It does seem however that Paul's refusal to do the ritual obeisance to Israel (as Obama, Edwards and Clinton did) is TNR's motive for a hit piece by its editor. The piece is based on material from a newsletter about which Paul has been pilloried for a while. (See note 2 below)
Paul's second sin -- and the vulnerability that TNR wants to use against a presumed enemy of Israel -- may be a failure to repeat liberal shibboleths on race. Paul says his his opposition to racism is based on libertarian, not liberal, principles. He wrote the following last April:
"Racism is simply an ugly form of collectivism, the mindset that views humans strictly as members of groups rather than individuals. Racists believe that all individuals who share superficial physical characteristics are alike: as collectivists, racists think only in terms of groups. By encouraging Americans to adopt a group mentality, the advocates of so-called 'diversity' actually perpetuate racism. Their obsession with racial group identity is inherently racist."
There was only one campaign rally in NH last night (as shown on C-Span) where the chant "No more war! No more war!" went up; only one candidate I saw who devoted part of his post-primary speech to an attack on the CIA (mentioning the overthrow of Mossadegh) and a demand for the end of "meddling" in foreign countries.
Paul has been spouting the same libertarian economics for decades (as in his presidential candidacy in 1988), to little or no effect. He's not saying anything new about that these days: what is new is his clear anti-war position, and that's the source of his sudden support. How many articles did we see in recent weeks insisting that "the war is no longer an issue"? That's what the party establishments very much wanted, but the polls said the war was the leading issue in both Iowa and NH. It is for TNR, too. --CGE
=======
Note 1: There does however seem to be one contradiction in Paul's anti-interventionist position: although he did vote against the Iraq War Resolution, he voted in favor of force in Afghanistan. But in the September 5, 2007, Republican debate, he said, "We've lost over 5,000 American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. How much do we have to pay to save face? It's time we came home."
Note 2, from Wikipedia:
During the 1996 campaign, [Paul's Democratic congressional opponent, who attacked Paul for his opposition to federal drug laws] also attacked issues of the Ron Paul Survival Report (published by Paul since 1985) that included derogatory comments concerning race and other politicians. The newsletter had accused President Bill Clinton of fathering illegitimate children and using cocaine; called U.S. Representative Barbara Jordan a "fraud" and a "half-educated victimologist"; and argued for lowering the legal age for prosecuting youths as adults, using race-based examples.
In 2001, Paul took "moral responsibility" for the comments printed in his newsletter under his name, explaining they were written by a ghostwriter and did not represent his views. He said the remarks referring to Rep. Jordan were "the saddest thing, because Barbara and I served together and actually she was a delightful lady." Texas Monthly magazine defended Paul's decision to protect the writer's confidence in 1996, concluding, "In four terms as a U.S. congressman and one presidential race, Paul had never uttered anything remotely like this." In 2007, with the controversy resurfacing, the New York Times Magazine concurred that Paul denied the allegations "quite believably, since the style diverges widely from his own"...
Doug Henwood wrote:
> [this bounced because it was pre-pended to the full post, and with
> HTML code added - please, plain text, and clip extraneous material -
> which give me the opportunity to ask: 1) did you read the piece,
> Carl, and 2) there's a lot more than anti-semitism in the quoted
> material]
>
> to approve or deny the request.
>
> From: "C. G. Estabrook" <galliher at uiuc.edu>
> Date: January 9, 2008 10:47:58 AM EST
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] the bigoted past of Ron Paul
>
>
> Perhaps a certain incredulity is in order when The New Republic tells
> us that someone is an anti-Semite... --CGE
>
>
> ---- Original message ----
>
>> Date: Wed, 9 Jan 2008 10:06:19 -0500
>> From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com>
>> Subject: [lbo-talk] the bigoted past of Ron Paul
>> To: lbo-talk <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org>
>>
>> <http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=e2f15397-a3c7-4720-
>> ac15-4532a7da84ca>
>>
>> THE NEW REPUBLIC
>> Angry White Man
>> by James Kirchick
>> The bigoted past of Ron Paul.
>> Post Date Tuesday, January 08, 2008
>>
>> If you are a critic of the Bush administration, chances are that, at
>> some point over the past six months, Ron Paul has said something that
>> appealed to you. Paul describes himself as a libertarian, but, since
>> his presidential campaign took off earlier this year, the Republican
>> congressman has attracted donations and plaudits from across the
>> ideological spectrum. Antiwar conservatives, disaffected centrists,
>> even young liberal activists have all flocked to Paul, hailing him as
>> a throwback to an earlier age, when politicians were less mealy-
>> mouthed and American government was more modest in its ambitions,
>> both at home and abroad. In The New York Times Magazine, conservative
>> writer Christopher Caldwell gushed that Paul is a "formidable stander
>> on constitutional principle," while The Nation praised "his full-
>> throated rejection of the imperial project in Iraq." Former TNR
>> editor Andrew Sullivan endorsed Paul for the GOP nomination, and
>> ABC's Jake Tapper described the candidate as "the one true straight-
>> talker in this race." Even The Wall Street Journal, the newspaper of
>> the elite bankers whom Paul detests, recently advised other
>> Republican presidential contenders not to "dismiss the passion he's
>> tapped."
>>
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