The real Ron Paul surfaces

[A recent post at David Duke's site.]
-- by Dave

It's been a rough week for Ron Paul's Republican presidential campaign. First it emerged that he had written a campaign letter (Brendan Nyhan has the PDF) promoting his candidacy in distinctly Patriot/militiaman-like terms:

I don’t need to tell you that our American way of life is under attack. We see it all around us — every day — and it is up to us to save it.

The world’s elites are busy forming a North American Union. If they are successful, as they were in forming the European Union, the good ‘ol USA will only be a memory. We can’t let that happen.

The UN also wants to confiscate our firearms and impose a global tax. The UN elites want to control the world’s oceans with the Law of the Sea Treaty. And they want to use our military to police the world.

On Wednesday Jesus' General noticed that Paul won the coveted endorsement from the white-supremacist organization Stormfront (where we'd already noted he was a favorite).



The coup de grace the same day was the report by the SPLC's Heidi Beirich at the Hatewatch blog detailing a Ron Paul campaign appearance planned for today:

The Robert A. Taft Club, a group headed by a man with a network of racist connections, has announced that a U.S. congressman, Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), will address the group this Thursday at a restaurant in Arlington, Va.

The Taft Club is led by Marcus Epstein, who serves as the executive director of both white nationalist Pat Buchanan’s The American Cause and the Team America PAC, which is run by Buchanan’s sister, Bay Buchanan. Epstein writes for the anti-immigrant hate site vdare.com and he advocates for white supremacist organizations. He is especially fond of American Renaissance — a white supremacist journal that has suggested that blacks have “psychopathic personalities” — and attends the journal’s biannual conferences. In 2006, Epstein invited the head of American Renaissance’s parent organization, Jared Taylor, to speak to the Taft Club on the issue of “Race and Conservatism.”

Taylor isn’t the only extremist Epstein has invited to speak at the Taft Club’s meetings. Both Paul Gottfried, who has spoken at American Renaissance gatherings, and Robert Stacy McCain, a foe of interracial marriage who is an editor at The Washington Times, have spoken to the club. (Epstein is listed as one of McCain’s friends on McCain’s Facebook Internet page). This past February, Epstein invited two members of a racist and anti-immigrant Belgian party, Vlaams Belang, to speak to his group. In 2004, an earlier incarnation of the Vlaams Belang, Vlaams Blok, was banned on the grounds that it incited racial hatred.

As Steve Benen says:

Listening to the debates, Paul often comes across as the most sensible guy on the stage, especially when it comes to Iraq and the Patriot Act. And then we're reminded, in print, that when it comes to a paranoid vision of the world, Paul really is out there on the political periphery.

Well, regular readers here already know about Paul's extended history of dalliances with right-wing xenophobes, racists, and conspiracy theorists. You have to wonder how he's managed to keep it hidden for so long. Has the press been looking the other way?