Ron Paul conveyed to Fox News yesterday the familiar, "I'm just too gutsy" lament of every neglected, second- or third-tier presidential candidate:
[The media] don't want to discuss my views because I think they're frightened by me challenging the status quo and the establishment.
Yet Paul has excellent reason to be rather thankful for his relative anonymity, notes Politico's Maggie Haberman:
[A] more thorough vetting of the kind that mainstream candidates generally receive would invariably lead to some of the newsletters that bore his name (if not his byline or direct authorship) decades earlier.
Haberman points to the New Republic's examination of such, back in 2008:
They were published under a banner containing Paul’s name, and the articles ... seem designed to create the impression that they were written by him--and reflected his views. What they reveal are decades worth of obsession with conspiracies, sympathy for the right-wing militia movement, and deeply held bigotry against blacks, Jews, and gays. In short, they suggest that Ron Paul is not the plain-speaking antiwar activist his supporters believe they are backing--but rather a member in good standing of some of the oldest and ugliest traditions in American politics.
If Paul really wants to appreciate his obscurity, though, all he need do is just look around -- namely, at the media attention given to the accumulated imbecilities of Rick Perry, only because he's a genuine contender.
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