What I Admire About Ron Paul

It seems we need even more fresh thread for those who wish to discuss Ron Paul, so let me start this one off by saying something nice about the man.

A younger Ron Paul appeals to swing voters.

Ron Paul had a pretty sweet swing at the plate.

Just look at that photo — pinched from David Brown’s post last week at Big League Stew — showing Paul batting in an annual congressional baseball game a few decades back. As Brown says:

No matter what you think of Paul’s politics — look at that swing! Arms extended, head down, back foot dug in. Up in Hitting Coach Heaven, Charlie Lau is smiling.

Probably the best-looking swing of any major party presidential candidate since George H.W. Bush. Plus, as Brown notes, Paul gets style points for the rainbow ‘Stros replica jersey and old-school stirrups.

None of that, of course, means you should vote for the guy any more than, say, Steve Carlton’s hall-of-fame career means he’s qualified for public office. (Carlton would’ve loved Paul’s newsletters.)

The newest news about Ron Paul is that, despite his denials, the congressman did sign off on those racist and conspiratorial newsletters. I’m not really sure just how newsy that news is — “Man linked to statements he published in his name” isn’t much of a scoop.

As Myrddin writes at AmericaBlog, this confirmation isn’t likely to change Paul’s standing with the GOP:

Don’t expect the confirmation of the obvious fact that Ron Paul wrote and approved the racist bile printed under his name to hurt him in the nomination race, the reason his opponents haven’t mentioned the issue is that they know their party too well: The modern GOP is built on racism. Nixon’s ‘Southern Strategy’ was courting the votes of white supremacists upset by the end of segregation.

One problem with courting support from the racist and conspiratorial fringes is that you’re likely to wind up with support from the racist and conspiratorial fringes.

Jim Linzey, for example, has taken to Christian newswire to “Appeal to Americans to Support Ron Paul for President in 2012.” This creates, as Warren Throckmorton notes, “Another Pastor Problem for Ron Paul.” Throckmorton links to this 2009 Talk2Action piece outlining the views of Paul’s fan:

In 2005 Linzey went on a speaking tour, under the auspices of an entity known as the Prophecy Club. In one of Linzey’s Prophecy Club talks, which was recorded and sold by the club in VHS video format, Linzey claimed that “The Rothschilds”, and European bankers who all have Jewish names except for “The Rockefellers”, control the US economy through the Federal Reserve and are scheming to bankrupt, and enslave through debt, the American middle class.

… In a series of radio show appearances Linzey made in concert with his Prophecy Club tour, Linzey went on to claim that the International bankers he said ruled America were conspiring to send a wave of 5 million Mexican and illegal alien killers across the border into the United States, to rape Caucasian American women and their teenage daughters, and kill American Caucasian men and so alter the country’s ethnic and racial makeup. Linzey claimed the Mexican/illegal alien rapist/killer army would slaughter 25 million Americans in what would be a “Holocaust.”

In other Paul-thread related news: