As Newt Gingrich sinks slowly into the sea of extremism, after having his month as the Republican King of the Hill, the latest GOP flavor of the month is attempting to climb the hill - Ron Paul.

And in that steep climb to the top, Dr. Paul has to attempt to get rid of any excess baggage that might weigh his campaign down.  In his case, his decades long ties to racist and bigoted associations.

During a recent CNN interview he tried to explain away the laundry list of hate-filled comments made in his own newsletter.

CNN host Ali Velshi gave Paul a chance to respond Tuesday.

“You refer to disturbances in Washington’s Adams Morgan [neighborhood] as ‘animals taking over the D.C. Zoo,’ referring to African Americans,” Velshi noted. “You said that Martin Luther King seduced underage girls and boys. You talked about Ronald Reagan proclaiming ‘annual hate whitey day’ with Martin Luther King Day. And you advocated prohibiting AIDS patients from eating in restaurants. These things were published under your name.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t write them and I disavow them,” Paul insisted.

“But you’re a presidential candidate. That’s tough,” Velshi observed. “It kind of comes back to bite you that you made money off of things that were published under your name that were hateful and racist.”

“Yeah,” Paul agreed. “But this has been addressed for 20 years and nobody accuses me of that type of belief or language. I’m a true civil libertarian, and I think people dig these up when people think that ‘Oh, his economic policies are winning. His foreign policies are winning. His monetary policies are winning.’ So, they have to dig these things up that they really can’t pin on me.”

“But I didn’t write them and those aren’t my beliefs. So, I sleep well,” he added.

 “Are you comfortable in telling us who did write them?” Velshi asked.

“I really don’t know,” Paul explained. “Twenty years ago, I had six or eight people helping me with the letter, and I was practicing medicine to tell you the truth. And so, I really do not know.”

“Well, we could find out?” Velshi pressed. “Because you had six or eight people? Like, it was one of those six or eight people?”

“Well, possibly I could,” Paul admitted. “These charges are a total contradiction of everything I’ve said and everything I believe.”

Now here's the problem that I have with Dr. Paul's explanation for the racist statements in his newsletters over a period of years: If my name was on the masthead and one of my writers wrote something vile and racist, they wouldn't have a chance to touch the next edition. They'd be identified and fired, at the very least, since their comments in a newsletter that has my name on the masthead would suggest that I, at the very least, was accepting of these attitudes.

But obviously, Dr. Paul wasn’t even upset enough by knowing that such hatred was published in his letterhead to find out who was writing it.   Thus the supposedly “Unknown Racist” was allowed to stay and continue with their hate filled rants for years.
He claims that they aren't his views but he never once even so much as put out an article in his own newsletter announcing that those views weren't his, that they “were a total contradiction of everything he believes”, let alone make the logical decision to obtain writers who did espouse his belief system.  As long as they sold papers, he said nothing and let the racism and hatred continue.

It's only now that those hate-filled views could have a negative effect on his campaign that he now disavows them.

Dr. Paul’s explanation not only is full of…holes, it paints a picture of a man so out of touch with what’s going on around him that he allows heinous acts, acts that are supposedly a total contradiction of everything he believes to be committed by his hand-picked underlings for years and didn’t have the common sense to even ask who was ruining his good name, let alone stop it.  If he can’t keep on top of protecting himself and his good name, how can voters be expected to believe he would keep more poorly picked underlings from committing heinous acts unfettered?

Of course, that picture of an ineffective man only holds if you believe his explanation.

And those who are aware that Dr. Ron Paul has, according to his own words on Twitter, a close friendship with Stormfront leader, Don Black, an avowed White Supremacist and neo-Nazi, then you aren’t likely to believe his explanation.  You see, Dr. Paul’s long running friendship with Don Black is such that he’s willing to ask for financial contributions from him and his White Supremacist followers for his son, Rand’s political campaign.  

Think about that.

He’s willing to make himself and his son beholdin’, as my grandmother would say, to people and organizations who hold attitudes that are supposedly a total contradiction of everything he believes.  What, he couldn’t find anyone with his belief system who had funds?  I don’t think so. (Remember that Rand's campaign manager was Chris Hightower, a racist who kept a picture of a lynched black man on his MySpace page for several years and wrote of wishing to walk through the local mall dressed in his KKK robes.) Either father and son share views and hire accordingly or they have a genetic defect which causes them to hire racists.

Logic would suggest that if his friends are racists, his hand-picked writers are racists, the articles he allowed to be printed in his own newsletter  for years were racist, that the simplest diagnosis is most likely true. 

Dr. Paul claims that his detractors “can’t pin this on him”.  The truth is, he pinned it on himself years ago.