Exclusive: Ron Paul Responds To New Republic Story
David Weigel | January 8, 2008, 3:46pm
About an hour ago I followed Ron Paul outside the Radisson in Manchester, NH to get his response to James Kirchick's explosive New Republic piece, "Angry White Man." The article goes through the Texas Republican's newsletters from the 1970s through the 1990s, and finds dozens of offensive comments about gays, blacks, and other targets.
I was told by Paul's staff it was old news and he didn't want to talk about it, but I asked the candidate a few questions as he moved to his car.
Here's a transcript:
reason: Do you have any response to The New Republic's article about your newsletters?
Ron Paul: All it is--it's old stuff. It's all been rehashed. It's all political stuff.
reason: Why don't you release all the old letters?
Paul: I don't even have copies of them, because it's ancient history.
reason: Do you stand by what appears in the letters? Did you write these...?
Paul: No. I've discussed all of that in the past. It's just old news.
reason: Did the New Republic talk to you before they ran it?
Paul: No, I never talked to them.
reason: What do you think of Martin Luther King?
Paul: Martin Luther King is one of my heroes because he believed in nonviolence and that's a libertarian principle. Rosa Parks is the same way. Gandhi, I admire. Because they're willing to take on the government, they were willing to take on bad laws. So I believe in civil disobedience if you understand the consequences. Martin Luther King was a great person because he did that and he changed America for the better because of that.
reason: You didn't write the derogatory things about him in the letter?
Paul: No.
Paul's position is basically that he wrote the newsletters he stands by and someone else wrote the stuff he has disowned.
Matt Welch blogged an MSNBC appearance by Kirchick yesterday.
reason on Ron Paul here.
4truth1 | January 8, 2008, 4:10pm | #
You are being lied and manipulated by the media. They want war. They are agents of death and are lying about Ron Paul, because he threatens them.
RON PAUL'S OWN WORDS:
Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H. Res. 58. I saw Muhammad Ali as a man of great courage, and I admired him for this, not because of the courage that it took to get in a ring and fight men bigger than he, but because of his stance in 1967.
In 1967, he was 25 years old. He was the heavyweight champion of the world, and for religious beliefs, he practiced what Martin Luther King made popular, civil disobedience, because he disagreed with the war. I thought his comments were rather astute at the time and were not complex, but he merely said, I have no quarrel with the Viet-Cong. He said the Viet-Cong never called him a name, and because of his religious convictions, he said he did not want to serve in the military. He stood firm, a man of principle, and I really admired this as a quality.
He is known, of course, for his athletic skills and his humanitarian concerns, and these are rightly mentioned in a resolution like this. But I do want to emphasize this because, to me, it was so important and had such impact, in reality, what Muhammad Ali did eventually led to getting rid of the draft, and yet we as a people and we as a Congress still do not have the conviction that Muhammad Ali had, because we still have the selective service; we say, let us not draft now, but when the conditions are right, we will bring back the draft and bring back those same problems that we had in the 1960s.
I see what Muhammad Ali did as being very great. He deserves this recognition, but we should also praise him for being a man of principle and willing to give up his title for 3 years at the age of 25 at the prime of his career. How many of us give up something to stand on principle? He was a man of principle. He believed it and he stood firm, so even those who may disagree with his position may say at least he stood up for what he believed in. He suffereconsequences and fortunately was eventually vindicated.
Michael Cathcart | January 8, 2008, 4:13pm | #
The campaign should have responded within minutes of Kircheks remarks on Tucker yesterday. I realize this is all old news and has been dealt with in the past, but that wont satisfy some. It is a political smear tactic on Kirchek's part, he needs his guy Giuliani, to beat Ron Paul today. That is the reason for drudging this back up. The New Republic is a disgisting leftwing/pro-war rag, which once referred to Ross Perot as a Hitler lover.
The new York Times attempting this kind of smear, and they were forced to retract their statements.
Kirchek admitted on Tucker that he has never seen or heard ron paul use anykind of racist statements in any kind of public speech or talk. Instead he insinuated that Paul uses codewords, never mentioned what those codewords were, but I have a feeling that the primary code word he is reffering to is "states rights." That left wing rag, hates states rights.
