I had no idea that Paul was supposedly writing racist invectivein the early nineties.
I can assure you, that plenty of libertarians, and probably the vast majority, would have been troubled by the racist invective.
Years ago, Lew Rockwell wrote a defense of the police who beat Rodney King. This created a good bit of debate in libertarian circles. My impression is that most libertarians rejected Rockwell’s views. And, of course, “libertarians” in general were being attacked by Rockwell and the other paleos as being gay or libertine or pot smokers, etc.
And while I knew Ron Paul was close to Rockwell, he didn’t say crazy things about police brutality.
I became aware that the paleo-libertrarian crowd had connections with anti-semites and racists a few years ago. Tom Palmer began attacking these connections. Because Rockwell’s “scandal,” it seemed credible. But I did some research. It was easy. There are people who write things on Rockwell’s website that read libertarian enough. But these writers also write anti-semitic and racist things on other websites.
I thought (and think) it is about the effort to build a strategic alliance with paleo-conservatives. The goal was to recreate the anti-inteventionist “Old Right.”
This strategy was very controversial among libertarians. Many, (and I think most) libertarians wanted nothing to do with it. I think it is obvious that Ron Paul approved the strategy.
Comment by Keifus —
January 10, 2008 @ 9:35 am
Paul’s position on immigration is (evidently, based on his campaign website) central to his platform. I agree that highlighting this non-difference with the other Republican candidates is unwise from an election standpoint, but I don’t think from a voter’s perspective it’s something that should be ignored. His ads, some of which have leaked south from New Hampshire, are actually pretty obnoxious. To the tune of European immigrants good, Mexican immigrants bad.
A couple threads back, y’all were throwing around whether racism (or tolerance for racist thought), was necessarily incompatible with libertarian positions. I think Paul’s immigration policies are one example of how racial suspicions can infect otherwise well-meant goals. His desire to restrict citizenship may come from some Heinlein ideal where membership in the system is earned rather than bestowed by the birth lottery, but repealing the 14th amendment forgets the context of the 14th amendment. We’ve already had a large population of non-citizens floating about the country, and it wasn’t very conducive to liberty. Paul favors strict border control, and careful monitoring of non-citizens in this country. Surely some state apparatus would be needed to enforce that, yes?
Comment by Neel Krishnaswami —
January 10, 2008 @ 10:25 am
Keifus: your last observation is dead on accurate.
The hard right anti-immigration crowd are pretty much uniformly in favor of a national ID connected to an online federal database, because they think it will make it easier to keep businesses from hiring undocumented workers. Note that this proposal is one of the bete noires of many of those same people ten years ago, back when they thought the federal government might oppress them, instead of Mexicans.
Comment by David —
January 10, 2008 @ 2:20 pm
I never saw an ad that said “european immigrants good, mexican immigrants bad”, and I don’t believe that Ron Paul supports that concept.
What we have now is entire community and culture takeover of many areas, complete with spoken language. That is BAD. The problem will come home to roost for your children, who will not have a common culture or even language with the children of the newcomers, who already speak of “taking back” the southwest.
If immigrants from european or asian cultures are relatively good, it is because they do not contribute to this cultural take over, and are inclined to become more a part of the general culture. In other words, it is just too much too fast…illegal and literally anti-american.
Comment by AnotherDavid —
January 10, 2008 @ 2:29 pm
No one’s yet mentioned the significance of this:
A linked article from Virginia Postel’s blog says this about an earlier questioning of Ron Paul about the newsletters:
“In one issue of the Ron Paul Survival Report, which he had published since 1985, he called former U.S. representative Barbara Jordan a “fraud” and a “half-educated victimologist.” In another issue, he cited reports that 85 percent of all black men in Washington, D.C., are arrested at some point: “Given the inefficiencies of what D.C. laughingly calls the ‘criminal justice system,’ I think we can safely assume that 95 percent of the black males in that city are semi-criminal or entirely criminal.” And under the headline “Terrorist Update,” he wrote: “If you have ever been robbed by a black teenaged male, you know how unbelievably fleet-footed they can be.”
In spite of calls from Gary Bledsoe, the president of the Texas State Conference of the NAACP, and other civil rights leaders for an apology for such obvious racial typecasting, Paul stood his ground. He said only that his remarks about Barbara Jordan related to her stands on affirmative action and that his written comments about blacks were in the context of “current events and statistical reports of the time.” He denied any racist intent. What made the statements in the publication even more puzzling was that, in four terms as a U. S. congressman and one presidential race, Paul had never uttered anything remotely like this.
When I ask him why, he pauses for a moment, then says, “I could never say this in the campaign, but those words weren’t really written by me. It wasn’t my language at all. Other people help me with my newsletter as I travel around. I think the one on Barbara Jordan was the saddest thing, because Barbara and I served together and actually she was a delightful lady.” Paul says that item ended up there because “we wanted to do something on affirmative action, and it ended up in the newsletter and became personalized. I never personalize anything.” (my emphasis)
http://www.texasmonthly.com/2001-10-01/feature7-2.php
His first response is to own and defend comments from the newsletters.
His second response is to deny that he said them.
Comment by Leonard —
January 10, 2008 @ 2:43 pm
David, that’s among the things I read that made me think he was (and still is) shielding a friend. It really sounds like he wrote up an outline and gave it to this ghostwriter. The outline idea was his, so he initially owned it, then gave up on that when that reporter challenged that it really didn’t sound like him.
