By Hao Li: Subscribe to Hao's RSS feed
December 19, 2011 3:21 PM EST
Ron Paul is the saint of the 2012 presidential race.
He is not corrupted by money, has been married to the same wife since 1957 and by all accounts raised his five children (including Rand Paul) to be upstanding citizens.
He is consistent in his political stance and even backs them up with personal actions; he refuses to participate in the Congressional pension program, did not take Medicaid and Medicare money as a doctor and encouraged his children to refuse government-backed student loans.
In one of his earliest known displays of virtue, Paul turned down a full athletic scholarship with Penn State because he "was not confident [he] could meet the standards of honoring that scholarship."
He is a boy scout compared to the likes of Newt Gingrich, who took over $1.6 million from Freddie Mac, cheated on and then divorced two wives (he is now on his third wife) and had to pay $300,000 to settle ethics charges relating to taxes as the Speaker of the House in 1997. A think tank he founded also received millions from the health care industry.
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The one thing critics "have" on Paul, though, is a series of racist newsletters published a few decades ago under his name.
Among other things, the newsletters contained racist language against Martin Luther King and blacks in general.
As Paul's campaign gains traction, this scandal is almost sure to resurface again as it did in 1996 and in 2008. In fact, it already has.
New York Magazine put out an article a few days ago that declared Paul "a really creepy bigot."
The article stated that Paul has drawn the admiration of social liberals despite being a "bigot" because "nobody is attacking him."
"Paul is (correctly) considered to have no chance to actually win the GOP nomination, so debate moderators have not bothered to research his past, instead tossing off generalized questions that allow him to portray himself on his preferred terms," stated the article.
Separately, a Mother Jones article portrayed Paul's association with the newsletters in a negative light and concluded with the dismissive remark that "none of his presidential opponents...have raised the newsletters as an issue [because] they simply don't take him seriously."
Since this issue was first brought to national attention during Paul's 2008 campaign, Paul and his staff have repeatedly stated that Paul did not author those newsletters. Instead, it was ghostwriters who wrote them. When asked about the identities of the ghostwriters, Paul claims complete ignorance.
However, this was not always the story Paul and his campaign told.
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