If you’ve missed the item about the politically incorrect newsletters published under Ron Paul’s name during the 1980s and 1990s, and unearthed strategically by The New Republic, it is because Beltway libertarians are just about the only ones still “spilling pixels” over the affair. Spilling pixels and beating breasts.
Especially inconsolable over the unsavory newsletters, none of which bore Ron Paul’s byline, are the Reason Magazine and Cato Institute claque—excrescences on the D.C. establishment both.
Ron Paul’s supporters are certainly not reaching for the smelling salts. They remain focused on the Paul platform. They understand that in Paul his opponents have found a man who’s led an exemplary life—has served his country and community, stayed married to his childhood sweetheart for 50 odd years, and is as devout a Christian as he is a constitutionalist. It’s not easy to impugn this impish, good-natured man, so mudslinger becomes a must.
Because the Beltway characters believe they are at the center of the universe, they imagine that: 1) The Paul Revolution revolves around them and their “ideas,” and 2) In the unlikely event the Revolution was started without them, it has to be insignificant.
As usual, they are wrong.
Ron Paul is not running as a Libertarian, but as a Republican with a strong libertarian sensibility. Ron’s Revolution is revved, for the most, by independents, defecting Democrats, and disgruntled Republicans for whom his message is fresh and intuitive.
What are the odds that Rep. Paul’s followers have come to the philosophy of freedom through Reason magazine? Is it remotely possible that the passionate soldiers of the Paul Army enlisted after chancing upon a dispassionate, desiccated, dry-as-dust disquisition on a free market in kidneys (I’m all for it)? I think not.
