Just when you think that the man can finally be ignored, he does something completely idiotic which results in him getting some new headlines: ‘Maverick GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul has booked an arena in Minneapolis for a “mini-convention” that could steal some of John McCain’s thunder just days before he accepts the Republican nomination.’ (more…)

Ron Paul has decided that since the Republican party won’t give him the light of day, he’s going to hold his own little party in St. Paul coinciding with the Republican National Convention. The idea would be to showcase that there are Republicans sick of the GOP and it’s straying away from small government (which is doubtlessly true) and that these people would rather see someone like Ron Paul in the White House (which is highly unlikely).

(more…)

Andrew Malcom says that Ron Paul’s supporters are planning a rebellion against the mainstream Republican powers who are essentially lined up behind John McCain.  While everyone has been watching the Obama-Clinton brawl,

quietly, largely under the radar of most people, the forces of Rep.Ron Paul have been organizing across the country to stage an embarrassing public revolt against Sen. John McCain when Republicans gather for their national convention in St. Paul at the beginning of September.

(via memeorandum)

(more…)

After winning his party’s primary for his Congress seat (and thus ensuring re-election) Ron Paul basically told his supporters that his campaign for the presidency is over (which would be logical considering that John McCain already won this thing). He did encourage them to vote for him in upcoming primaries, but he talked about his campaign in the past tense and said that the campaign is “winding down.” (more…)

The revelation that Ron Paul, or someone under his name, published racist pamphlets seems to have resulted in the death of the Ron Paul Movement. (more…)

“Most of these people are not rational.”

Jennifer Call on Congressman Ron Paul’s supporters.

Consider this an open thread.

Since we have given extensive coverage to the original story, we should also publish Ron Paul’s response to an article in the New Republic documenting racist newsletters published in his name during the 1990s.

The official response from his campaign is also provided here. (more…)

The article at The New Republic I referred to earlier today is up. The good news? It leaves little room for doubt. The bad news for Ron Paul and his supporters? It leaves little room for doubt.

The author, James Kirchick, explains: (more…)

The New Republic will publish an article today in which it is alleged that Ron Paul has a racist past. The author of the article, James Kirchick, appeared on Tucker’s show to give us some information about what the article will contain, what proof they’ll have etc. (video below the fold).

Although I’d like to read the newsletters as collected by TNR and the article, it seems to me that the defense of the Ron Paul campaign is weak. (more…)

In what many will - I am sure - consider to be very good news, the New Hampshire Republican Party has, out of disappointment with Fox’ decision not to include Congressman Ron Paul in its upcoming debate / forum, severed its partnership with the network owned by conservative Australian Rupert Murdoch. 

Fox’s decision doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. The network is right not to allow Duncan Hunter to participate if it only wants to invite people who do fairly well in the polls, but the Congressman from Texas is polling better in some states than Rudy Giuliani who has been invited and Paul received 10% of the vote in the Iowa caucuses, meaning that there are quite a lot of Republicans who support his bid for the nomination. (more…)

Evangelical blogger Joe Carter worked for Governor Mike Huckabee and published a fascinating post about his work - all from a pro-Huckabee perspective of course. I encourage you to read it in its entirety, here are some excerpts and my thoughts on them:

Firstly, Carter’s view on Romney. We can now be fairly sure that the target of Monday’s smear campaign is Mitt Romney. UPDATE: Carter answered my e-mail, saying that the thing he’s referring to is not the same thing as what’ll happen Monday. Joe writes: “Mitt Romney will never be President — I won’t be surprised if Mitt Romney wins the Iowa Caucus. I will be surprised, however, if he’s still in the race when the South Carolina primary comes around. Even if the impending scandal that has been rumored for weeks doesn’t derail his campaign (I can’t say what it is but you should hear about it before Jan. 8), his inherent dishonesty will eventually do him in.” (more…)

Here’s quite an interesting article about the money-bombs Congressman Ron Paul received in the fourth quarter of last year. The author, C.J. Maloney, basically argues that the money-bombs are proof that freedom works and that carefully orchestrating everything always produces lesser results than letting people sort it out themselves. Not only that, it also proves, according to Maloney, that it’s also proof that transparancy works as well. After all, would Ron Paul supporters have donated as much money as they have if Paul had not shown his fundraising totals at any given moment on his website?

Maloney writes: (more…)

Josh Marshall:

As we get deeper into the campaign, I do not have a problem with excluding candidates who are not generating any substantial public support. Gravel, I think, was an example of that in the Democratic debates. But I think the Paulbots have a pretty good case for outrage with Ron Paul’s exclusion from the upcoming Republican debate in New Hampshire.

