Crossposted from My Left Wing and Booman Tribune
Nothing ever surprises me about Republican candidates, but perhaps Ron Paul does.
He just may be a stealth candidate Pat Buchanan might like.
Why?
I once felt the same way that blogger Black MYStory did about Ron Paul. A man who refreshingly proclaimed during the GOP debates and on Bill Maher's show that the Republican Party had lost its way, and needs to return to its roots--that's the kind of man who I believed was reasonable. Not a wingnut or a hater, so I thought, although I wouldn't vote for him. I slotted him just to the center of someone like Pete McCloskey.
However, Paul accepted a plaudit from Maher on his last show for the season that he was indeed more conservative than his conservative fellow candidates, and that jangled alarm bells in my brain.
Why bring in Pat Buchanan? Because Buchanan can easily get liberals and progressives to jump on his side when he talks about Iraq literally sucking the lifeblood and treasure out of the country. But when Buchanan starts inveighing against immigration and blacks...he loses these same progressives quick. The racism is right there in your face; you just can't abide it.
So here's where the term "stealth" comes in with Ron Paul, because Houston Chronicle political writer Alan Bernstein reported some disturbing information about Paul during the 1996 Texas congressional race:
Paul, writing in his independent political newsletter in 1992, reported about unspecified surveys of blacks.
"Opinion polls consistently show that only about 5 percent of blacks have sensible political opinions, i.e. support the free market, individual liberty and the end of welfare and affirmative action,"Paul wrote.
Paul continued that politically sensible blacks are outnumbered "as decent people." Citing reports that 85 percent of all black men in the District of Columbia are arrested, Paul wrote:
"Given the inefficiencies of what D.C. laughingly calls the `criminal justice system,' I think we can safely assume that 95 percent of the black males in that city are semi-criminal or entirely criminal," Paul said.
Paul also wrote that although "we are constantly told that it is evil to be afraid of black men, it is hardly irrational. Black men commit murders, rapes, robberies, muggings and burglaries all out of proportion to their numbers."
A campaign spokesman for Paul said statements about the fear of black males mirror pronouncements by black leaders such as the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who has decried the spread of urban crime.
Jesse has never--during the time I have been following his career--used this kind of rhetoric about black men and street crime.
Does Ron Paul continue to stand behind these words he wrote in the heat of a congressional battle fifteen years ago? Black MYStory thinks:
So, a white kid raised in a "good home" is less culpable for murder than a black kid raised "on the streets"?
Look, a lot can change about a person in 15 years but, I think Ron Paul may have some explaining to do.
Do tell.
And people wonder why blacks tend not to support certain candidacies or certain constituencies? How about the environmental movement?
Take for example, a recent award given to St. Bernard Parish (Louisiana) president Junior Rodriguez by the Delta Chapter of the Sierra Club on April 21, 2007.
The corpulent Junior Rodriguez, as some of you may know, was a witness to Hurricane Katrina, and who appeared in Spike Lee's When the Levees Broke documentary.
I'm sure some of you got the idea, from his witnessing, that this Henry Rodriguez, Jr., seemed like a pretty good guy.
What some of you may not know--particularly the members of the Delta Chapter of the Sierra Club (and Anderson Cooper of CNN) who hurried to laud the parish president for his criticism of FEMA and of the upkeep of the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet Canal (or MRGO) is that Rodriguez is pretty much a racist who has pushed through legislation in 2006 prohibiting blacks from ever living as renters in St. Bernard Parish. As Lance Hill put it:
More recently, the Louisiana Chapter of the Sierra Club recently honored St. Bernard Parish Council President Henry "Junior" Rodriguez with their "Legislative Leadership" award. This, despite the fact that Rodriguez has a long and un-apologetic history of publicly using racial epithets and took the lead in passing the "blood relative rental law" last October that effectively prevented blacks from renting in St. Bernard Parish. The law made it a crime for white home-owners to rent to anyone other than a "blood relative," effectively making it impossible for blacks and Latinos to rent in the 96% white parish. That a putatively liberal organization like the Sierra Club can countenance racism by honoring a man with a long history of open bigotry is a sign of a serious problem that begs for a community-wide dialogue; and it’s a case study in how not to build racial unity and counter racism.
What's underground usually rises to the surface.
Unfortunately, people fool themselves thinking that as long as people cloak their language and hide their propensities, there is no racism present and all is well with the world. With some liberals and progressives, however, starved for some leadership or mainstream advocacy for an issue or program close to their hearts, they may refuse to see that some people will never change. With blacks, they know that with voting, their very lives may be on the line.
So between Ron Paul and Junior Rodriguez, and between Ron Paul and Pat Buchanan, there may not be such a difference at all in these men's 'conservative' views.
And this leads me to place Paul in the same category as Pat Buchanan. Unless...
People had better choose their s/heroes carefully.