Rep. Ron Paul has broken out of his seemingly permanent less-than-ten-percent in the polls -- to emerge as a contender in next week's Iowa Republican caucuses. This is in no small part thanks to his faith outreach consultants who have sought to help him craft a more decidedly evangelical approach while seeking a bigger share of the Religious Right vote. Along the way, Paul has sought to emphasize the Biblical roots of his public policy ideas.
Paul also owes considerable thanks to national media that have not devoted much serious reporting to his campaign, perhaps because of his standing in the polls, was not taken seriously as a candidate. Meanwhile, in a remarkable election year twist, his libertarian anti-drug war, and old time isolationist foreign policy views have been taken by marijuana reform and anti-war progressives as a reason to crossover and support Paul in Iowa and elsewhere, while down playing or ignoring his unsavory views that are consistent with the depth and breadth of his support from the far right in the U.S.
Election rules vary greatly by state, and in Iowa it happens that the rules allow for non-Republicans to vote in the GOP caucuses in Iowa. Therefore dedicated antiwar activists (including independents, Greens and Democrats) in the absence of a Democratic challenge to Obama, are planning to turn out for Paul. In so doing however, they are aligning themselves with a man who is about much more than the handful of (important) matters where their views converge. Paul is not only seeking to appeal to theocratic evangelicals, but is also the candidate of members of such anti-progressive entities as the neo-Nazi group Stormfront and the John Birch Society.
The New York Times recently detailed the horrendous material published in his name in his newsletters, and today editorialized about the slippery way he has dodged responsibility for the newsletters' content, whether he personally wrote them or not:
Mr. Paul, a Republican congressman from Texas who is doing particularly well in Iowa's precaucus polls, published several newsletters in the '80s and '90s with names like the Ron Paul Survival Report and the Ron Paul Political Report. The newsletters interspersed libertarian political and investment commentary with racial bigotry, anti-Semitism and far-right paranoia.
Among other offensive statements, the newsletters said that 95 percent of Washington's black males were criminals, and they described the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday as "Hate Whitey Day." One 1993 article appeared under a headline lamenting the country's "disappearing white majority." Other articles suggested that the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, was responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, praised the Louisiana racist David Duke and accused some gay men with AIDS of deliberately spreading the disease, "perhaps out of a pathological hatred."
A direct-mail ad for the newsletters from around 1993 warned of a "coming race war in our big cities" and said there was a "federal-homosexual cover-up" to suppress the impact of AIDS.
Mr. Paul, who, beginning in 2008, has disavowed the articles and their ideas, now says that most of them were written by others and that he was unaware of their content. Even if that were the case, it suggests a stupendous level of negligence that should force a reconsideration by anyone considering entrusting him with the White House.
When the newsletters first became an issue during his Congressional campaigns in the 1990s, however, he did not deny writing some of them or knowing about them.
Mr. Paul has never given a full and detailed accounting of who wrote the newsletters and what his role was in overseeing their publication. It's especially important that he do so immediately. Those writings have certainly not been forgotten by white supremacist and militia groups that are promoting his candidacy in Iowa and in New Hampshire.
Meanwhile The National Memo has a report on a John Birch Society video from 1998, promoting The American Sovereignty Restoration Act, which calls for U.S. withdrawal from the UN, and was introduced by Rep. Ron Paul who is featured in the video. He has re-introduced the bill every year since.
The National Memo reports that the video:
... suggests that the United Nations is planning to impose a global dictatorship, leaving the U.S. Constitution "consigned to the ash heap of history," among other conspiratorial warnings.
Alongside ominous footage of burning crosses and a building labeled the "United World Temple," the video's narrator also warns that the U.N. plans to burn all churches that don't submit to the "anti-Christian attitude of the almighty" U.N. government, and incarcerate their pastors.
"If the United Nations has their way, there will be curtailment of our right to practice our religion," Paul says in the video. "They are not going to be believers in the right to practice our religion as we have seen fit throughout this country. And therefore individuals who are interested in this subject certainly cannot be complacent about what the United Nations is doing."
Update [2011-12-28 17:15:51 by Frederick Clarkson]:TPMreports that the Paul campaign is touting the endorsement of a minister who appears to be a Christian Reconstructionist.
Paul’s Iowa chair, Drew Ivers, recently touted the endorsement of Rev. Phillip G. Kayser, a pastor at the Dominion Covenant Church in Nebraska who also draws members from Iowa, putting out a press release praising “the enlightening statements he makes on how Ron Paul’s approach to government is consistent with Christian beliefs.” But Kayser’s views on homosexuality go way beyond the bounds of typical anti-gay evangelical politics and into the violent fringe: he recently authored a paper arguing for criminalizing homosexuality and even advocated imposing the death penalty against offenders based on his reading of Biblical law.
“Difficulty in implementing Biblical law does not make non-Biblical penology just,” he argued. “But as we have seen, while many homosexuals would be executed, the threat of capital punishment can be restorative. Biblical law would recognize as a matter of justice that even if this law could be enforced today, homosexuals could not be prosecuted for something that was done before.”
Reached by phone, Kayser confirmed to TPM that he believed in reinstating Biblical punishments for homosexuals — including the death penalty — even if he didn’t see much hope for it happening anytime soon. While he said he and Paul disagree on gay rights, noting that Paul recently voted for repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, he supported the campaign because he believed Paul’s federalist take on the Constitution would allow states more latitude to implement fundamentalist law. Especially since under Kayser’s own interpretation of the Constitution there is no separation of Church and State.
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