(more…)

Although some say that Fox may have invited Ron Paul for the forum it will hold on January 6, only two days before the primary of New Hampshire, the Ron Paul campaign website has the following to say:

On December 27, the Associated Press reported: “The New Hampshire Republican Party is sponsoring a forum for Republican presidential candidates on Jan. 6, two days before the state’s first-in-the-nation primary.” Later in the article, the AP stated: “Participating in the forum will be Rudy Giuliani, Mike Huckabee, John McCain, Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson.” (more…)

Don Surber says that Fox is in the right for not allowing Ron Paul’s participation in the final pre-primary debate in New Hampshire. His justification? The fact that Paul’s fans “stuff every online poll on the Internet”.

Whoop-ti-doo. First, polls are a joke anyway, particularly in a close election cycle like this one. Nothing is more irritating than the constant navel-gazing that dominates memeorandum and other aggregation sites on slow news days. Who cares? Poll reporting is merely an opportunity for writers to attempt to influence the debate.

The relevant facts are that Ron Paul is on the primary ballot in New Hampshire, he significant support in the state, and he has something that the American people deserve the opportunity to hear. (more…)

A couple of days ago I read this column by John Derbyshire for National Review Online, which he wrote little over a week ago. In it, the conservative columnist endorses Ron Paul, arguing that the time has come for Libertarianism to be implemented.

One of the main reasons that Derbyshire endorses Paul is that the government has become increasingly bigger, with even the Vice President having a gigantic staff. In fact, Dick Cheney’s staff is so big that Derbyshire decided that it would be useful for him to do some research as to find out how many advisers and staff Cheney exactly has. Soon, however, he ran into a brick wall. There is, Derbyshire writes, simply no way to find out how big Cheney’s staff exactly is. (more…)

Congressman Ron Paul wrote an essay titled “What Does Freedom Really Mean.” You can read it in its entirety at Paul’s website. Here are some excerpts:

The problem is that democracy is not freedom. Democracy is simply majoritarianism, which is inherently incompatible with real freedom. Our founding fathers clearly understood this, as evidenced not only by our republican constitutional system, but also by their writings in the Federalist Papers and elsewhere. James Madison cautioned that under a democratic government, “There is nothing to check the inducement to sacrifice the weaker party or the obnoxious individual.” (more…)

One Larry Fester wrote an op-ed for USA Daily, which was e-mailed to me last night by a reader, Robert E. (who supports Congressman Ron Paul). He wrote me that “since you are so quick to publish negative articles about Dr. Paul, I wonder whether you also have the courage to publish this opinion on PoliGazette.”

Although I’m not sure whether ‘courage’ has anything to do with it, I’m more than happy to link to the op-ed, and to comment on it. Robert’s words indicate, of course, that there’s some kind of hetze going on against Dr. Paul - which is certainly not true. He deals with White Supremacists, or is at least actively supported by them. That automatically results in criticism. That has nothing to do with Paul personally, nor with a potential message of “freedom.” (more…)

UPDATE: Charles Johnson has more. A person who calls himself Bill White, Commander of the American National Socialist Workers Party, says that Ron Paul’s campaign has met with white supremacists. True, not true? Who knows, he certainly is making life increasingly more difficult for himself. (more below the fold)

Well, not sitting in a tree, but… (more…)

When this issue came up again my first reaction was to think, like the little kid in the legend of Shoeless Joe Jackson of Black Sox infamy, "Say it ain’t so, Ron.  Say it ain’t so."

But as Frank James writes and his comment section elaborates on quite eloquently:

As Paul’s campaign explained, it plans to keep the money because that will reduce the cash Black has to spend on spreading his controversial ideology by $500.

And, according to the campaign, another good will occur. Paul will have $500 more with which to spread his libertarian message of freedom from big government, including his opposition to the Iraq War.

My first, emotional reaction was that taking money from Stormfront was something to avoid on principle.  Goes to show what emotional reactions are good for.

h/t memeorandum

At the bottom of this post is a video of Ron Paul criticizing Mike Huckabee over the latter’s last Christmas ad. What’s most interesting about this clip isn’t that Paul repeats the words of Sinclair Lewis (”when fascism comes to this country it’ll be wrapped in the flag, carrying a cross”). Instead what’s interesting is that we see a true clash between two voting blocs, two groups that are part of the conservative alliance that has brought the GOP to power.

On the one hand we have the religion right, personified by Mike Huckabee. To many of these voters, life is all about religion, thus so is politics. They’re conservative in many ways, but their conservatism is based on a (protestant) Christianity, hence the name Christian conservatives. On the other hand we’ve got libertarian conservatives and libertarians as personified by Congressman Ron Paul. Their conservatism is based on a small government philosophy combined with a ‘live and let live’ approach. They tend to believe that people are free to express their faith, but they don’t want to mix religion and politics. (more…)