The Huntsman campaign just released this video, which scores a pretty solid hit on Paul with the newsletter issue, ending with his embarrassing flight from the Gloria Borger interview:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vMHuWQ_kfg[/youtube]

As we count down the final few days before Iowa, I also wanted to point out and hopefully tie together some of the remaining questions about the Ron Paul newsletters. This somewhat lengthy piece is definitely worth a read even if it is somewhat obviously written by someone with an axe to grind in an intra-libertarian movement fight. I find the conclusion of the piece to be sound, which is that Paul himself probably did not most (or any) of the racist material himself, but he was certainly willing to “toast a marshmallow on a cross that someone else was burning.”

Consider the following: at least one eyewitness account indicates that while Paul did not write most of what went in the newsletter, he was fastidious about approving every word before it went to print. This is consistent with what we know about Ron Paul, who is obsessive about his public image when it comes to political doctrine. The idea that he would allow a newsletter to be printed for a decade in his own name without having more than a casual interest in what was contained in the newsletter is contrary to everything we know about Ron Paul. It is also directly contradictory to his actions in 1995 and 1996 when he defended the content in the newsletters.

Second, Paul’s explanation about the newsletters leaves the next logical question completely unanswered (and I have no idea why media folks aren’t asking him this every time the question comes up) – “If you did not write the newsletters, who did? And what action did you take against them when you learned that they had been printing racist content in your name without your consent?” This is an especially important question because any person of even marginal decency would have been outraged and canned anyone they found responsible. However, I have never seen Ron Paul mention that he took any punitive action against the alleged staffers involved.

However, this is an avenue that Paul can’t afford to have explored, because the most likely answer to the first question, according to virtually everyone with knowledge of Paul’s operation at the time, is that the newsletters were the product of some combination of Lew Rockwell and Murray Rothbard. Paul absolutely cannot disown Rockwell and the Mises Institute because that constitutes a significant portion of his support. Additionally, Paul has continued to work with Rockwell long after the mid-90s when this came to his attention (according to his version of events) – thus any questions about what action he took to disown the true author of these pieces would lead to uncomfortable places if it really was Rockwell or Rothbard.

Paul’s actions since his Congressional run in 1996 are completely inconsistent with a man who was completely unaware that others were posting racist content in his name. Whether he wrote the newsletters or not, the evidence is pretty clear that he knew what was in them and was perfectly content to let them go out in his name.