Rep. Ron Paul is an oddity. He is a libertarian-leaning Republican, who voted against the Iraq War, opposes the Patriot Act and has called for an auditing of the Federal Reserve. He is also in favor of withdrawing from the United Nations and reducing drug sentencing. And although he won the CPAC poll, he has absolutely no chance of winning the Republican nomination in 2012.
Paul has been dogged by accusations of racist comments he made in his newsletter back in the 1980s and 1990s. (His son, Rand, also discovered he had a white supremacist working on his campaign team.) Some of the comments in Paul's newsletter include advising people to buy guns to protect themselves against blacks, accusing blacks of thinking car jacking is hip and saying that inner city blacks are taught to hate whites.
Paul claims that he was the publisher of the newsletter but did not keep track of who was writing for the publication or what they were writing about it. As a journalist, I have learned that if your name is on top of a publication, you bear responsibility for it. Also, CEOs of corporations are held responsible for the products their companies put out.
His excuses in this CNN interview simply do not add up. You don't get to say, "I didn't know" and walk away. And this wasn't one comment, there were several. It seems obvious that this was a smear campaign designed to upset Paul as he was gaining popularity, but it leaves some nagging doubts about Paul's motivations. But the question is where do we, and Ron Paul, go from here? I think Paul's political future lies with a third party, which would only draw away Republican voters.
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