Rand (I'm not a racist - I only pander to racists) Paul

Joe Conason had an excellent article in Salon.com about the candidate from Kentucky:
"To understand Rand Paul's agonized contortions over America's civil rights consensus, let's review the tainted pedigree of the movement that reared him. Specifically, both the Kentucky Republican Senate nominee and his father, Ron Paul, have been closely associated over the past two decades with a faction that described itself as 'paleolibertarian,' led by former Ron Paul aide Lew Rockwell and the late writer Murray Rothbard. They eagerly forged an alliance with the 'paleoconservatives' behind Patrick Buchanan, the columnist and former presidential candidate whose trademarks are nativism, racism and anti-Semitism."

. . .

"The last time that anyone examined the details of the Paul family's gamy history was back in 2008, when the New Republic dug up copies of newsletters sent out under Ron's name to raise money, and found that they were replete with ugly references to blacks, Martin Luther King, homosexuals and other targets of the racist far right. At the time, Reason magazine, a libertarian magazine that opposed the 'paleo' deviation, gave the most revealing account of its movement's degenerate element.

"Following Ron Paul's dismal performance in the 1988 presidential campaign as the Libertarian Party candidate, Rockwell and Rothbard 'championed an open strategy of exploiting racial and class resentment to build a coalition with populist "paleoconservatives," producing a flurry of articles and manifestos whose racially charged talking points and vocabulary mirrored the controversial Paul newsletters' uncovered by the New Republic. Rothbard died in 1995, but in 2008 Rockwell was still at Paul's side as a top advisor, 'accompanying him to major media appearances; promoting his candidacy on the LewRockwell.com blog; publishing his books; and peddling an array of the avuncular Texas congressman's recent writings and audio recordings.'

"According to Sanchez and Weigel, the tone of Paul's newsletters shifted to reflect his political circumstances. Between his first presidential campaign and his return to Congress in 1996 as a Republican, they were filled with slurs against blacks generally and Martin Luther King Jr. in particular, including the accusation that the civil rights leader 'seduced underage girls and boys.' Rothbard hated King deeply, describing him in November 1994 as 'a socialist, egalitarian, coercive integrationist, and vicious opponent of private-property rights ... who was long under close Communist Party control,' and concluding that 'there is one excellent litmus test which can set up a clear dividing line between genuine conservatives and neoconservatives, and between paleolibertarians and what we can now call "left-libertarians." And that test is where one stands on "Doctor" King.' (Then again, he hated Lincoln too, whom he disparaged in the same essay as 'one of the major despots of American history.')"

. . .

There is a reason why Rand Paul is choosing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as his primary example of the government over-stepping its boundries. There are a lot of other pieces of legislature at which he could have taken aim: anti-trust laws, OSHA, the newly-passed financial reform law... But in speaking out against the Civil Rights Act he's secretly winking at the far, far-right wing racist factions of the GOP. This is just like Reagan giving his first major campaign speech in Philadelphia, Mississippi where civil rights workers were killed in the 1960's. In speaking about the importance of "State Rights" at that speech he was giving a little wink and nod to racist southerners in a code that they clearly understood.

This veiled, secretive embracing of racism is present at every level of GOP campaigning. From the '08 presidential campaign where McCain did nothing to dispel or disavow the rampant racism that infected his campaign. It was only when he couldn't put the genie back in the bottle that he actually took the trouble to address the xenophobia and racism that began to overshadow his message. Just look at the TV ad campaign Linda McMahon is pushing in Connecticut: the whitest, white people in the whole state talking about how Linda is "one of them" and "understands their concerns." It may be a bit more innocuous than Sarah Palin blathering about "Real Americans" in redneck central but it essentially sends the same message.

Rob Simmons, We Hardly Knew Ya...

...well, not really. Anyone who has lived in Connecticut for a while knows who he is. He is getting another fifteen minutes of fame on the national level now that he is bowing out of the Republican primary race for the U.S. Senate. Which is a real shame. I actually kind of like Rob Simmons (OK, not really. but I do not loathe his very existence which is saying a lot for a Republican politican.)

I would rather he got the nomination over WWE CEO and general slimeball, Linda McMahon. He would have had broader appeal, is more moderate and falls more into the mold of the prototypical New England Republican. He would have fared MUCH better against Blumenthal than McMahon. Neither one of them stands a snowball's chance in hell of beating AG Rich Blumenthal, but if I were to choose who would be more representative of my state's values, I would have chosen the former congressman and decorated Vietnam War veteran over the "lady" who has appeared on national TV kicking wrestling commentators in the groin and sharing a beer with Stone Cold Steve Austin. ...not to mention the scandal swirling around her and her stable of wrestlers' steroid use.

Simmons is dropping out of the race after the GOP state convention chose McMahon over him and endorsed her. She's spent sixteen million dollars on the campaign thus far and with the election still over a year away is on pace to break records with her spending. Supposedly, she has set aside fifty million dollars of her own money to campaign for the seat. Simmons just could not match that pace of spending and is, like I am, that the GOP chose McMahon's over-stuffed war chest over the character and record of someone who has served his country in the Army and the CIA as well as in Congress.

"I'm not a multi-millionaire," Simmons said in an interview with the CT Mirror. "I own my home. I've got some property in Vermont that has some value. My wife and I are what you might call a middle-class family, and we have chosen to enter politics at this stage in our lives and have been successful without being multi-millionaires."

This is just further evidence of the continuing erosion of the Republican middle ground to the out of control, torrential flood that is the teabaggers. Simmons would have gone to the Senate and would have worked with members on both sides of the aisle. He was fairly moderate when he served in the House of Representatives. He's widely respected in the state for the work that he did to keep the sub base in Groton open. But that took bipartisan cooperation and that is an affront that simply will not be endured by the teabaggers. McMahon's message, on the other hand, is that she's going to D.C. to shake things up and implement "real change" whatever that means. To show that she's just a "normal person," a Beltway outsider she's running ads in Connecticut (and they have become rather ubiquitous) with "normal people" saying that Linda is one of them; that she understands them; blah blah blah... The only problem is that she's somehow corraled the whitest looking group of people possible. They all look like they've just walked out of the lounge at the Greenwich Yatch Club.

That's certainly not the Connecticut that I live in.