The New Republic has all of Libertarianism abuzz over this story which reveals the racist, homophobic and generally crappy material in The Ron Paul Newsletter, The Ron Paul Survival Report, The Ron Paul Freedom Report, The Ron Paul Political Report, The Ron Paul Investment Letter and other publications linked to maverick Republican Presidential candidate. The New Republic has these selections available in .pdf format, so if you are a Ron Paul supporter you might just want to stop now and go take a look.

Paul has released a statement based on this hasty interview with Reason Magazine, in which he dismisses the newsletters as “Ancient History,”  and claims that much of the material was written by others. His campaign has since released this statement, which concludes “For over a decade, I have publicly taken moral responsibility for not paying closer attention to what went out under my name.”

Needless to say, the “Ron Paul Revolution” is over… or at the very least the name is going to have to change. I, for one, appreciate Paul’s proving to the Republicans that “Liberty matters” over the course of this election, but he wasn’t exactly poised to take the party over, either. In fact, this story will probably be spun mostly by Republicans in order to tar Libertarians with the “wacko” brush, and push them back from the political mainstream. Either way, the newsletters have nothing to do with the ideals of libertarianism, shouldn’t prevent people from embracing elements of Paul’s message even if they can no longer support the man.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 8th, 2008 at 22:01 by Niedermeyer and is filed under Elections, Media, National, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.