Wisconsin Historical Society Archives and Enterprising Writer Should Doom Ron Paul's Candidacy

Update:

The newest TNR revelations leave no doubt about the bigotry in Paul's repulsive journals. Too bad, I liked Paul's anti-war positions. 

If you have not read James Kirchick's first piece on the story, give it a look. 

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Good-bye Ron Paul.

James Kirchick at The New Republic has a disturbing piece about the anti-war libertarian candidate for president, Rep. Ron Paul

Kirchick has researched old Ron Paul political newsletters that contain blatantly racist tracts.

And the Wisconsin Historical Society, a repository for such political periodicals just may be responsible for putting an end to a candidacy that has been a thorn in the side of the pro-war GOP.

Writes Kirchick:

Finding the pre-1999 newsletters was no easy task, but I was able to track many of them down at the libraries of the University of Kansas and the Wisconsin Historical Society.

The racist nature of several pieces in the newsletters is obvious:

The Freedom Report's online archives only go back to 1999, but I was curious to see older editions of Paul's newsletters, in part because of a controversy dating to 1996, when Charles "Lefty" Morris, a Democrat running against Paul for a House seat, released excerpts stating that "opinion polls consistently show only about 5% of blacks have sensible political opinions," that "if you have ever been robbed by a black teen-aged male, you know how unbelievably fleet-footed they can be," and that black representative Barbara Jordan is "the archetypical half-educated victimologist" whose "race and sex protect her from criticism." At the time, Paul's campaign said that Morris had quoted the newsletter out of context. Later, in 2001, Paul would claim that someone else had written the controversial passages. (Few of the newsletters contain actual bylines.) Caldwell, writing in the Times Magazine last year, said he found Paul's explanation believable, "since the style diverges widely from his own."

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