Associates: Ron Paul Proofed, Signed Off On Newsletters

Come on. Was this really some kind of actual question?

Ed Crane, the longtime president of the libertarian Cato Institute, said he met Paul for lunch during this period, and the two men discussed direct-mail solicitations, which Paul was sending out to interest people in his newsletters. They agreed that “people who have extreme views” are more likely than others to respond.

Crane said Paul reported getting his best response when he used a mailing list from the now-defunct newspaper Spotlight, which was widely considered anti-Semitic and racist.

Benton, Paul’s spokesman, said that Crane’s account “sounds odd” and that Paul did not recall the conversation.

At the time, Paul’s investment letter was languishing. According to the person involved with his businesses, Paul and others hit upon a solution: to “morph” the content to capi­tal­ize on a growing fear among some on the political right about the nation’s changing demographics and threats to economic liberty.

The investment letter became the Ron Paul Survival Report — a name designed to intrigue readers, the company secretary said. It cost subscribers about $100 a year. The tone of that and other Paul publications changed, becoming increasingly controversial. In 1992, for example, the Ron Paul Political Report defended chess champion Bobby Fischer, who became known as an anti-Semitic Holocaust denier, for his stance on “Jewish questions.’’

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“The real big money came from some of that racially tinged stuff, but he also had to keep his libertarian supporters, and they weren’t at all comfortable with that,’’ he said.

In related news, a pitch for some new book on the essential truthiness of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was discovered on Paul's Campaign for Liberty website. It's now been zapped without explanation, though the screenshot remains.

I'm sure Paul didn't know about that and didn't solicit that. And no, I'm not being sarcastic. But after Ron Paul sending the message for 20 years that Neo-Nazis were welcome in his libertarian club, Neo-Nazis strangely derived from that the belief that they are welcome in his libertarian club.

posted by Ace at 11:46 AM

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