It hasn't been a good week for Ron Paul. He doesn't seem to enjoy answering questions about the extremist, frequently racist newsletters he published in the 1980s and 1990s, if his peevish reaction to CNN's Gloria Borger on Wednesday is any indication.
But Paul wasn't always so reticent to talk about his publications. A pair of C-SPAN videos has surfaced, one from 1987, and one from 1995, in which the former and future Congressman and presidential candidate touts The Ron Paul Political Report and his various other enterprises.
To recap: Ron Paul originally served in Congress from 1979 to 1985, whereupon he returned to his medical practice in Texas and began the process of building himself into a one-man brand. At the time, there was a curious phenomenon on the extremist right whereby radical libertarian "economists" (Gary North is one of the more well-known ones, but there have been many others) published their own little "investment letters" that mixed crackpot investment advice with conspiracy theories about the New World Order and the like. For about $100-200 a year, potential subscribers were assured, one could become privy to certain secret information that was not available to ordinary citizens, as well as vital tips for surviving the coming economic apocalypse. Ron Paul, who as a former member of Congress could credibly claim to have more knowledge about the workings of the government than the average lunatic, enjoyed moderate success with his own newsletters, including The Ron Paul Political Report (renamed The Ron Paul Survival Report around 1993) and the Ron Paul Investment Letter, which he published from 1985 until around the time of his 1996 Congressional campaign. Most of the truly racist and hateful material that has been responsible for much of the media attention these newsletters have received was published between about 1989 and 1994, but the bizarre conspiracy theories and crackpot economics were a hallmark of both the Investment Letter and Political/Survival Report for their entire run.
This period is bookended by a pair of C-Span interviews, one from 1987 and one from 1995, that have surfaced today featuring Ron Paul touting his publications. The Huffington Post uncovered the 1987 piece, in which Paul speaks of "[putting] out an investment type of letter because I've always been fascinated with the hard money school, and been interested in the gold standard, so I put out an investment letter on those lines":
The Ron Paul Political Report, January 1988:
In the 1995 video, uncovered by video archivist Andrew Kaczynski, Paul talks about the various "educational" materials he's produced, including a video series as well as "a political type of business investment newsletter ... it covered a lot of about what was going on in Washington, and financial events, and especially some of the monetary events ... this has to do with the value of the dollar, the pros and cons of the gold standard, and of course the disadvantages of all the high taxes and spending that our government seems to continue to do."
The Ron Paul Survival Report, January 1995:
Contrary to Paul's current characterizations of these newsletters as being little more than a sidelight that he farmed out others and paid no attention to, the contemporaneous evidence makes it clear that he saw them as a significant enterprise and a central part of his efforts to spread his political philosophy. As more damning information continues to come out, Ron Paul is going to have a harder and harder time disclaiming knowledge of these matierals.