If anyone buys into this crap, especially being released the day of an important primary, and taking into account the background of the magazine (i.e. Stephen Glass, Pro-war agend) and taking into account the political leanings of Kirchek (a huge Giulini supporter, major neo-con, pro-war) and lastly take this email response into account from Kirchek: you can see it yourself at:
http://gays-for-ron.blogspot.com/2008/01/jamie-kirchick-i-dont-think-ron-paul-is.html
Hi Berin,
Thanks for writing; and I’m glad you enjoyed by [sic] piece in the Boston Globe. I’ll try and make the [DC Log Cabin Republicans] party tonight, though [LCR President] Patrick Sammon isn’t particularly happy with me after I wrote this piece [attacking LCR for not endorsing Giuliani, whom Kirchick calls "the most pro-gay Republican White House contender in history"]
http://www.advocate.com/exclusive_detail_ektid50709.asp
Anyways, I don’t think Ron Paul is a homophobe; I’m just cynical and enjoy getting supporters of political candidates riled up. If you were a Giuliani guy I’d have called him a fascist. But I must say, the Ron Paul supporters are the most enthusiastic of the bunch! [Emphasis added.]
Best,
Jamie
DenisL | January 8, 2008, 4:17pm | #
This is a repost from someone else with more detail on the smear.
Quote:" These were written by an outside writer and it was discussed many years ago in a Texas Monthly interview with Ron Paul.
Excerpt from the Texas Monthly interview
“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.”
His reasons for keeping this a secret are harder to understand: “They were never my words, but I had some moral responsibility for them . . . I actually really wanted to try to explain that it doesn’t come from me directly, but they campaign aides said that’s too confusing. ‘It appeared in your letter and your name was on that letter and therefore you have to live with it.’” It is a measure of his stubbornness, determination, and ultimately his contrarian nature that, until this surprising volte-face in our interview, he had never shared this secret. It seems, in retrospect, that it would have been far, far easier to have told the truth at the time.”
Since I believe in Ron Paul from watching him for 30 years, it is clear to me that he is protecting someone that is close to him. It must have been someone very close for him not to release the name. I can only surmise that he is protecting someone that he does not want to hurt. You and I can only speculate on why that might be. I can come up with several good reasons for him to do this. In any case he has repudiated the columns and outside of the weird non-Ron Paul writing style, there is nothing else of substance to this rehashed smear campaign from the neocons.
Li | January 8, 2008, 4:20pm | #
No way I'm jumping on the "Ron Paul is a racist" bandwagon just because of this pieces, written by a very questionable person with questionable motives published by a web site I have trouble with.
I've seen about as many of Paul's speeches and writings as one can reasonably absorb over the past few months, and never have I seen any of the venom displayed in that article. I've already heard the allegations, and how they were handled during his Congressional race.
Based on his voting record, and his speeches, Paul doesn't support any kind of black agenda, or white agenda, or latino agenda, and as a minority (latino) I'm completely fine with that. We each need to be judged for our own merits, whether applying for a job, getting graded on collage papers, or whatever. Some of the things in that article were completely fine, some appear like there are plenty of reasonable contexts, and some clearly are horrible.
Paul already talked about the embarrassment of having staffer(s) who used his name to publish things he greatly disagrees with. Of course his political enemies were going to raise these issues again in a Presidential race, but it was done in a very questionable manner.
For now, Paul continues to have my complete support, based on the platform he is running on, his message, and his history. He has sufficiently responded to these allegations in the past, and based on all I know about him and heard from him, I completely believe him.
4truth1 | January 8, 2008, 4:26pm | #
You are being lied and manipulated by the media. They want war. They are agents of death and are lying about Ron Paul, because he threatens them.
Do you want to die in war? Do you want you family to die in war? DO NOT BELIEVE THE LIES OF THE WARMONGERS.
RON PAUL'S OWN WORDS:
Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H. Res. 58. I saw Muhammad Ali as a man of great courage, and I admired him for this, not because of the courage that it took to get in a ring and fight men bigger than he, but because of his stance in 1967.
In 1967, he was 25 years old. He was the heavyweight champion of the world, and for religious beliefs, he practiced what Martin Luther King made popular, civil disobedience, because he disagreed with the war. I thought his comments were rather astute at the time and were not complex, but he merely said, I have no quarrel with the Viet-Cong. He said the Viet-Cong never called him a name, and because of his religious convictions, he said he did not want to serve in the military. He stood firm, a man of principle, and I really admired this as a quality.
He is known, of course, for his athletic skills and his humanitarian concerns, and these are rightly mentioned in a resolution like this. But I do want to emphasize this because, to me, it was so important and had such impact, in reality, what Muhammad Ali did eventually led to getting rid of the draft, and yet we as a people and we as a Congress still do not have the conviction that Muhammad Ali had, because we still have the selective service; we say, let us not draft now, but when the conditions are right, we will bring back the draft and bring back those same problems that we had in the 1960s.
I see what Muhammad Ali did as being very great. He deserves this recognition, but we should also praise him for being a man of principle and willing to give up his title for 3 years at the age of 25 at the prime of his career. How many of us give up something to stand on principle? He was a man of principle. He believed it and he stood firm, so even those who may disagree with his position may say at least he stood up for what he believed in. He suffereconsequences and fortunately was eventually vindicated.
