Jack Hunter, the racist former aide to both Ron and Rand Paul, now says he wasn't really a racist. He just played one on the radio. Dude's gotta make a living, you see. He claims too, that Ron Paul was shocked, shocked, to learn that the newsletters that were published under his name were filled with racist material for years and years. Suffice to say, there is much self-serving, revisionist material in Hunter's Politico article, which comes at a time when Rand Paul is actively testing the waters for a presidential run, and Ron Paul is busy building his new career as, among other things a homeschooling text book entrepreneur.
But I want to highlight just one point out of Hunter's rich stew of attempted political redemption.
Hunter complains:
I didn’t work for the [Ron] Paul campaign in 2008, but I sure sounded as though I did when I talked about him on the radio. When other GOP candidates like Rudy Giuliani and John McCain tried to portray Paul as somehow not a real Republican, I explained how the Giulianis and McCains were more like Bush-Cheney retreads, while Paul was far more in line with the limited-government philosophy that had long defined American conservatism.
But as it turns out, McCain and Giuliani were onto something. As I
noted a few months ago, Ron Paul ran in and lost all of the 2008 GOP primaries for president -- and could not bring himself to support the party's nominee, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ).
Faced with several third party options, Ron Paul did not endorse the candidate of the Libertarian Party -- which was surprising, since Paul was once the Libertarian Party candidate for president himself. He also did not endorse the candidate of the Green Party, many members of which have admired, among other things, Paul's anti-war and marijuana reform views....
Ron Paul endorsed Florida megachurch pastor Rev. Chuck Baldwin, the presidential candidate of the openly theocratic Constitution Party for president in the general election of 2008.
Hunter conveniently ignores all that.
Journalist and scholar Chip Berlet, wrote at the time:
Let's be clear, the U.S. Constitution Party would impose a form of theocratic neofascism in the United States. And I am not a person who tosses the term fascism around lightly.
Many people will no doubt be tempted to consider supporting the latest projects of Hunter and the Pauls as they try to decouple themselves from the horrific history of slavery, the Confederacy, Jim Crow, and contemporary neo-confederatism. But the truth of the legacy of their
ideas and their personal histories cannot be ignored.
Crossposted from Talk to Action