Politics & Government

Iowa Pundits Discount Dustup Over Racially-Charged Ron Paul Newsletter

Walking out of a CNN interview calls Paul's leadership abilities into question, say some Iowa observers.

Ron Paul’s unlikely surge to the top of the polls is placing the Texas Congressman under close scrutiny.

Some political experts say the new found attention exposes leadership flaws that could doom his candidacy for president past the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses.

Paul, predicted by some polls to win Iowa, is embroiled in a dustup over incendiary, racially charged statements attributed to his “Ron Paul Political Report” newsletter two decades ago.

However, during Thursday night's town hall meeting at the The Hotel at Kirkwood Center in Cedar Rapids, Paul did not address the letters at all.

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In fact, despite being billed as a town hall "meeting," Paul answered no questions from the audience, only giving a few responses to reporters whose cameras swirled around the Congressman like so many bees to honey.

The meeting room was fully packed with over 400 people, filling each seat and snaking in a U shape around the edges of the convention center.

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Paul made comments that subtly distanced himself from at least one of his criticized statements, when he compared social security and medicare to slavery.

"We have asked people to buy into a system that we are supposed to take care of," Paul said. "So to start (cutting budgetary spending) on social security or health-care for the elderly and indigent children, it is not where to start."

The crux of his spending policies laid out during his speech were focused on cutting the defense budget, promises that were met with raucous applause, on top of the enthusiasm supporters showed when he mentioned ending the P.A.T.R.I.O.T. act and re-instituting trade with Cuba.

But just because he failed to mention the ongoing controversy, doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.

This week Paul is facing a new round of questions and defending himself, saying he did not write a series of newsletters in the 1990s that featured slurs against homosexuals and African-Americans.

Those remarks may not have mattered when few were taking Paul’s campaign seriously, said University of Iowa politics expert Tim Hagle, but they matter now. Paul didn’t do his campaign any favors when he walked out on an interview with CNN Wednesday when asked to own up about what he knew and when he knew it.

“Walking off wasn’t a good way to handle it, and it made him look bad,” Hagle said. “He’s getting a close-up look he’s managed to escape up until now. From his point of view, he has answered all of this and his supporters would agree or they simply don’t care.”

As the frontrunner, Paul is getting a taste of what former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney went through when health-care reform in his state was compared to President Obama’s health-care reform plan.

“It’s the same thing Mitt Romney went through with Romney Care,” Hagle said. “You may think you’re clear, but that doesn’t mean you won’t have to answer it several times.”

Hagle said that after the media bashing Texas Gov. Rick Perry took over the painted-over racial epithet name for a hunting cabin his family occasionally leases, it’s fair that fellow Texan Paul be held to the same standards.

Paul has repeatedly disavowed the statements in the newsletters, saying he didn’t write them and they don’t reflect his beliefs. Being “sufficiently clueless” exposes Paul as a weak leader, Hagle said.

“It went out under his name, and he was making some money of that newsletter,” Hagle said. “He’s going to have to address it.”

David Yepsen, who covered the Iowa caucuses for more than three decades as the Des Moines Register’s political editor, said the tussle is a last-minute effort to stem Paul’s rise in the polls that likely won’t have much effect on voters and could backfire.

“This came up four years ago, and I don’t see where that’s hurt him,” said Yepsen, now the director of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. “If I’m a Ron Paul voter, I may have known about it and don’t care about it, or I didn’t know about it and it’s not a big deal because I’m for him for another reason.”

Yepsen said Iowa caucus-goers “place a big discount on this last-minute stuff.”

“It smacks of dirty tricks and last-minute desperation,” he said. “I won’t say never, because last-minute things can work. Bringing up George W. Bush’s drunken driving conviction in Maine came out in the last few days in 2000, and it did cost him some points.

“But that was a new allegation and this is digging up something old. I just think people discount that.”

Dianne Byrstom, director of the Carrie Chapman Catt Center for Women and Politics at Iowa State University, said she’s not sure Paul’s rivals have enough time to make much political hay over the controversy before Iowans caucus on Jan. 3.

Much depends on whether campaigns eschew traditional political wisdom and suspend negative television ads in the days before and immediately following Christmas, Bystrom said.

“It depends on what the media and the other candidates do with it,” she said. “If the charges end up in attack ads run by people like Romney or Gingrich, they’re more likely to stick.”

Like Yepsen, Bystrom doubts attacks on Paul for statements he may or may not have subscribed to 20 years ago will hold much sway with the candidate’s “true believers.”

“They accept Ron Paul for being consistent,” Bystrom said. “If they hear him say, ‘I didn’t write that, those are not my words,’ I don’t think this is going to change their minds. But it could linger afterward if he survives Iowa.

But aside from how the general public will react to Ron Paul, whether he wins or looses the caucus or the nomination, for the many Ron Paul die-hards, the man can do no wrong.

When asked about the racist comments in the newsletters, Ron Paul supporter and Cedar Rapids resident Dale Kielly said he adamantly believes that Paul did not write or see the entries himself. He said he feels that if that is all the dirt that can be brought to Paul, it doesn't compare to past presidents, citing George W Bush's drug and alcohol related incidents.

"I got into an hour-long argument with my cousin on Facebook about that," he said. "She wouldn't believe that he didn't write them."


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