Comment by Geotpf —
January 10, 2008 @ 3:10 pm
Here’s a solicitation for his newsletters:
http://www.tnr.com/downloads/solicitation.pdf
It has his name and signature on it. The phone number to call to order the thing was 1-800-RON-PAUL.
It’s also one of the craziest anti-governmental pieces of gibberish I’ve ever read. Look at the third paragraph from the bottom on page six. In one single paragraph, Paul (or his idiot ghostwriter):
1. Says he was “told not to talk”.
2. Talks about “the coming race war”.
3. Talks about “the federal-homosexual cover up of AIDS” which his “training as physcian helps him” see through.
4. Mentions the whole Skull and Bones conspiracy thing with Kerry and Bush-over a decade before the 2004 election. (Yes, he mentions Kerry, although the Bush he mentions is the current President’s father, which helps date the document as being from circa 1990.)
5. Also mentions the Israeli lobby playing Congress “like a cheap harmonica”, talks about Bohemnian Grove, and the “Soviet-style ’smart card’ that the Justice Department has in mind for you”.
And that’s just one paragraph. There’s eight pages of this crap.
Comment by Keifus —
January 10, 2008 @ 3:14 pm
Hi (first) David, below is the one I remember (glad I found it first try). Note the imagery: Ellis Island vs. swimming the big river. There’s some irony to be found in consciously propping up the early European infusion to scare up votes against the Mexican and terrorist menace.
(And thanks Neel, don’t get used to it.)
video link
Comment by Jim Henley —
January 10, 2008 @ 7:55 pm
@Leonard in 3. I’m not sure we should assume that Paul was “not apparently looking to return to Congress.” When you look at what Ron Paul does as well as what he says, you see a man who has spent an awful lot of his life running for or holding office. He only left the House the first time to run for the Senate. After he lost his Senate bid, he secured the LP nomination for President within 3 years. After ‘88 he appears not to have run for anything, but he may simply have been waiting for a propitious moment (e.g. an open seat in a promising district).
Regardless, the newsletter business appears to have had considerable financial value. Consider:
Paul had employees. He kept them coming out for years on end. One of them was an “investment letter.” In one of the PDFs, there’s an entry that appears to be a deniable invitation to invest in a gold mine.
The thing that struck me last night is, there’s still a lot of real journalism to be done on the issue. What were the economics of the newsletter? Cirulation income? Ad revenue? Costs? To put it indelicately, what the hell were Ron Paul’s qualifications to be publishing an “investment letter” anyway? I can’t escape the suspicion that the newsletters could fairly be labeled, on one level, a scam. If you look at the history of “paleolibertarianism,” as much a political scam as a financial one, but a financial one for sure. But that’s a suspicion. We’d need a thorough reading of all the newsletters, not just the pages cherry-picked by a Giuliani booster. We’d need to know the people involved, how much time they put into the newsletters and how they got compensated, how the donor base related to the subscriber base. (I think we’ve seen some pointers in the comment thread above.)
Comment by Roach —
January 10, 2008 @ 8:11 pm
Lots of mild-mannered, affable people write and think like raging lunatics. Maybe Paul is one of them. Rothbard and Lew were both pretty nice; I met them both. They still sound like nuts from their writing, at least Lew does.
Comment by Eric Dondero —
January 10, 2008 @ 9:34 pm
What Eric Dondero would think:
Now up at http://www.libertarianrepublican.blogspot.com
Comment by Mona —
January 11, 2008 @ 1:06 am
Eric Dondero, do you feel ashamed of your 12-year association with Ron Paul? Were you a “racist” then, too?
Comment by Leonard —
January 11, 2008 @ 2:23 am
Eric: did you know what was in those newsletters at the time? Specifically, did you ever read any of the racially incendiary language that has since popped up? Did you confront Ron Paul with it, and if so, what did he say?
Comment by notme —
January 11, 2008 @ 4:13 am
This whole disgusting connection of the Rockwellians with racists and anti-Semites has been on line since 2005. People just didn’t bother to check. Read Rightwatch@tblog.com and you can see the posts dating back to then trying to warn libertarians that this was happening.
Comment by Eric Dondero —
January 11, 2008 @ 7:43 pm
I am ashamed that I mistakenly posted on this Blog. Will never come back here again. You all are obviously a bunch of liberal slime, who paint anyone who doesn’t agree with your Socialist garbage a “racist.”
Bye.
Comment by Jim Henley —
January 12, 2008 @ 12:01 am
In the context of the sum total of your contribution here, what you are saying is, “Your blog is not worthy of my spamming it with links to my site.” We’ll deal.
Comment by abb1 —
January 12, 2008 @ 2:27 pm
Yeah, seriously, why don’t you become libertarian-socialist slime, folks? You’ll be in good company…
Comment by Mona —
January 12, 2008 @ 8:39 pm
Dondero writes irrational nonsense and this:
So, now that you oppose him — for failing to “oppose Islamofascim” — and you speculate Ron Paul had some responsibility for what is contained in his old newsletters, you simultaneously have have ZERO interest in discussing what said newsletters say about you as his aide of some 12 years during that period, if Paul might be racist. Got it.
Comment by fazsha —
January 13, 2008 @ 3:25 am
Thanks for the link to the Texas Monthly article. I am a former Democrat; not anymore.
Because Ron Paul is a true American hero. I don’t agree with his stance on abortion, but I am going to support him 100%. I would rather change my position than to not fully support this man.