Whites Lose Electoral Power, Ron Paul Still Is Retrograde

Ron Paul

Terry Nelson, a campaign adviser to George W. Bush, John McCain and, this year, the former candidate Tim Pawlenty, said ... :

'The country is changing. In every election cycle, every year, every day, this country becomes more ethnically diverse. And that has an impact on the kind of coalition that you need to put together to win. ... The truth is, Obama needs fewer white voters in 2012 than he did in 2008.'

- Calmes, Landler, NYT

In January 2008. James Kirchick in The New Republic knocked down Rep. Ron Paul as a bigoted nutbag running on white resentment.

The Ron Paul people went ballistic, but nine months after Kirchick's piece, it was reported [Walters in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel] that Paul would keynote the 50th anniversary of the Appleton-based John Birch Society.

The John Birch Society, dating back to the 1950s, is infamous for its conspiracy-minded, anti-Semitic, and Joe McCarthy-supporting whacks.

Even as Ron Paul dances around the single digits in the Republican Party primary this year, he is still proving Kirchick correct.

Ron Paul remains a "member in good standing of some of the oldest and ugliest traditions in American politics," Kirchik wrote in '08.

In 2012, Paul recentally embarassed himself more than usual by advoacting that those hit by Hurricane Irene should have to face the consequences without FEMA or any help from the federal governement:

[A]ssuming the vanguard of Tea Party reactionaries, [Paul] deemed a FEMA response unnecessary, remarking, 'We should be like 1900… I live on the Gulf Coast; we deal with hurricanes all the time. Galveston is in my district.'

That's the bottom line for Paul; bring back 1900 and the good ole days.